Teresa Berkowitz’s experiences with therapists had been hit or miss. “Some good, some useful, some just a waste of time and money,” she says. When a childhood trauma was reactivated six years ago, instead of connecting with a real human being, Berkowitz, who is in his fifties and lives in the US state of Maine, downloaded Youper, a mental health app with a artificial intelligence powered chatbot therapist function.
Once or twice a week, Berkowitz keeps a guided journal with Youper’s chatbot, during which the bot prompts him to spot and change negative thought patterns as he writes down his thoughts. The app, she says, forces her to rethink what triggers her anxiety. “It’s available to you all the time,” she says. If activated, she doesn’t have to wait a week for a therapy appointment.
Unlike their living, breathing counterparts, AI therapists can lend a robotic ear at any time, day or night. They are cheap, if not free; a significant factor considering cost is often one of the biggest barriers to access help. Also, some people are more comfortable confessing their feelings to an unresponsive bot than to a person. research has found.
The most popular AI therapists have million users. However, its explosion in popularity coincides with a severe lack of resources. According to figures According to the World Health Organization, there is a global median of 13 mental health workers for every 100,000 people. In high-income countries, the number of mental health workers is more than 40 times higher than in low-income countries. And the anxiety and massive loss caused by the pandemic has magnified the problem and further widened this gap. A paper published in the Lancet in November 2021 estimated that the pandemic triggered an additional 53 million cases of depression and 76 million cases of anxiety disorders worldwide. In a world where mental health resources are scarce, therapy bots are increasingly filling the void.
Take Wysa, for example. The “emotionally intelligent” AI chatbot launched in 2016 and now has 3 million users. is being extended to teenagers in parts of the London state school system, while the UK NHS is also running a randomized control trial to see if the app can help the millions sitting on (very long) waiting list for specialized help in mental health conditions. government of singapore licensed the app in 2020 to provide free support to its population during the pandemic. And in June 2022, Wysa He received a Breakthrough Device Designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat depression, anxiety, and chronic musculoskeletal pain, intended to expedite product testing and approval.
In a world where there are not enough services to meet demand, they are probably a “good enough move”, says Ilina Singh, professor of neuroscience and society at the University of Oxford. These chatbots could be a new and accessible way of presenting information about coping with mental health issues that is already freely available on the internet. “For some people, it’s going to be very helpful, and that’s great and we’re excited about it,” says John Torous, director of the division of digital psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts. “And for some people, it won’t be.”
.
