Have you been hearing a lot about AI taking over the world? Or how will AI affect mental health services? The thought of Artificial Intelligence taking over the role of a therapist is quite interesting and is full of anecdotal uses. Let’s begin by breaking up some of the myths surrounding the use of AI in Mental Health Services. Here are some anecdotal uses of why my clients have turned to AI. Some of my clients use it as a way to bounce off ideas in different scenarios. Others use it for journaling. Some even ask for specific advice. Let’s talk about the pros and cons about these situations.
I have had clients use AI to ask about dating advice. Such as, when do I ask her out? What is the best meal to make on a first date? These things could be helpful if you have a client that is well functioning and not suffering from social anxiety. If you can roll with the suggestions and are ambitious enough to try it out, but what if you don’t succeed? Do you not try again or go back to social isolation? Or do you have a way to talk to your therapist about the thoughts leading up to the planning and how you did you handle the rejection? If you only relied on AI, would you be inclined to try again? The motivation to recover from rejection is just as important to your success. Therapy would be a great place to check your negative thoughts, plan for some appropriate alternative scenarios if they don’t work out, and hopefully be a place to talk with a real live person on ways to improve social interaction skills.
I’ve also had clients in couples therapy use AI to ask for specific interventions in difficult situations. Should I give him a second chance if he cheated on me? Should I file for divorce? If these big life decisions could be answered by a computer algorithm, then what are we doing in couples therapy? These are complex human interactions and cannot be boiled down to statistics nor should it discount real feelings of hurt and betrayal. In this situation, would you trust AI to really take your feelings into consideration of the complex history of the relationship and discount the motivation of the person to want to change to stay together? The AI program would give you a statistically derived answer that bypasses the human emotions. For some, this might work, but for many people, we are vested in the emotional outcome and healing that needs to be worked through in couples therapy and this would be a major loss of opportunity to work out a solution.
In another situation, I have had clients used AI to keep them accountable in daily journaling, a tool that helps the client to slow down and take into consideration their thoughts and feelings to keep track of their growth. This could be helpful when AI is used for prompts in their journaling. It helps them to be accountable for homework success. Using AI can for this purpose can allow for questions and feelings to come up during the week and the client can bring them into sessions.
With any new tool that comes up, we should proceed with caution, but keep an open mind. In general, it is difficult to think that AI will ever replace a real live therapist, but some of the tools could still be helpful to facilitate discussion and for session. Hopefully as we navigate this phenomenon, we can proceed with caution and be open to learning the benefits and cons of this powerful tool.
