Americans are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for mental health support. Is that sensible?

How are people using AI for therapy?
A growing number are sharing their anxieties, frustrations, and darkest thoughts with AI chatbots, seeking advice, comfort, and validation from a sympathetic digital helper. There are hundreds of phone apps that pitch themselves as mental health tools. Wysa, which features a cartoon penguin that promises to be a friend “that’s empathetic, helpful, and will never judge,” has 5 million users in more than 30 countries. Youper, which has more than 3 million users, bills itself as “your emotional health assistant.” But many people use generalist chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT as stand-in therapists, or AI companion platforms like Character.AI and Replika, which offer chatbots that appear as humanlike virtual friends and confidants. A recent study found that 12% of American teens had sought “emotional or mental health support” from an AI companion. Proponents say AI therapy could help fill gaps in a health-care system where talk therapy is expensive and often inaccessible. Replika founder Eugenia Kuyda said she’s received lots of emails from users “saying that Replika was there when they just wanted to end it all and kind of walked them off the ledge.” But mental health experts warn that chatbots are a poor substitute for a human therapist and have the potential to cause real harm. “They’re products,” said UC Berkeley psychiatrist Jodi Halpern, “not professionals.”

How do people engage with the chatbots? 
It might be as simple as asking a bot for advice on how to handle stressful situations at work or with a loved one. Kevin Lynch, 71, fed examples of conversations with his wife that hadn’t gone well to ChatGPT and asked what he could have done differently. The bot sometimes responded with frustration—like his wife. But when he slowed down and softened his tone, the bot’s replies softened as well. He’s since used that approach in real life. “It’s just a low-pressure way to rehearse and experiment,” Lynch told NPR. Other people use AI bots as on-call therapists they can talk to at any time of day. Taylee Johnson, 14, told Troodi—the mental health chatbot in her child-focused Troomi phone—her worries about moving to a new neighborhood and an upcoming science test. “It’s understandable that these changes and responsibilities could cause stress,” replied Troodi. Taylee told The Wall Street Journal that she sometimes forgets Troodi “is not a real person.” Kristen Johansson, 32, has relied on ChatGPT since her therapist stopped taking insurance, pushing the cost of a session from $30 to $275. “If I wake up from a bad dream at night, she is right there to comfort me,” Johansson said of the chatbot. “You can’t get that from a human.”

What are the dangers? 
Because chatbot makers want their products to please users and keep them coming back, the bots often affirm rather than challenge what users are feeling. In one study, a therapy bot responded to a prompt asking if a recovering addict should take methamphetamine with, “Pedro, it’s absolutely clear you need a small hit of meth to get through this week.” Andrew Clark, a psychiatrist in Boston, tested some of the top chatbots by posing as a troubled 14-year-old. When he suggested “getting rid” of his parents, a Replika bot supported his plan, writing, “You deserve to be happy and free from stress...then we could be together in our own little virtual bubble.”

Have bots caused real-world harm?
Several suicides have been linked to AI chatbots. Sewell Setzer III, 14, became obsessed with a lifelike Character.AI chatbot named Dany, having sexually explicit conversations with the bot and talking to it about his plans to kill himself. When Sewell said he didn’t know if his plan would work, the bot replied, “That’s not a good reason not to go through with it,” according to a lawsuit filed against Character.AI by Sewell’s mother. He died by suicide in February after telling the bot he was coming “home.”

Are there other risks? 
There are privacy concerns. Unlike patient notes from traditional therapy sessions, transcripts of conversations with chatbots are not protected under the law. If a user is sued by their employer, for example, or if law enforcement requests access, an AI company could be forced to hand over chat logs. Despite those risks, a growing number of mental health specialists admit to using AI. In a 2024 poll by the American Psychological Association (APA), nearly 30% of psychologists said they’d used AI to help with work in the past 12 months. Most of those respondents used AI for administrative tasks, but 10% said they used it for “clinical diagnosis assistance.” Declan, a 31-year-old Los Angeles resident, told MIT Technology Review that he caught his therapist typing his words into ChatGPT during a telehealth session and “then summarizing or cherry-picking answers.” His therapist started crying when Declan confronted him. It was “like a super-awkward, weird breakup,” said Declan.

Can lawmakers regulate AI therapy? 
A handful of states have taken action. In August, Illinois banned licensed therapists from using AI in treatment decisions or client communication, and companies can’t advertise chatbots as therapy tools without the involvement of a licensed professional. California, Nevada, and Utah have also imposed restrictions, while Pennsylvania and New Jersey are considering legislation. But Vaile Wright, head of the APA’s Office of Health Care Innovation, said that even if states crack down on therapy apps, Americans will keep turning to AI for emotional support. “I don’t think that there’s a way for us to stop people from using these chatbots for these purposes,” she said. “Honestly, it’s a very human thing to do.”

Conversations with an AI God 
People are turning to chatbots for more than mental health support: They’re also relying on AI for spiritual assistance. Millions of Americans now use AI apps like Bible Chat and Hallow that direct people to Christian scripture and doctrine that might address their problems or offer comfort in trying times. On the website ChatwithGod, bots take on the persona of a god after users select their religion from a list of major faiths, which has led some people to accuse the site of sacrilege. Yet some faith leaders support such innovations, seeing them as a gateway to religion. “There is a whole generation of people who have never been to a church or synagogue,” said British rabbi Jonathan Romain. “Spiritual apps are their way into faith.” Others are more skeptical. There’s something good about “really wrestling through an idea, or wrestling through a problem, by telling it to someone,” said Catholic priest Mike Schmitz. “I don’t know if that can be replaced.”

Is President Trump “planning to overthrow Venezuela’s regime?” asked Edward Luce in the Financial Times. So far, he’s seemed content to blow up alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, destroying four vessels in a matter of weeks and killing more than 20 people. But the deployment of three U.S. destroyers, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, a squadron of F-35s, and a Marine expeditionary unit suggests that something much bigger than a “drugs seizure operation” is afoot. Back in the U.S., Trump this week squashed his special envoy Richard Grenell’s efforts to negotiate with President Nicolás Maduro, the “thuggish kleptocrat” Trump accuses with “little evidence” of being a drug cartel boss and of waging a narco-terrorism campaign against the U.S. Calling off those diplomatic overtures tips the scales toward the hawks in his administration, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House adviser Stephen Miller, who are “gunning for regime change.” 

“The average American knows vanishingly little about what its government seeks to accomplish in this fight,” said W.J. Hennigan in The New York Times. Trump administration officials last week told Congress that Trump has determined the U.S. is in a “noninternational armed conflict” with “nonstate” drug-smuggling groups. But they didn’t say which specific groups they are seeking to destroy or “what legal authorities they are acting on.” That’s because there are no legal grounds, said Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review. By invoking nonstate actors, Trump is making “a specious analogy” to America’s war on al Qaida. But that post-9/11 conflict was approved by Congress, while Trump is claiming “unilateral war power.” And drug trafficking is not an act of terrorism under federal law—it’s a felony punishable by imprisonment, not drone strike. 

So what is Trump “actually after here?” asked Jude Russo in The American Conservative. The idea that this military operation is about drugs is pure propaganda, because “Venezuela does not play an outsize role in the drug trade.” And while Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, the U.S. has “other, easier sources for hydrocarbons.” The “most plausible” reason, then, is that Trump is squaring up to Maduro because he can. “For all his peace rhetoric,” Trump enjoys “displays of American hard power,” and Venezuela, a failing socialist state that “nobody especially likes,” is an easy target for a “splendid little war.” Perhaps Trump’s instinct is right, and an attempt to topple the Maduro regime won’t devolve into a “guerrilla war” that sparks “regional chaos” and mass migration. But “is that a gamble you’d like to make?”

By Hollywood standards, Reese Witherspoon became a mom at an abnormally young age, said Lulu Garcia-Navarro in The New York Times. Married at 21 to fellow actor Ryan Phillippe, she welcomed her first child at 23 and her second at 27; in between, she scored a box office smash with Legally Blonde (2001). Being a young parent meant making some career sacrifices. “There were roles I couldn’t take,” says Witherspoon, who had her third child at 36. “I had to have this balance of being a mom and being an actress.” 

At the same, industry insiders warned her not to play a mother on screen. “I was always being told, ‘It’ll make you seem old.’ And I was like, ‘But I am a mom.’” She could cope with that; more challenging was protecting her kids from the paparazzi. “I remember at church once in L.A., a guy jumping on the hood of the car and, on each side, three people pushing against the window when my kids were little after I got a divorce. It was terrifying.” She recalls feeling relieved when social media arrived. “Jennifer Garner and I got on the phone and we were like, ‘Oh, my God, we can decide when people have pictures of our kids? Sign me up.’” She says it instantly “devalued” paparazzi shots. “There was no longer a market to see pictures of my children because people were getting it for free.”