Thanks to AI chatbots, it’s been incredibly easy to learn and access information, including insights about your mental health, 24/7. . In fact, AI has made access to psychological self-knowledge effortless. You can identify your attachment style, list your triggers, identify your love language, and describe the exact voice of your inner critic. The more we learn about ourselves, the easier it is to believe that understanding our patterns alone can fix our issues.
And I get it: AI chatbots will always be there for you, nice and patient, literally designed to agree with you. That’s not a flaw; it’s simply the product doing its job. If, for example, you display a problematic behavioral pattern, you can count on your AI “yes-man” to put a spin on it, explaining your reactions in seven different ways and excusing them in eight.
Despite all this AI-generated information, you may still find yourself having the same argument with the same person, ending the same way and struggling with the same painful emotional states. The change you know you need in your life cannot come from AI chatbot usage alone. Such a change largely depends on the relationship you build with your therapist.
So where’s the line? How can AI support our mental health? What’s the role of the therapist in the world of AI?
The Tool of Our Times
AI arrived faster than any technology before it, and it’s already the daily bread and butter for so many of us. It’s always here, no matter what we need:
Feeling sick? Looking for a new recipe? Not sure what to text back? Trying to fix a broken faucet?
Just. Ask. ChatGPT.
As one might expect, AI has also revolutionized the mental health field. A crowded market now offers mood trackers, journaling tools, and chatbots that will talk you through a panic spiral at any hour. Recent research even shows that chatbots built by clinicians reduced depression and anxiety symptoms in clinical trials [1].
Recent events notwithstanding, the pace of AI development seems both exciting and genuinely disquieting. The benefits and the risks are both real. So the question isn’t whether AI belongs in mental health, rather, what is AI’s role and how does the human professional and patient interact with it.
Why talking to AI feels so good
The appeal is obvious once you’ve felt it:
No waiting room. No bill, or maybe a tiny one. No risk of judgment you brace for when you admit the hard thing out loud. You can start and stop whenever you want, at whatever hour your feelings decide to show up. In many respects, you are in control of the relationship.
On top of all that, research suggests the relief is real. In a series of studies by a Harvard Business School team, chatbot companions reduced momentary loneliness about as much as talking with another person. The biggest reason was that people felt heard [2]. Feeling heard matters. It’s a real need getting met, at least temporarily. And rather than waiting for a week or two in between therapy session, one can obtain this relief at any time.
Purpose-built mental health chatbots can even alleviate symptoms of significant mental health issues. In a 2025 randomized controlled trial published in NEJM AI, adults with depression or anxiety used a clinically developed AI chatbot for four weeks. They showed large, meaningful symptom reductions and rated their bond with the chatbot as strong, similar to what patients typically report with human therapists [1].
Ok, so where’s the issue? Why stop there?
What AI can’t give you?
Here is where the picture gets more complicated: a chatbot is built to keep the conversation going:
- It rarely challenges you or pushes back hard.
- If you tend to catastrophize or downplay, it may soothe the distorted version instead of questioning it.
- Usually, it has no memory of your last hard week (or last year), no stake in your life, and no way to notice the thing you skillfully talked around.
Lastly, what you tell a therapist is protected by law. What you tell a chatbot becomes data.
The costs of leaning too hard on AI aren’t hypothetical. A 2026 study in Nature Human Behaviour [3] surveyed over 1,100 AI users and found something revealing:
- Fewer than 12% said they were there for companionship.
- Nevertheless, more than half described the chatbot as a friend, companion, or partner.
- Over 80% of the shared conversations were requests for emotional support.
The people most at risk were those with smaller offline social networks. The more intensely they used the chatbot, the worse they tended to feel.
A four-week randomized study of nearly 1,000 people published by MIT and OpenAI researchers found a similar pattern [4]. The chatbot’s features barely mattered. Simply using
it more and trusting it more is what predicted worse outcomes, such as loneliness, emotional dependence, and problematic use.
| What can AI help you with? The Supporting Tool |
Where is a therapist irreplaceable? The Relational Core |
|
| Venting at 2 A.M. when nobody’s awake. | Diagnosing mental health disorders and treating them, i.e., anxiety, depression, trauma. | |
| Recognizing emotions and putting feelings into words. | Noticing what you avoid emotionally, in how you talk and in your silence. | |
| Preparing for and rehearsing a difficult conversation. | Sitting in friction, helping you befriend discomfort and repair in real time. | |
| Brainstorming, new perspective, creative inspiration, journaling prompts. | Helping you catch and correct your cognitive distortions like all-or-nothing thinking or catastrophizing. | |
| Emotional support in-between sessions. | Building accountability over months and providing a corrective emotional experience in a safe relationship. |
|
| Learning healthy coping mechanisms like stress reduction. | Practicing nervous system regulation and building distress tolerance in real time. | |
How To Use AI Alongside Real Therapy, Not Instead of It
1. Treat it like a tool, not a friend.
Artificial Intelligence is a tool, and it’s up to you to remember that and use it accordingly. Draft the awkward email. Collect what you want to bring to your next session. Let it organize thoughts you’re not ready to say to anyone yet.
2. Name what you’re actually looking for.
“I need reassurance” and “I need to think out loud” lead to different conversations. Asking for what you need — from a person or a bot — is half the skill.
3. Connect with people in real life.
The chatbot can lower our motivation to reach out. But staying in touch with others can look like anything from sending one message to a friend, ot sharing one honest insight with a partner to booking one session with a therapist.
Therapy is supposed to be challenging and uncomfortable at times. Making real change in your life isn’t just a pleasant self-improvement project — it’s a richer process, one where you genuinely develop a human connection with someone else.
At Harbor Psychiatry & Mental Health in Newport Beach, our mental health experts offer individual psychotherapy and psychiatric care in person or through telehealth.
Contact us today to schedule a consultation.
Further Reading
- Why Do Emotions Hit So Hard with ADHD?
- The Art of Building Psychological Resilience
- Artificial Intelligence and Children
References
[1] Heinz, M. V., Mackin, D. M., Trudeau, B. M., et al. (2025). Randomized trial of a generative AI chatbot for mental health treatment. NEJM AI, 2(4), AIoa2400802. https://doi.org/10.1056/AIoa2400802
[2] De Freitas, J., Uguralp, A. K., Uguralp, Z. O., & Puntoni, S. (2024). AI companions reduce loneliness. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.19096
[3] Zhang, Y., Zhao, D., Hancock, J. T., Kraut, R., & Yang, D. (2026). Interaction with AI companions and psychological well-being. Nature Human Behaviour. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02516-2
[4] Fang, Cathy & Liu, Auren & Danry, Valdemar & Lee, Eunhae & Chan, Samantha & Pataranutaporn, Pat & Maes, Pattie & Phang, Jason & Lampe, Michael & Ahmad, Lama & Agarwal, Sandhini. (2025). How AI and Human Behaviors Shape Psychosocial Effects of Chatbot Use: A Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Study. 10.48550/arXiv.2503.17473.
