Our mental health matters
The impetus for engaging a therapist tends to be crisis-driven for most of us. We may have found ourselves struggling due to some major changes to our lives. Our usual coping strategies ceased to be as effective as before. Our health (physical, mental, emotional and even social) has deteriorated. Therapy would become a helpful resource for us to learn more skills and techniques to cope with these difficult stressors and ride the waves of the crisis.
Engaging the services of a mental health professional can be expensive, if we are looking at hiring someone in their private practice. There could be long waiting lists for those practitioners whose fees cost lesser. This gap in accessibility in meeting mental health needs is real.
Do you know how to use Gen AI for mental health?
At the time of writing this, Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) is being widely used to meet mental and emotional health needs. Gen AI and touted wellness applications are more indeed more accessible: interaction and use is at our fingertips with no waiting time, and cost much lesser than engaging a mental health professional.
Gen AI and wellness applications need to be used with care. They are not meant to substitute psychological treatment or professional counselling and therapy.
I thought to write a post and suggest some guiding principles on how we could use Gen AI for our mental health needs. Rather than totally dismissing what artificial intelligence can do, I believe that AI can be used in a more informed manner, as a form of supplementary resource to meet our mental and emotional health needs and enhance our healing journeys.
Because like it or not, AI has become a disruptor and its current use challenges our conventional ways of doing things. We need to move with the technology and equip ourselves with the know-how to use it well. Clinicians like me also need to keep up with the times and adapt accordingly.
For contextual understanding and how our nation is choosing to work with AI, you can find out more about Singapore’s approach in governing AI here. The Ministry of Health has also released guidelines for the use of AI in the Singaporean healthcare sector which you can find here.
Gen AI and applications are tools.
The key thing is first recognising that Gen AI is a tool. The most important thing when employing any tools in our lives is to be able to identify the potential risks involved and mitigating them. We need to learn and understand how to use Gen AI for our mental health in a responsible and safe manner.
Gen AI and wellness applications with AI are not psychological treatment.
Unfortunately, many of us could be confusing the use of Gen AI as a form of psychological treatment, considering its wealth of information and data. It is NOT.
Gen AI has NOT been trained to provide treatment, nor has it been developed to provide clinical feedback. In fact, globally there is a lack of regulatory practices and the lack of safety protocols in governing its development. We have seen prominent cases reported in the news in the United States of America of how vulnerable populations like children with history of mental health issues have interacted in unsafe ways with AI chatbots.
Gen AI could be biased and could provide misinformation.
There would be bias and even misinformation in Gen AI tools. Considering how Gen AI tools have been trained using large language models, we could also infer that there would be misrepresentations and lack of effectiveness even. Machine learning in AI development run the risk of being attacked where malicious actors can trigger inaccurate or even harmful output in AI. We need to be discerning and continuously fact-check our A.I. tools.
While research is being conducted on which contexts and tools offered by artificial intelligence are safe for use, we have to remain critical and continuously exercise human judgement and analysis when using artificial intelligence.
It is a useful tool for us to consult to obtain more information and analyse data we have, to make a more informed decision. Like how we have learnt to build knowledge about our own physical health through the use of internet search engines and develop our own ideas and plans for our personal health care, we can learn how to use Gen AI as a helpful supplement for meeting our mental health needs.
Like when we are engaging the services of a mental health professional, we continuously evaluate whether the therapy services meet our needs. We also access if our therapists are taking us for a ride or be biased or judgemental. We should do that and more when using tools like Gen AI, or even wellness applications touted to better our mental health.
Be concerned about privacy and security when using AI.
Essential factors we have to be mindful of is that of privacy and security.
Trained mental health professionals like myself are bound by codes of ethics. Counsellors, therapists, psychologists, social workers must treat client information with professionalism and respect the privacy of client information. Our jobs depend on that, and we have to be held accountable.
At the time of writing this, I have for a couple of years now, disabled all AI functions in the software and applications I use for my work and these tools are also paid versions which allow me to control how I want to share my data. Unlike some of my counterparts in the field, I have not adopted the use of AI for notes taking. Until I have learned enough about privacy and security and gain competence and knowledge about the use of AI tools in my clinical work, I am still doing things concerning privacy of my clients the conventional way.
Because, privacy and security may not be so clear in the use of Gen AI or wellness applications or chatbots.
We individuals have to protect our data. We have to be careful on how our in-app data would be used especially when technology that may not be transparent is employed. We have the authority to ask our mental health professionals how they are keeping our data safe and it should be the same when we are use Gen AI or AI wellness applications or chatbots.
An easy rule of thumb to start, would be that we use tools where we can control and decide how our data would be used: there is transparency in their privacy notice. We can make informed decisions around how elements of our data are used and for what purposes.
This means that we have to largely limit use of free versions and learn not to share private and privileged data on AI tools that may use our identifiable information for further machine learning and AI model development. We need to be careful when using AI because we may not be sure who is using that information: Like how we don’t go around sharing our deepest and darkest secrets with everyone we meet in-person or online.
AI’s basic support is not genuine emotional support and understanding.
Authentic human interactions with empathy, understanding and emotional connections are irreplaceable. Good therapists can read non-verbal cues and engage in complex and nuanced conversations about the depths of human experiences and connect with us emotionally. Therapists can explore and consider the complexities of human behaviours and societal norms and can tailor their approaches based on a deep understanding of the individual’s unique context.
The therapeutic relationship with a mental health professional built over time fosters trust and safety and it aids us to build more trusting relationships in our lives with others in our communities: we learn to navigate interpersonal friction and vulnerability. AI can offer basic emotional support, but AI has inherent limits for caring – it can learn to offer empathetic responses but they can’t share the human emotional resonance.
Set limits and capitalise on AI’s accessibility
I have learnt of individuals using Gen AI to talk through moments of emotional overwhelm.
Gen AI use is at the tip of our fingertips and they are available 24/7. They won’t be complaining about being woken up in the middle of the night when you need some space to process the overthinking or rumination in your head. Because they are machines, we can teach Gen AI how to respond to us, in a human-like way: what tone to use and when and how to respond to us. They can offer encouragement and validate our expressed feelings. They may not react like a tired spouse or a distracted therapist and they are likely to be predictably nice. And nice-ness can actually be problematic: For a thought-provoking and relevant about nice-ness and kindness, watch this brief clip of a discussion between Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah.
Because AI are machines and have caveats currently built into them, you may also find their responses patronising, even if their use of words be affirming, validating or encouraging. AI can be our ever-present personal assistant possibly programmed with rigid response patterns.
My suggestion is to be able to take up the space safely and responsibly offered by AI.
With limits.
And for basic support.
Because an over-reliance on an always available assistant and tool takes away the needed opportunities for us to brush up and practise interpersonal skills for interacting with fellow humans.
Studies have shown that our human brain structure has remained relatively unchanged for tens of thousands of years. Even if we have developed complex cognitive abilities to use modern technologies, our brains are still wired for emotional connection and relating with a fellow human.
How to use Gen AI for our mental health and emotional health needs?
Set a timer to vent, to rant and formulate parameters for the use of AI for emotional coping. Express our thoughts and feelings, build more language around our experiences for sense-making. Seek trusted riends with whom we can share in a confidential manner. Identify points where you find yourself looping or stuck and talk them out with a therapist.
Use AI to get resources recommendations
Gen AI and wellness applications have the advantage of offering resources for our wellbeing. They can be efficient in offering suggestions on what we can use to help with various aspects of our mental health. We can get it to analyse the research available to get some suggestions on evidence-based techniques to aid our coping.
For instance, they could offer resources for tracking and suggesting tips for general lifestyle management that have impact on mental and emotional wellbeing like guided meditation, sleep patterns, exercise and movement. They can remind us or even plan and strategise how to kick-start a new habit for improved emotional coping. They could suggest material like books or podcasts that we can refer to, for gaining knowledge for our specific woes.
Accounting for possible misinformation or bias, we can use Gen AI like our personal assistant with access to a global library of information to meet our mental health and emotional needs. The important thing is that we need to exercise human judgement and evaluate which would work or not, by doing the work. For our own mental and emotional health: we read, we apply and practise new skills and we incorporate new habits aligned with what we value into our lives. AI can definitely be a helpful assistant and supplement the journey.
Engage a therapist who can guide you on how to use your resources well, including AI
AI can be a great tool to meet our mental health and emotional needs: it is convenient and accessible. It offers a great amount of convenience and even comfort, but it can’t be everything. Just like a therapist who can’t be everything on our journey of self-discovery.
A suggestion would be to engage the services of a mental health professional who could guide us on our current struggles and in between sessions, we could tap on AI to supplement the needed work for our healing journey. AI definitely has the potential to enhance our experiences.
The essence here is that we are making the informed decisions on how to use Gen AI to meet our mental health and emotional needs and we have a trusted and trained mental health professional to emotionally connect with us, to work on and through our very human struggles. I’m a therapist and you can find out more about me or arrange a no-obligations free 30mins consultation here.
Conclusion
Fundamentally, we as users, need to be understand the risks involved when using GenAI and AI wellness applications or chatbots to meet our mental health and emotional needs. We need to be mindful of bias, misinformation, privacy and security issues when tapping on the technology. Understanding the differences between interacting with a human mental health professional and Gen AI chatbots and the benefits and disadvantages is also key.
If you would like a recommendation from a professional body on the use of generative AI chatbots and wellness applications for mental health, do check out the health advisory put forth by the American Psychological Association here.
P/S: I wrote this blog post with some research using DuckDuckGo internet search engines (of which AI is built in but anonymously search results) and I also used a paid-version of an Gen AI application for research purposes. I have not used AI to write for me, even though the creative process of writing can be painful sometimes. It may not be deemed productive by corporate organisations but I believe the use of my brain for cognitively intensive tasks are good for my wellbeing.