Take our Do I Need Therapy?

Find a therapist near me

Patients are using AI for emotional support, advice, and mental health, often without telling clinicians.

AI chatbots may reinforce specific vulnerabilities in OCD, eating disorders, and depression.

AI literacy is becoming an essential part of clinical practice, and practical training can help clinicians.

Co-authored by Jill Noorily at the Division of Digital Psychiatry at BIDMC.

This post is part 1 of a series.

A man you have been seeing for several months for OCD and anxiety comes into his next session saying he stopped attending the weekly support groups he had previously found helpful. Upon further discussion, he discloses that he has been spending several hours each night talking to an AI chatbot, saying, "It understands me better than anyone."

As his clinician, how would you respond?

Our team at the Division of Digital Psychiatry sent a similar pre-screening vignette and question above to over 100 mental health clinicians to better understand how clinicians currently approach these conversations.

Most clinicians first approached the scenario with curiosity, but their curiosity lacked a target of inquiry. This vignette presents the clinician with three clinical facts: a dose (several hours each night), a feeling (it understands them better than anyone), and a functional cost (they have abandoned a support group that was helping). Many clinicians missed fundamental inquiries that explore the dose and use pattern. So, while clinical curiosity was present, there wasn't a clear sense of how to harness it.

Clinicians need to know which questions can help distinguish benign AI use from concerning use, and which questions to ask to explore patient use. They also need a technical understanding of the tools to understand engagement risk.

This is a teachable gap in clinical understanding.

A Therapist's Practical Assessment Framework........

© Psychology Today