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First Call for Papers for CLPsych 2026
The 11th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology: Moving Beyond Labels to Understand Mental Health Dynamics
A hybrid workshop to be held in conjunction with ACL 2026
Website: clpsych.org
Submission site: softconf (exact address to be sent later)
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Since 2014, CLPsych has brought together researchers in computational linguistics and NLP, who use computational methods to better understand human language, infer meaning and intention, and predict individuals’ characteristics and potential behavior, with mental health practitioners and researchers, who are focused on psychopathology and neurological health and engage directly with the needs of providers and their patients. This workshop’s distinctly interdisciplinary nature has improved the exchange of knowledge, fostered collaboration, and increased the visibility of mental health as a problem domain in NLP.

Together, we hope to be able to advance the common goal of using human language as a tool to better understand emotional and mental state, and to reduce emotional suffering and the potential for self-harm. In this year the theme will be a continuation of last year's theme on Understanding the mental health state -going beyond classification, where we would focus on Understanding intra- and inter-personal dynamics in mental health. We will focus on: understanding the mental health state and its changes as opposed to focusing on one final label or output.

Paper submission instructions
All paper submissions must describe substantial, original, completed, and unpublished work. In addition to papers describing algorithms, models, or experimentation, we are happy to receive carefully argued and supported position papers, insightful reviews or synthesis of relevant literature, or informative descriptions of real-world experiences deploying language technology (including prototypes) in relevant clinical settings. Topics include, but are not limited to

• Understanding people who are difficult to reach
• Serving people who are traditionally less likely to seek and receive help
• Addressing social or digital exclusion
• Creating stronger links between patients and providers
• Addressing the needs of underrepresented communities
• Machine learning methods
• Large language models
• Linguistic methods and questions
• Data collection and annotation
• Specific conditions (e.g. autism spectrum, depression, etc.)
• Practical deployment of technology
• Clinical assessment
• Clinical research
• Therapy
• Explainability and interpretability
• Position papers
• Ethics and limitations

A key goal of this workshop is to foster the conversation with clinicians and clinical researchers, both at the workshop and when these papers are read in the future. We therefore include practicing clinicians and clinical researchers on our program committee, and the ability to communicate ideas, approaches, and results clearly to people who are not computational linguists will be as important as the technical quality of the work.

CLPsych submissions will be submitted using Softconf; detailed information will appear at clpsych.org. CLPsych will accept submissions of both long papers (up to eight pages of core content) and short papers (up to four pages of core content); plus unlimited references. Up to an extra page can be added in the final camera-ready version to allow space for addressing the reviewers’ comments. We require all authors to include relevant discussions of ethical considerations, impact, and limitations in the body of the paper. The limitations section does not count toward the page limit and should appear immediately before the references section. Following ACL’s policy, papers without a limitations section will be desk-rejected.

Authors may optionally include appendices, but these constitute additional information and might not be looked at by reviewers. If anything in the appendix is an important part of the contribution, or important for the reviewers to assess the work, they should be a part of the main paper, and not appear in the appendix.

All submissions must be fully anonymized to preserve the double-blind reviewing policy. Insufficiently anonymized submissions and submissions that do not respect the anonymity period will be desk-rejected. https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=ACL_Policies_for_Submission,_Review_and_Citation

Authors should adhere to ACL 2026 submission policy and requirements that are posted at https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp#paper-submission-information with respect to author guidelines, double submission, anonymity period, double blind review, data management, human subjects discussion, referencing prior work, and templates.

In order for the paper to appear in the proceedings, at least one author must register for the workshop by the early registration deadline. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to provide a pre-recorded video presenting their work and to participate in discussant-led sessions, in which their paper will be discussed.

Important dates

• March 17th, 2026: Workshop paper submissions are due, see clpsych.org for how to submit
• April 28th, 2026: Notification of acceptance
• May 12th, 2026: Camera-ready papers due
• June 1st, 2026: Pre-recorded video due
• July 2nd or 3rd, 2026: ACL workshops (Exact workshop date to be announced soon)

Shared task
Please check https://clpsych.org/shared-task/ for more details on the shared task. The shared task will have its own important dates, but please assume that the camera-ready paper deadline is the same as above.

Organizers
clpsych_organizers@googlegroups.com

Aya Zirikly, George Washington University (chair)
Kfir Bar, Reichman University
Sean MacAvaney, University of Glasgow
Molly Ireland, Receptiviti
Yaakov Ophir, Ariel University and University of Cambridge
Dana Atzil-Slonim, Bar-Ilan University
Vasudha Varadarajan, Carnegie Mellon University
Steven Bedrick, Oregon Health & Science University
Bart Desmet, Thomson-Reuters

Workshop site: https://clpsych.org/
ACL conference site: https://2026.aclweb.org/