Why Human Therapy?

Millions of people are already using AI for mental health support, whether they'd call it "therapy" or not. 

Adam Dodge and Dr. Saed D. Hill take an honest, non-judgmental look at how AI is showing up in mental health care, what it does well, where it falls short, and what it means for the future of therapy.

Three Ways AI Shows Up in Mental Health General-purpose chatbots used informally for support; purpose-built therapy apps with clinical input; and AI companions that "shape shift" across roles: girlfriend, therapist, trainer, etc. Spoiler: blurring those lines is not a great idea.

Why AI Therapy Is Everywhere ChatGPT handles roughly 18 billion messages a week. If just 2% involve mental health, that's 342 million therapeutic conversations weekly, potentially making it the largest mental health provider in the country. That's not an accident. It's a direct response to a broken system: nearly 50% of people who need care can't access it.

What AI Does Well Dr. Hill makes the case that AI can genuinely shine at skills-based, manualized approaches like CBT, helping people recognize thought patterns, challenge distorted thinking, and build coping strategies. He tested it himself on Character AI and found it impressive for skill-building. Short-term support for anxiety and depression? Research backs it up.

Where It Can Get Dangerous AI can't read the room. It misses body language, tone, and the unspoken signals human therapist picks up in real time. It can't do repair work. In a crisis, the stakes are life or death, and an active lawsuit against OpenAI involving a minor's death makes that concrete. A Stanford study on LLMs and therapy reached a clear conclusion: not a replacement. And none of this is HIPAA-protected.

The "New Relationship Energy" Trap 24/7 availability, zero judgment, and constant validation feels great at first. But endless affirmation without challenge can stunt emotional growth. Real growth often requires tension, rupture, and repair. Those are things AI doesn't offer.

The Hybrid Future Rather than competition, the hosts see AI as a bridge between sessions: a reflection tool, a way to review skills between appointments, or eventually an AI trained on your own session transcripts to reinforce what you and your therapist are working on.

If you're considering an AI therapy app:

• Was it purpose-built for mental health?
• Who built it? Clinical expertise/credentialed advisory board matter.
• Was it researched and tested?
• What data are they collecting? How is it protected? (No HIPAA = no confidentiality guarantee.)

If you're a therapist:

• Ask clients about their AI use
• Learn the technology

Research Referenced

OpenAI / ChatGPT message volume statistics

Mental health access gap: ~50% of people who need care can't reach it

1 mental health provider per 10,000 people seeking care; 1,600 patients per available provider

"Therapy deserts" (geographic mental health access gaps)

Stanford study: LLMs and therapeutic replacement

Lawsuit against OpenAI involving a minor's death (Raine v. OpenAI)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Why Humans Podcast, where we discuss how our relationships with AI chatbots are changing how we connect in the digital age. My name is Adam Dodge. I'm the founder of NTAB.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

And I'm Dr. Saeed D. Hill, and I'm a counseling psychologist and consultant in the field of men and masculinities.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

And really excited to get into this with you today, man. Some background here. Said and I have delivered talks in the past about mental health in the age of AI. It has been one of the most engaging, resonant talks we've ever given. Anything you're excited to talk about today? Anything coming up for you?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I feel like more than anything, I think what's important about this sort of episode too is to sort of shed light on just how many people are actually using this kind of technology for mental health services. It's continuing to increase. And when we first started doing this, Adam, and talking about this, I mean, it was like kind of more in early stages. And now I just feel like it's so much more, and so many more people are using it. But I still think that there's a lot of stigma attached to it. And I wonder how many people are talking to each other about their AI therapy, ChatGPT, Claude, like their use of AI technology, especially around mental health. And so hopefully this helps with some of the stigma. It helps shed some light on what people are using it for and why. And to my therapists out there, my colleagues who might be concerned about this sort of thing, we need to know more about it. This can be used to our advantage to know more about psychologically why people are turning to this sort of technology. So I'm hopeful we can get into that too. Just for uh, you know, my colleagues out there who might be concerned about this technology coming for their job. Let's talk about that. I think that might be important.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah. I mean, this is whether we want to or not, this is a reality that I think therapists and mental health professionals and the people who seek their assistance are going to have to reckon with. Like, how do we make space for AI in our mental health journey, whether you are a professional or a client or a patient? So let's get into this. Let's talk about how AI is showing up in mental health because we see three ways this is happening. Uh, people are probably most commonly accessing general purpose apps. So the first category would be general purpose apps like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, who weren't built to be mental health AI mental health professionals or therapists, but are widely, widely used for this purpose. And I think ChatGPT manages something like 18 billion messages each week. And even if like 2% of users use it for mental health, that's 342 million therapeutic conversations a week. So that is a monster. In fact, it may be the largest provider of mental health services in the country, passing the VA. If you know we don't have exact stats on that, but that is definitely a possibility. And I was just playing around with this in voice mode with ChatGPT, and I asked, I said I was having anxious thoughts, and this British voiced woman uh walked me through ways to deal with anxious thoughts in the middle of the night. I asked it if it had any cognitive behavioral therapeutic insights, immediately was more than happy to get into cognitive restructuring and things like that. So just right out of the gate, just like no, not holding back. Because I think ChatGPT is basically, or OpenAI, who runs ChatGPT, is taking the position that, hey, people are using us for this anyway, so let's lean into it. That's part of the reason why they launched ChatGPT Health recently, already using it for medical questions. And so they're just like, hey, let's lean into this. So that's one. And then the other two are purpose-built apps. These are the apps that are really designed to be AI therapists, right? That are designed specifically for mental health. And a lot of them are built with clinical expertise and have experts in the field guiding them and really are designed to tackle the mental health needs of the world in a way that human clinicians and therapists can't. So we've got general purpose, we've got purpose built, and then we have AI companions, which we talked about in our first pod about why human relationships, where AI partners can shape shift. So, hey, you're my AI girlfriend, and now I need you to be my therapist. And now I need you to be my trainer, and now I need you to be my accountants. So they are these shapeshifters. And I don't know, Said, I those apps clearly are not bound by any duties of care, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's probably not a good idea to date your therapist. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah, hot take, right? Absolutely not. So I mean, I think like these blurring of relationships and intermixing in these relationships really set people up for a lot of potential issues. And and people should know, ethically speaking, yes, if I need to tell anyone out there no dating your therapist and therapist, no dating your clients.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Anyway. So why is this happening? Why are we doing this podcast? Why is AI suddenly everywhere when it comes to mental health? It's because there's a massive unmet demand for mental health care. And it's not surprising. Like we see stats like nearly 50% of individuals who could benefit from therapeutic services can't reach them. There's one mental health provider for every 10,000 people seeking care. For every available provider in the US, there's an average of 1,600 patients with depression or anxiety alone. The companies that are creating these AI therapy apps love these stats. They love these stats because it it justifies and legitimizes why they exist, because there is, I think without question, an unmet demand for therapeutic services.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

No, this isn't so surprising at all. I feel like when you kind of look at what's going on, I mean, I think of the example of like food deserts. People talk about food deserts all the time. And I think that there's in the research things called therapy deserts, right? Like where there's particular geographic areas in the country and around the world that people just cannot access mental health services. Internet isn't the same all over the place, too, for people who might need virtual assistance and virtual therapy, phone connections, all sorts of stuff. I mean, there's just a lot of barriers to it, not to mention costs. So access, costs, people's geographies, where they're from, you know, the wait lists that because so many therapists are in demand, there's tons of wait lists. And that's not just out in the public. I mean, I work at a lot of universities where I've seen wait lists just backed up at university counseling centers. So I think those numbers don't necessarily surprise me at all. I think it should gravely concern us, though, and probably explains a lot about why people are turning to AI therapy, in particular mental health assistance. Because, and I say this, I mean, this should be kind of the baseline of this conversation. I mean, I don't think the question necessarily is why are people turning to AI therapists? I think the real question is like, what are human systems sort of failing to provide other humans at this time? So our reliance and turning to AI is telling us something about our relationships to humans at this time, and the field of therapy should be really paying attention to that.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I love the way you put that. It's like we shouldn't be asked the question, why are people turning to AI for therapy? It's like, why aren't they getting it from the existing systems? Why aren't they turning to human beings for support? When people can't access care, it's not that they don't stop needing the support, they just find it elsewhere. And AI is just so juicy for this. And I didn't realize that there were wait lists on college campuses for mental health care. And I think about it, it's so much friction, right? You get into a wait list, then maybe you get in, and then you don't like the therapist, or their schedule doesn't work for you, or there's so many other barriers that could show up, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:50

100%. Or you can kind of think of it, you don't close for the semester or take breaks for holiday breaks, and all of these other things at play there too. Also remember that many university counseling centers have what they they call like short-term therapy or time-limited therapy, or this dynamic of like you have a certain amount of sessions that you can access, like, and it's usually based on research, you know, five to seven sessions you might get for free at a university counseling center or so before they try to refer you outside of a university counseling center, and then it becomes about insurance. And then that's another huge barrier for people. Does so-and-so therapists you want to work with or a therapist, period, take your insurance? I know many clinicians who aren't getting paid a ton and they try to limit the amount of insurance clients that they take as opposed to out of pocket, right? And even if they do take your insurance, not every insurance is built the same. I know many colleagues who are like, oh, I can't take another client or has this particular insurance.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

That's the current situation, which gosh, nobody uses as a commercial for how awesome mental health care is. Sounds bleak. No, no, no. Sounds real bleak. Sounds real bleak. But then in comes this new mental health resource in the form of an AI companion or a chatbot or an AI therapy app, and all the barriers that you just described evaporate. It's immediate. It's free. I can do it for as long as I want or as short as I want when I want at a time that's convenient to me. What we hear from a lot of people is you're going to therapy, you're likely sharing something that is very private and personal, which you may be protective of, or you may carry a shame around, or be embarrassed about, and be uncomfortable telling another human being. But people are much more comfortable sharing that with AI. And it's often very affordable or even free and unlimited. So wow, it's just the complete opposite end of the spectrum, which is why this it sells itself. Like it really sells itself, and it's why people are are investing hundreds of millions of dollars, right, if not more, into this. So that's the inflection point, right? We're very clear on this podcast, Saeed, that we're not here to pass judgment on how AI is affecting relationships or therapy or empathy or whatever it is. It's really to be curious about what's happening and explore it from as but be as objective as possible. And one of the things when you and I first started doing this, you just like threw a hot take at me so fast that it caught me off guard, which was you're like, you know, I could see AI actually being better at a lot of stuff than human therapists, like certain types of therapies. So let's talk about what it can do well.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Absolutely. I mean, I think that there's some really basic level of therapy that AI can do really well. So I think things like basic skills-based sort of support is really one of those main things. And so for a lot of my colleagues out there, and people who are know anything about therapy might know about like cognitive behavioral therapy, right? Or cognitive therapy or behavioral therapy, things that are maybe more manualized, like manualized treatments. There's valid, like empirically validated treatments that are very much skills-based.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Sorry to interrupt, but I actually don't couldn't define CBT to save my life, even though I'm familiar with the term. Can you quickly sort of explain what cognitive behavioral therapy is?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Sure. CBT, the way I would describe it, is identifying the links between how your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors are sort of all interconnected with each other. So part of what CBT would do for you is like help you recognize, for example, how what we might call distorted thinking happens. So some of your cognition, some of your thoughts, some of your problematic thought patterns, like how they might lead to behaviors that contribute to your issues, right? So a lot of us are just alone with our thoughts quite a bit. We ruminate all day on something and we paint a narrative about a situation that is filtered through our own lens, right? Our own experiences, our backgrounds, our traumas, our joys, our successes, all of that is filtered through us. And then it causes us to then make assumptions and maybe behave a certain way based on that filter. So what CBT would kind of help you do is maybe restructure some of that, maybe think differently about some of those issues and reframe some of those negative thoughts and to respond to situations differently, to break some of those normal patterns you might be doing, to provide you with the potential to do something different and have a new outcome to kind of show you that things don't always have to be that same way that you're thinking. So that's how I might think of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

I'm starting to see why you think AI might be able to swim in those waters.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Tell me, what are you noticing about what I just said? From somebody who's not a therapist, like what have you picked up on? I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

First of all, that never none of that ever happens to me. I'm super well adjusted and I never have. Of course. Well, when you talk about for me, that's a lot of pattern recognition, helping somebody recognize their inner thoughts and how they might be not consistent with what actually is going on or and helping them reframe. I think AI would be really good at that. If you're brain dumping to your AI therapy app, everything that happened someday or over a period of time, I think it's recognizing pattern could do a really good job of recognizing patterns and help you reframe those. That's what was coming up for me.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Absolutely. I think a big part of CBT is challenging some of those thoughts at times, but really helping you develop healthier coping strategies for some of those thoughts and how they impact your behaviors. So focusing on current issues, teaching you some practical skills and just to help with your overall well-being. And so, yeah, so I think what I've seen, and maybe this is a spoiler, I don't know how much we will get into this, but early on in this process, Adam and I also both jumped on some of this tech. And I am personally like started talking to an AI therapist and AI psychologist before on a platform called Character AI. I really started talking to this AI therapist about issues I was going through, and and they were amazing at providing me specific skills that I could try to engage in to try to be helpful to some of the these thoughts I was having at the time. So I think those skill-based things, really key, manualized things, very key. I think where things started to get dicey was when I started asking questions about more like intimate and vulnerable issues I was going through. And then things kind of went off the rails a little bit more there. So I think I'm seeing some of those limitations to really great with those skills, really great at helping you kind of challenge some of yourself here and there and develop new coping strategies and being specific about that, but it gets a little dice here when you get a little more depthful with the technology.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Would it be fair to say because some of what I've read is that studies show that in the short term it's really helpful at addressing anxiety and depression, but over the long term, it becomes less effective. And I'm I was listening to you, I was like, well, yeah, maybe you start out saying, hey, I need some of these, I need some tools in my toolbox to address, you know, racing thoughts at night, or I need some skills. But then, and I have no idea what I'm talking about, but is it very normal for people to then move on to more nuanced or like underlying things in their lives to kind of uncover why they're having those anxious thoughts in the first place? And is that where one AI may not be ready for prime time? And two, you're starting to get more into like relational therapy waters, and that's where it just can't show up.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

It's not as built for that, at least yet, right? It's just not built for that yet, being more relational. And I a main way to think about it is that um you kind of coined that term, Adam. I think that new relationship energy, right? N R E.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Oh, I didn't coin it first of all. Okay, okay. Like let's let's Sloan taught me about it.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Okay, okay. For those out there, this idea of new relationship energy, right? Or or the honeymoon phase of things, or any new relationship, you overlook a lot of things and you're kind of into and invested in the nuances of it. And that's the same for an AI relationship, especially with an AI therapist, where you're being validated all the time. It's available 24-7, it kind of gives you what you need. It's not judgmental in any capacity, right? It's it's really, it can feel very safe and very secure for people to just engage with AI therapy in the beginning stages. But to Adam's point, and some of the research shows that it's pretty good for alleviating some of that short-term loneliness and distress. But longer term, you want more. And you often want more from not just your human interactions, but you want more from your AI interactions as well. So, for example, you can only be placated and validated and whatever so many times before you start to realize that can really stunt some of your own emotional and personal growth. Because without tension, without differences, without judgment sometimes, without more challenging in a relationship, you're kind of stuck where you sort of are. And if you really want to grow more emotionally and depthfully, you need some of that tension that human dynamics really offer you and provide to you to help and aid in that growth. But one big thing about this comes with repair work. And so sometimes I've had some of my most depthful relationships that I've had with clients in the past have been born out of like me just pissing them off somehow. Honestly, like me saying something that they're just like not into. And as a human therapist, I'll read it right away. They may not tell me that I pissed them off or I've hurt them or something, but as a human therapist, I read it. I can read the facial expressions, maybe the body language. They go silent, and that is a prompt for me to kind of say, hey, hey, I just said this thing and I noticed this about how you changed in this moment. Tell me about what came up for you, right? And then I'm able to like kind of talk that through, repair with them, validate them, apologize if need be, right? The technology in AI isn't doing that with you. And imagine the safety and growth you can have knowing that some entity, some person will apologize to you, take accountability, help you see something a little differently, and help you move forward. That can create even more depth for you, and that can help you feel even safer, as opposed to AI that's gonna help pretty safe with you and isn't gonna give you that same kind of range that might be really beneficial to your growth.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Dude, I love the way you think about that. AI just is taking everything verbatim that you're communicating to it. You there's so much nuance. I think you talked about ending their life, but clearly not in a serious way, more in the way they were vocalizing frustration, but you were relying on years of experience and training and schooling and your knowledge of this person and the fact that you are a human being yourself that can recognize emotions in somebody else to interpret that one statement. And I think that really clearly demonstrates why so universally people say that AI cannot handle crisis situations, right? It cannot happen. Like if you talk about suicide with an AI, it's gonna just refer you to the suicide hotline. Like it's or more dangerously, it won't, and it'll try to address it, which we've seen is a life or death decision on the part of the AI because there's a lawsuit against open AI right now for a 16-year-old boy who turned to ChatGPT for his mental health and it helped him end his own life. So there was a study last year out of Stanford that really examined whether LLMs, large language models, could replace therapists. And the answer was a resounding no. And some of the things it said. The study released were things like therapy involves embodied multi-sensory interpersonal dynamics that LLMs can't replicate, which I think really is a fancier way to describe what you and I were just talking about. Therapy requires trust, empathy, and confrontation, none of which LLMs can authentically provide. And without the capacity to meaningfully challenge clients, LLMs risk being overly agreeable and enabling unhealthy behavior. I'm guessing that tracks for you.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

100%. I'm also somebody that works a lot in violence prevention. And what we haven't talked about here is at times I work with people who have harmed other people. And I do have examples of those same people turning to Chat GPT for perspective on how they showed up in a relationship, which I know as a human therapist, when I hear what they've done, it sounds rather manipulative or abusive or whatever it may be. When they turn to Chat GPT, ChatGPT kind of validated what they were sort of doing, kind of talked about how understandable it was and how maybe people misinterpret what they're doing and all these things that felt like you can have that sort of nuanced conversation, but it was sort of validating in a way without challenging whatsoever the perception of this person. And it sort of like allowed more space for them to believe that what they were doing, which was rather abusive, was the correct way of being in relationship. So we can also reinforce some of those sorts of negative things. Another thing that I'm thinking about with this is as we kind of like keep going down this discussion of like new relationship, whatever energy around therapy and stuff like that. One thing that AI can't really do either, that human therapists can also do is DTR, I define the relationship. And what I mean by that is this idea of as a therapist, I can talk about like caring for my clients. Can kind of say, like, if I'm with somebody who says, well, no one really cares about me and no one's there for me and stuff, I can kind of point out to them in real time, like, hey, I but I know you feel that way, and that can be understandable, but I also really care about you and I'm here for you. And really mean that, and to have another human being able to do that with you is is quite something, versus this technology, which can't really define that explicitly for you in a relationship. They can't really define who they are to you. I'll even ask like AI sometimes, like, what are you to me and stuff? And it's like, I'm just a simulation of whatever, like it's just giving me some weird, weird nonsense word salad. And I'm like, that's it, just takes you out of that sort of, I guess, fantasy and relationship very quickly, right? So yeah, I think all these sorts of things about boundaries and respect and attending to ruptures in a relationship and being able to define what the relationship is to you, hold that complexity of a relationship. Those are all things human relationships and therapists can provide that AI is not.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

I love that. And I think you and I did a pretty good job talking about some of the things that AI can do well as CBT or or track patterns and other things. And we've talked a little bit about the risks and where it can fall short with nuance, being able to understand not just what somebody's saying, but what's behind it, relational therapy, shared stakes, etc. There's a lot more, but you know, we try to keep these podcasts to 45 minutes to an hour, and so we would go way over time. If we did that, I will say the last thing I'll say, like the last risk to be clocking when you're using these platforms is this they're not HIPAA protected, right? So they're encouraging you to share the most intimate details of your life in a judgment-free space. And we just encourage people to be really mindful about what they share because it's not the same security as sharing that with a human licensed therapist who has an ethical duty of care and their license is at stake if they fall short of confidentiality and things like that. So just be really mindful of what you're sharing. So the reason we talked about sort of the benefits and the risks is because this is no spoiler alert, but we believe that these things are critical to AI literacy, and I think more importantly, mental health literacy. I think it's less about AI literacy and more about mental health literacy and what therapy actually is and what it's like and what it requires of you as the person seeking therapy and the effort. And honestly, and this is what I discussed or mentioned earlier: was this idea of like if there's a generation of kids using AI for therapy, they're gonna learn mental health literacy that where they're gonna learn what going to therapy is. And it's not something that should be available 24-7. It's not something there just to validate you and make you feel awesome, right? And give you skills. Like I've been in therapy, like it is rough very often. And I I worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Yeah, one thing I'll say about that, Adam, too, is that this is another thing we don't often talk about when it comes to therapy, but therapy isn't necessarily for you to just feel better, right? It's not supposed to be some sort of life raft that's thrown to you when you're drowning. It's not meant to just alleviate all of your symptoms. A lot of people think of it as sort of a cure to something. Therapy is actually meant to like help you experience that pain you might be experiencing, that depression, the anxiety, like kind of like face the issues that you're experiencing, face the pain and kind of help you like sit with that because we often like try to ignore those sorts of things, which cause a lot of our issues. And so that's the other part of it, too, that I just wanted to mention very quickly is that like a lot of people turn to this technology because it's like, oh, this is gonna make me feel better. But if it was really that easy and amazing, like a lot more people would be doing therapy, probably. It's it's meant to like make you face some of the ugly and validate that and make sure you know that's a human experience that you're having. It's not meant to just alleviate everything, it's meant to help you sit with it and contain it and learn about that because that's a human experience.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

I really appreciate you saying that. When you and I give these talks, we're not saying don't ever use this. We're saying uh understand what you're using and what you're using it for and what you need so you can make an informed decision as to when AI is the right tool and when a human clinician or therapist is what you need. And being able to make those decisions, I think, moving forward is absolutely critical because this is your mental health we're talking about. This is uh extremely high stakes. And we shouldn't just be choosing an AI therapy app because the reviews on the app store are awesome. We should really understand what we're using, why we're using it, and when to turn to something else. Because I think if we're passive and sort of silent about that, then these apps and the app makers are going to control the narrative. And I really think clinicians and therapists should be controlling the narrative. So, with that said, when I talk about AI or mental health literacy in the age of AI, what I'm encouraging people to do is ask yourself a couple questions. One, was this built for mental health, right? Is this a purpose-built app or not? I think that's important. Two, who's behind it? Ash is one of the more well-known ones, and it's founded by two people who are not mental health clinicians and don't have mental health. Like one of them is the founder of Casper, who's is a mattress company, right? So, but they have an incredible, and I want to be very clear, I'm not promoting this app. I'm just using this as an example, but they have an incredibly well-credentialed, very impressive advisory board. And they tested it and they did a lot of RD. And that's really what I'm looking for here, as opposed to an app that has is silent on who's behind it, whether it was tested, and it just says it's AI for therapy. Like, I'd be really careful about that. What data is being collected? Like, you are sharing the most intimate details of your life, you should know how they're protecting it. Like, these are the questions that you don't really have to ask when you go to see a licensed clinician, but we do have to ask.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Something that I might add to this conversation for especially my other therapists out there is you should be asking about AI use. And even if people aren't using AI necessarily for therapy, inquiring about how people use AI in their life is an important thing to probably be doing at this time because it could be a number of things. So I give this example of a friend that I have, and this was not a client of mine, but just a friend who's not hasn't been in therapy but has been going through a rather messy divorce. And they've been using Chat GBT for and things like that, just to kind of help them keep track of like some numbers, some business stuff that they're doing, coming up with some ideas, answering some emails, things like that, like real managerial tasks. And they don't mind me sharing this, so I could I could say this, but in a particularly low moment for them, they were curious and asked Chat GBT just conversation about their divorce, about like how they showed up in the divorce. And it was like so validating to them and their experience. And they called me up almost right away. They're like, Said, oh my gosh, Chat GBT says I was completely right about what happened in my divorce, and it's really nice, and maybe I should be asking it more questions and things like that. It's that easy to get sucked into it because this friend of mine is looking for support, but wasn't seeking that in Chat GBT. It was just a curiosity just to see what it would be like, and then was kind of hooked on it. And so it's one of those things where you just don't know how people are using the technology. I guess what we're seeing a lot in the public right now with the use is always like something painted as negative, like, oh, students in college are using Chat GBT for homework, or I just saw I'm a huge Stranger Things fan. I just saw this whole thing about like the writers of Stranger Things or might be using Chat GBT to write the script. And it's always like something like it means that there's some sort of deficit that people are engaging it with it in it with, and it's like creates a lot of stigma. And so I think we aren't always checking in with people about this, but a lot more people are using it. The percentages are really high, and we just don't realize that. And so we need to be asking more conversations about it, but it's absolutely here, and a lot of the people I see are using it.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

We're all using it, dude. We're like everybody, like I think the stick that stigma extends to the workplace, to all facets of our life. I've had multiple interactions professionally where there will be m-dashes in something that somebody, myself, somebody else wrote, and they'd be like, Oh, did you use ChatGPT for this or AI for this? And they they will quickly say, We use it for everything. You may just want to move remove those M dashes. Like we're all doing it, like we're all doing it. And for work, you need to be AI literate because it's not, you need to review everything that it creates for you before you actually put it out there as something that is from you. But yeah, I think what you're doing is is really important. And I wonder if like in the in a year from now, like there's gonna be no stigma because it's just gonna be so it's gonna be so common. But what I'm constantly thinking when I do talks on AI and mental health, even though I'm I'm coming from the layperson perspective, what I'm constantly saying is I don't think therapists should view themselves as in like competition with AI. I think they should embrace it. Do you see like a future of like hybrid care for clinicians and therapists with AI? Like if it was ready for prime time, are there any ways you could see AI being a benefit to your work?

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Yeah, I think that there are certainly things that it could be doing that could be very like helpful to aiding a therapist in their sort of work. So I think, for example, I've had some clients in the past who had seen other therapists before me who couldn't remember. They said something as simple as they couldn't remember a couple of the lessons around, say, some of the CBT that they were doing with the clinician before me. So they just couldn't remember some of the techniques or whatever it might be. So they went to Chat GPT and sort of asked, like, hey, what are some like CBT techniques that I could use for some thoughts that I'm having? And it spit out a list and on the list, like, jog their memory of some of the skills, right, that their therapist had talked about. And so that is like a very concrete sort of answer where it's like, well, sometimes it's like, I just can't remember what we talked about exactly or how we talked about it. Well, maybe AI could be something that could be helpful to help you review skills and review some of the things you did with a therapist. Again, we need to be careful about that, but I can also see that being sort of helpful. I also think a lot of the stuff in between sessions can be really helpful. So for example, AI being now we're now we're talking.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Now we're talking. This is where this is where I see the value for me.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Okay, yeah, absolutely. Like I'm thinking about in between sessions. I think of some of this technology being used as like sort of a journaling or reflection tool, even to kind of help you keep track of like how you are integrating some of the skills or some of the conversations that you've had with your therapists in your day-to-day life. So it's sort of like acting as sort of a bridge or an ongoing bridge between your sessions, in between your sessions with your therapist and your day-to-day, it can be really helpful with that too. So AI can feel very therapeutic without it actually being therapy. And I think if we think of it that way as a supplement to what you're already doing in therapy, that can be a really helpful reframe for how it's used and set you up for more realistic expectations for the technology.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Dude, I would use it right now because I can say when I'm in therapy, you're going over, first of all, how often are you meeting? Once 50 minutes, once a week, 50 minutes every two weeks, and you are, I'm not taking notes. I'm just in it, fully present, and I'm getting guidance, I'm sharing things. And then I get out of there and I'm like, wait, what? There were a lot of breakthroughs that just happened, and I was so emotionally invested, I'm having a tough time remembering what do I need to work on? What are the skills that I need to do in between sessions to apply what we just talked about? And if I had just full disclosure, I've been pushing like an AI Saeed uh app forever. So this is not new to students to Saeed.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Well, really quickly, to be fair, like maybe, right? Maybe that is the future. But also, like maybe for all therapists, maybe there is going to be an AI version of your therapist that you kind of have some more access to over time. Now, I think we still get into the issue of integration between sessions and the time taking time away from your therapist and stuff like that to integrate some of the lessons, but that could be a future thing where there is an AI version of your therapist that's with you to kind of help you integrate in between sessions.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

And it is read the transcript from all of your sessions. So I'm living my life and I'm like, wow, you know, got super anxious about a situation that I've discussed. And if I can one relay that to my AI like therapy app in between sessions, it's pattern tracking, which I think would be helpful for you as the therapist. And then it's also like, well, we're really getting into it now, but it's like your voice talking back to me, like, okay, Adam, we talked about this two sessions ago, exactly this, where what you said resonated with you in those moments was to do XYZ, right? And that would be amazing. For me, that would be amazing, probabilistic future of therapy.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

One thing, some advice for folks out there, especially my my mental health clinicians out there who are worried about the technology as a replacement. I think what we kind of can forecast as much as we can at this moment is that you won't necessarily be replaced altogether by AI, but you might kind of be replaced by a therapist that understands AI and the technology. And I think like learning right now about the technology, how it could be used to benefit the field if it can, or, and then also being very vocal about the limitations of the technology and and some of the issues that the technology presents based on having very low, maybe digital literacy about it, low mental health literacy, all these sorts of things. I think there's a balance that you need to really strike. But learn about the tech and lean in to see how it can maybe be helpful to you, but in the least be asking your clients questions about it. And this isn't just for clinicians, this is for anybody. We should probably be talking about people's AI use in particular. So let's lean more into that conversation because it's happening.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

I think that's a good place to close. Thank you, Saeed. We constantly badger Said for his takes as a psychologist, and he's always game and he I always learn something from him. So thank you, man. I really just I appreciate you so much. I am looking forward to future episodes. If you enjoyed this, we are gonna be talking about the aforementioned, you know, why human do relationship energy. We're gonna be talking about why human non-monogamy, why human commitment, why human flirting, empathy, grief. We're gonna be covering a lot of ground. So please join us. And if there's a subject you're interested in or you had questions about today's episode, you can reach out to us in the show notes. Our contact is in there. And thank you so much for joining.