Hao Zhang
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2026
MindUntangler: Resolving Cognitive Entanglements via Multi-Agent Topological Routing in Psychological Counseling
Xiaoyu Liu | Yufeng Diao | Jingjie Zeng | Shiqi Li | Hao Zhang | Liang Yang
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
Xiaoyu Liu | Yufeng Diao | Jingjie Zeng | Shiqi Li | Hao Zhang | Liang Yang
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
While Large Language Models (LLMs) offer scalable mental health support, they typically operate within the superficial text space, providing generic comfort that fails to resolve a patient’s deep-rooted cognitive distortions. To address this, we propose **MindUntangler** a novel multi-agent framework that models psychological counseling as a dynamic topological routing task. By conceptualizing cognitive distortions as "pathological topologies"—tangible knots in a patient’s Cognitive Topology Graph (CTG)—our system dynamically tracks and resolves these complex connections through pluralistic therapeutic routing. To ensure clinical safety, we integrate topological guardrails and align the model via a novel topology-driven Direct Preference Optimization. Experiments on two benchmarks demonstrate state-of-the-art performance in cognitive restructuring and clinical efficacy. Ultimately, this work shifts AI therapy from textual empathy to computable, structural interventions.