I used AI for therapy — here's why real therapists say it's an awful idea

I had a therapist for two years. She was very good at her job, both insightful and soothing and (for me as a 22-year-old living in London) very expensive. I spent over £5,000 on therapy over the course of two years. It is the best money I've ever spent. For many, though, those costs can be prohibitive.

- Maddy Mussen

So... what if a magical, hyper-fast, non-judgmental machine could do it for free? AI chatbots such as ChatGPT are threatening to take on that mantle. A new study published in PLOS Mental Health assessed the efficacy of ChatGPT and human therapists in treating 830 couples. Not only could the couples rarely tell the ChatGPT responses from the humans', the AI's responses received more favourable ratings. Young people appear particularly interested in using ChatGPT as an alternative therapist, too: in March, there were 16.7 million posts on TikTok about using ChatGPT as a therapist.

This trend is deeply concerning, with real, human therapists concerned it could be harmful. "It's not psychotherapy, and I think that needs to be understood," says Billie Dunlevy, a London-based BACP registered therapist. "A big part of my work is to assess risk," she says. "If a client has complex mental health issues, it would be highly unethical and potentially very harmful of me to start dropping truth bombs and insights in the first session. But this is what AI does."