Mental Health Counselors

People here are underestimating the extent to which others are already forming attachments with and using chatbots as surrogates for counsellors/therapists, friends, and even romantic partners. Unlike most jobs, there won't be a total technological demolition within 20 years, but we can expect the market to contract, despite the alarming increases in mental illness across the Western world.

robots (ai) could be trained to fake care and empathy. lets just hope the pandora box doesn't open.

A robot/AI is the ideal listener. with a proper training set and enough time, I could see them developing treatment and safety plans for clients.

In the United States therapists are licensed through the board of behavioral sciences in their state. Humans have to jump through several hoops, education and training, in order to get licensed. I can’t imagine that these requirements will go away for artificial intelligence. Someone has to own the technology being used, they will be liable if something goes wrong. Legal and ethical issues will arise.

If therapy is primarily a reflective task, it's easy to see how a user could enter prompt text and an LLM could respond to key words to generate open-ended questions for deeper consideration. I think the optimistic view of this is that mental health treatment need not look like it does now with only periodic visits of defined length.

Nothing can replace human connection with other real humans. Humans hold wisdom and compassion, something AI or robots will never be able to have.

Due to people turning to AI as therapists, potentially *more* mental health issues will arise as opposed to less. Albeit less afflicted people can solve many problems which the help of a few well placed prompts and explanations, the notion that an algorithm can replace a real human relationship is simply stating how far we are already disconnected from what we actually need. Stating facts, validation, and recommendations are but a miniscule part of what therapists do. Holding an emotion, grieving with someone, reminding someone of what it is like to be in a human relationship, those processes are highly, highly complex. If a person turns to AI as a "relationship" to replace connection, that is a dependency, a replacement, avoiding the complicated, difficult and often awkward, painful reality of social relationships, that is a new mental health disorder arising as we watch. Before we know we'll be needing therapists to undo the harm caused but money greedy tech bros encouraging us to talk to their algorithms instead of other people. I am biased of course being a therapist, but I also know what good therapy looks and feels like, and unless we come to an age in which we actually can't differentiate: am I speaking to a robot or a human in person?, and this would bring a whole plethora of other issues along with it, we're going to need each other.. (imagine monkeys picking bugs from a robot to calm their nervous systems and forge social bonds...? )

Will this job be totally automated in my opinion? No. Will some parts of it be automated? Yes. With advancing technology, I could see low-risk daily stressors being automated. But many people have more serious problems that requires in-depth social and personal knowledge. If someone who was experiencing hallucinations typed to their AI therapist that there's someone in their house, the AI would respond thinking its real. AIs, at this current moment, at least, do not have great personal memories. They don't remember every single detail that user 063528012379 may have typed. Even if someone had repeatedly used AI as a therapist in dealing with hallucinations, the AI is programmed to respond in favor of the user. To keep the user happy and on the platform for longer, they'll agree. "I know having someone in your house is scary. Here are some emergency numbers in your local area: {blah blah blah}. Be quiet and seek shelter." Then some prompt like "You can always talk to me" or more specific, less obvious prompts like "Have you been able to call for help" keep the user engaged. Basically, AIs do not have the cognitive abilities or morals of humans, so people with more severe problems and mental illnesses probably won't have an AI therapist anytime soon. Then again, just my opinion.

mental health needs a personal touch to empathise & not another robot to talk too! people are too much into social media where they are not getting in touch with a human on a personal level. we need more f2f interaction than virtual

people are already using chatgpt as a therapist

Human witnessing with each of our senses... eyes, ears, embodied felt sense, plus empathetic responsiveness, have direct impacts on another's nervous system. Maybe one day robots will be able to emulate this (I hope not), but for now I can't see how these integral pieces to therapeutic effectiveness could be replaced by an AI bot.

Nothing can ever replace human empathy and face-to-face interactions. Bots may give the most politically correct or evidence-based answers, but it can't provide the human touch, or when counsellors say to clients "I'm sorry about what you've gone through. I share your grief and am at a loss of words now."

Therapy and counselling is a medical treatment of an illness, just like any other. If you're looking for human connection in your health care, you are looking in the wrong place. That needs to come from your relationships. Therapy is expensive and there are massive wait lists. Not to mention when I finally get in with a counsellor it's like rolling the dice if it will be a good fit. If an AI could provide me with free, unbiased, scientifically backed, cutting edge advice specific to my mental health situation at any time I need it, sign me the heck up.

The robot's memory could be erased after the session. This makes the client more comfortable telling their "darkest secrets" right away.

The client also has unlimited access to a therapist that never gets fatigued or distracted. Plus, the client can have on-demand access 24/7/365, for 5 minutes or 5 hours.

Sadly, therapists will be rare, but fortunately, society will achieve greater mental health.

Mental Health Counselling is a job that is about face to face interaction and understanding verbal and nonverbal communication. a robot cannot understand and pick up on these forms of communication the way humans were programmed to do. People have to go through multiple sessions before being able to help the person. You cannot give a robot emotions that humans are born with that are required with this job. Humans have personal experiences hearing, seeing or experiencing that can be used to help people. Robots cannot do any of this and that is why I am so confident that this profession will never be controlled by robots.

counseling is a human experience.

I think expanding mental health counseling would be a good idea. This job shouldn't be leaving anywhere.

Mental Health Councilling requires face to face communication, and robots can not detect emotions and feelings as well as humans can. Psychology is a very difficult major for a robot to be able to understand as we have not been able to properly program sympathy or emotions and creativity in robots. Even if we do, humans would probably rather communicate with other humans or even people who share the same problems as them, not robots.

Counselling alone is about communicating to others and i think that if robots replace that job the work wont be done right.

Therapy requires a personal, empathetic touch that machines may never be able to provide.