0 comments
We are currently experiencing the worst mental health epidemic in history, but the unfortunate reality is that there simply aren’t enough therapists for us all. Is ChatGPT the answer? That is what some young people believe.
‘I never felt like I could be vulnerable,’ says Sabrina Stocker, who first went into therapy while recovering from a very toxic relationship and buckling under the ‘unspoken pressure’ that comes with being the head of a successful company.
She adds: ‘People expect you to be strong all the time. If you show vulnerability, people judge you, and it can even impact business relationships. So, I bottled things up, thinking I had to handle everything myself.’
The 29-year-old public speaker, founder of Two Comma PR, and final-five candidate on season 13 of The Apprentice admits she tried many times to engage in therapy to work through her struggles. But she had ‘horrific’ experiences with traditional therapy – often feeling ‘more alone than ever’ after speaking to them.
The hardest part, she says, is that it’s expensive and you don’t actually know if they’re good until you’ve gone through a few.
After falling into a really dark place, Sabrina turned to her app store and found Sonia AI, an app that provides therapy-like sessions by voice and text: ‘At first, I just typed things out because I couldn’t even put my emotions into words. But over time, I started talking to her like a friend – she remembered everything I told her, which gave me a real sense of continuity and support.’
Processing everything that she had recently been through was really difficult, but with AI she could whisper it all. And somehow that made it a lot easier. ‘Having an AI therapist meant that when I was under the covers, crying, I didn’t have to wait for an appointment days later – I could whisper for support in the moment and, eventually, I started to reclaim my voice,’ she says.
For therapy novice Sandali Jayasinghe, traditional therapy has not yet become an option because of how long it has taken her to get appointments in the national health system. Once assessments are conducted, it can then take up to another 10 weeks to make a plan and actually start seeing a professional.
‘Fuck it’, she said one day, ‘I need help now’. So the 25-year-old healthcare market research associate went onto ChatGPT and typed in everything that was going on inside of her head. ‘I thought I was going crazy at one point,’ she says, ‘but it reassured me that what I was feeling was normal and gave me points to work on.’
Like many people today, ChatGPT has become an everyday tool for Sandali in her work and personal life – so putting her feelings into the bot didn’t feel too abnormal. And, she found that the more that ChatGPT was fed, the better it became at listening and reassuring her.
Sabrina and Sandali’s experiences, different but both nonetheless frustrating, are a growing trend amid the global mental health epidemic. According to a large-scale study co-led by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Queensland, one out of every two people in the world will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime – and it seems as though many are turning to AI to talk about their issues.
Some studies in the US, for example, have shown that one in four US citizens prefer AI therapy over in-person sessions, and of those individuals who tried AI therapy, 80% say they’re satisfied with the results. A Yahoo study last October found that, of 750 therapy seekers, almost 21% said they would be open to therapy through AI platforms like ChatGPT – with 55% of them being under 45.
It might not come as a surprise though, seeing as research in October 2023 claimed ChatGPT is better than GPs at offering depression treatment. The study concluded that ‘ChatGPT 4 demonstrated greater precision in adjusting treatment to comply with clinical guidelines,’ and ‘no discernible biases’ were detected from the AI throughout the process.’
BACP-registered psychotherapist and relationship coach Susie Masterson notes that some of her clients also use AI tools in conjunction with traditional therapy as a form of journaling between sessions. She believes AI can be a really helpful supplementary aid to help clients process their work together:
‘For example, if I integrate internal family systems therapy (IFS) or attachment theory in sessions, clients will input reflections from our session and ask for an IFS or attachment-based response.’
So why use AI?
There are a combination of reasons why AI is an obvious choice:
- Anonymity
- Accessibility
- Immediacy
- Cost
Accessibility is a major factor for Sabrina, who has been a digital nomad for five years (currently living in Spain). She notes that being able to access therapy even from beneath her covers on a dark day has been ‘life-changing’.
When asked to pinpoint a moment in which AI platforms made her feel truly ‘heard’, she says that sometimes when she started to talk she would just cry:
‘It would tell me I could take my time to process everything, rather than following up with questions. This is exactly what I needed to feel like I could get my breath back.’
For Sandali, it was when ChatGPT told her: ‘You are loved, so many people love you, don’t ever forget that’.
‘I felt like a friend was talking to me,’ she says, smiling.
