AI Therapy: Advantages and Disadvantages
Though AI is unlikely to fully replace traditional therapy in the near future, the potential artificial intelligence has for mental healthcare is enormous.
AI Therapy is increasingly being used to offer support and a line of communication for mental health patients during their treatment and outside any treatment.
The landscape around mental healthcare can be disheartening, its longtime hallmarks have been the social stigma around mental health issues, high therapy costs, and an acute shortage of mental health professionals.
AI Therapists can help with coping with symptoms, as well as look out for keywords that could trigger primary issues and help clients to make direct contact with a human mental healthcare professional.
However, AI to match a human therapist, it would need to be able to recreate the phenomenon of transference, where the patient projects feelings onto their therapist, and mimic the bond between patient and therapist.
We are right to be ambivalent about algorithms and machine learning when it comes to mental health care because when we’re talking about mental health care, we’re talking about care and appropriate standards of care, and most importantly, ethics.
When we think about apps or algorithms … sometimes AI doesn’t solve our problems and it can create bigger problems,
However, what we can say is that AI mental health therapy remains a fantastic computer programme.