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While traditionally facilitated through therapist\u2013client interaction, growing research interest has turned toward modeling this process computationally to generate quality reference reframes. Previous studies using Large Language Models (LLMs) for cognitive reframing often overlook the structured reasoning processes emphasized in CBT. To address this, we propose\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">RETHiNK<\/jats:italic>\n                    , a psychologically informed Natural Language Processing (NLP) framework that emulates structured reasoning through a multi-LLM debate pipeline. It operates in three phases:\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Preprocessing<\/jats:italic>\n                    , which identifies emotions, intentions, and cognitive distortions to contextualize user input;\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Debate<\/jats:italic>\n                    , which evaluates thoughts, infers evidence, and proposes actions via multi-LLM debate grounded in psychological principles; and\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Refinement<\/jats:italic>\n                    , which iteratively enhances reframes with LLM-based feedback, introducing an\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">overpositivity<\/jats:italic>\n                    check for quality control. Experimental results demonstrate that\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">RETHiNK<\/jats:italic>\n                    outperforms the baselines in human evaluation across helpfulness, empathy, and rationality. This work is conducted entirely in an offline research setting with non-clinical data and is\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">not intended for therapeutic or clinical use<\/jats:italic>\n                    . Our goal is to investigate how structured reasoning can improve reframing generation, rather than building a deployable mental health system.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3815586","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,14]],"date-time":"2026-05-14T06:41:57Z","timestamp":1778740917000},"page":"1-33","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["RETHiNK: Simulating Human Reasoning via Multi-LLM Debate for Cognitive Reframing of Negative Thoughts"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"7","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-4683-3984","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiaomeng","family":"Wang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9856-4685","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Dharmendra","family":"Sharma","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4693-0097","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Dinesh","family":"Kumar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6377-0884","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xunzhu","family":"Tang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_2_2_2","first-page":"56","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2021 1st International Conference in Information and Computing Research (iCORE)","author":"Aureus Jelly P.","year":"2021","unstructured":"Jelly P. 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