The rise of AI in mental health care has providers and researchers increasingly concerned over whether glitchy algorithms, privacy gaps and other perils could outweigh the technology's promise and lead to dangerous patient outcomes.
Why it matters: As the Pew Research Center recently found, there's widespread skepticism over whether using AI to diagnose and treat conditions will complicate a worsening mental health crisis.
- Mental health apps are also proliferating so quickly that regulators are hard-pressed to keep up.
- The American Psychiatric Association estimates there are more than 10,000 mental health apps circulating on app stores. Nearly all are unapproved.
What's happening: AI-enabled chatbots like Wysa and FDA-approved apps are helping ease a shortage of mental health and substance use counselors.
- The technology is being deployed to analyze patient conversations and sift through text messages to make recommendations based on what we tell doctors.
- It's also predicting opioid addiction risk, detecting mental health disorders like depression and could soon design drugs to treat opioid use disorder.
Driving the news: The fear is now concentrated around whether the technology is beginning to cross a line and make clinical decisions, and what the Food and Drug Administration is doing to prevent safety risks to patients.
- KoKo, a mental health nonprofit, recently used ChatGPT as a mental health counselor for about 4,000 people who weren't aware the answers were generated by AI, sparking criticism from ethicists.
- Other people are turning to ChatGPT as a personal therapist despite warnings from the platform saying it's not intended to be used for treatment.
