Is ChatGPT ready to be used in mental health?

ChatGPT is a language model from open AI, which is a great leap to advance our lives. It is becoming more popular each day in a wide variety of fields. According to experts, ChatGPT can replace 300 million different types of employment; however, it is also a door for new opportunities.

Today we are in the Stone Age of ChatGPT, but its functions are getting more advanced day-by-day. You can use ChatGPT in many ways, ranging from website building, to summarizing books. The recent version of ChatGPT also supports visual processing that analyses the content and provides codes to build a new model.

ChatGPT can summarise books and texts, make travel plans, assist in marketing products, rephrase or paraphrase a given text, and also do other types of content creation. Access to ChatGPT is for free, however with paying 20 dollars a month you can use the extended version, which provides a faster response and has many more advanced features. Click here to reach ChatGPT.

Can ChatGPT be the counselor in our pocket? According to some of the Reddit users, ChatGPT is better than going to a therapist. The major reason for this is that they can access the information whenever necessary and can even communicate things that they find taboo and prefer to hide from another person. However, is the current version sufficiently developed to replace a human counselor? If yes, to what extent?

Psychological Impacts of ChatGPT

Before diving deep into the topic it is important to note down the overall psychological impact of ChatGPT.  It is for sure a revolutionary act on human-computer interaction and has a huge impact on humans. There are significant psychological implications since it changes the way we think to get a job done whether personal or professional.

A potential risk of ChatGPT is that it could manipulate humans in a certain direction. Data privacy is also another matter of concern. Furthermore, misinformation, information bias, privacy problems, social engineering, over-reliance, and unintended repercussions are some of the potential dangers associated with ChatGPT.

ChatGPT as a psychological consultant

Chat GPT is also being used as a tool for psychological consultation. It has some components to mimic the traditional therapy process by listening to humans, validating their feelings, and then providing advice. ChatGPT uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to communicate information in a psychological context and to support clients.

At this point, it is not possible for a chatbot to replace human interactions; however, it can be a source of healthy information processing if adapted to the context properly. Psychotherapy is expensive, and the waiting lists are long; therefore, AI-based systems may step in to fill the gap for first-line support. ChatGPT can mimic traditional therapy processes to a certain extent by listening to or getting essential input from consultants.

Here are three mental health platforms that are developed with using AI technology.

Wysa: An AI – based platform helps with a wide range of areas from anxiety, motivation, sleep, depression, stress and more. Listening to users (receiving input from users) and recommending tools. Click to learn more about Wysa.

Heyy: Provide personalized advice for stress and anxiety. Click to learn more about Heyy.

Woebot: A chatbot that uses therapeutic approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). Click to learn more about Woebot.

All three mental health platforms are based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which is an evidence-based method to treat disorders by altering disruptive thoughts into realistic ones and challenging the behavior.

To get effective answers from ChatGPT it is important to formulate the right questions. For instance, instead of asking “How can I manage stress?”, formulate the question as “I need help with stress management at work?” Then it would provide more context-specific advice.

You can also use ChatGPT to develop mental health content. For instance, if you type “Write a breathing mediation script”, it would come up with a mediation script which can help you to develop mediation videos. Click to learn more about meditation. The same is the case for other therapeutic methods, ChatGPT can help you to structure or inform about behavioral interventions.

Potential risks of using ChatGPT in mental health

Today, there are still many uncertainties and potential risks associated with using AI in psychological treatment. According to experts (cite the article), at this point, the potential risks of using the AI tools are not at a controllable level. ChatGPT does not provide information based on a rich personal history, but only provides information based on what a user provides as input. Some other reasons are that AI has a lack of real-world knowledge and is not being trained to assess the potential harmfulness of information. The ideal is to stick to evidence-based alternatives (i.e., cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction) when seeking psychological support. Furthermore, data privacy can also be a strong barrier to using in mental health.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ChatGPT and other AI-based platforms have demonstrated tremendous promise as instruments for counseling and support in the psychological field. By providing accessibility, anonymity, and availability, these cutting-edge technologies open up mental health information and help to a wider audience. They can offer urgent support, especially when traditional therapy is prohibitively expensive or difficult to reach.

It is important to understand that a text bot could never be a replacement for actual counselors or scientifically proven therapeutic techniques. While technology can replicate certain features of conventional treatment, it cannot offer the same level of in-depth comprehension, empathy, and individualized support that human specialists can. It should be regarded as an additional resource that offers general knowledge and resources for managing mental health.