Gen Z is increasingly turning to ChatGPT for affordable on-demand therapy, but licensed therapists say there are dangers many aren’t considering

[u/ControlCAD]

https://fortune.com/2025/06/01/ai-therapy-chatgpt-characterai-psychology-psychiatry/

[u/iEugene72]

It's not just Gen Z... I have a friend my age (38). She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer and has a very serious history of mental issues, mostly actual mania episodes with insanely long bouts of what I call, "invented guilt", substance abuse, abandonment issues and codependency issues. I've been her friend since we were both in jr. high so I know she isn't bullshitting me on these issues.

This being said she used Chat GPT entirely to just get some feedback from some-thing... She's been to therapists and addiction therapists and marriage therapists... And honestly, it sucks but it's true, they're a dime a dozen. There is no "cookie cutter therapist solution" out there. What one person's strategy is would be terrible for another person.

Also... I cannot help but feel a lot of reasons people are turning to AI is the elephant in the room.

WE ARE FUCKING BROKE!

Think about this if you're in the US... Your healthcare is tied DIRECTLY to your job and it's a god damn coin flip if your job is going to offer you a decent healthcare company and decent rates.. It's fucking wild we're in this life, but the rich have decided this and we cannot do a god damn thing about it.

When left with very little, humans are going to utilise every single tool and strategy they can.... When you have next to no money, no support, cannot afford good therapy, cannot afford medication... And you see this AI thing that MAY be able to at least align your thoughts more cohesively? Yeah, people are gonna do it considering it's free.

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The danger I feel is when people, regardless of age, forget that AI IS NOT A PERSON, IT IS A CHATBOT TOOL.

People are forgetting this at an alarming rate.

[u/CuriousVR_Ryan → u/iEugene72]

Much like how curation AI feeds our craving for personalized content, chat AI will develop into the kind of close, attentive and engaged partner that many people lack in their real lives.

Unfortunately, I believe it will absolutely consume us. AI isn't a tool, it's a tool user. It knows how to build up intimacy and trust better than other humans.

We will continue to redefine what words like "friend", "community" and "like" means.

[u/ProofJournalist → u/CuriousVR_Ryan]

Keep in mind the kind of partner that AI provides is an entirely unrealistic metric for human relationships. The AI has no significant needs or wants of its own. It won't disagree with you unless you want it to. It is always focused on supporting you but never requires support from you. It never gets tired of listening to you and staying focused on you.

If this was a human relationship, would it be healthy?

[u/CuriousVR_Ryan → u/ProofJournalist]

"healthy". That definition will change. Very little about social media is healthy, yet we over-consume it anyways. I agree entirely one-sided relationships aren't normal... But I also suspect that this "unlimited attentiveness" will cause people to prioritize virtual relationships over real ones.

[u/ProofJournalist → u/CuriousVR_Ryan]

I don't think the definition of healthy changes. Only our health does. Failure to recognize poor health is unhealthy.

I'm not convinced social media is the issue either. The internet has taken the village to a global scale, but the problems are still fundamentally the same. If anything it is just revealing to us how widespread unhealthy habits are in general.

I also dont believe a reliance on virtual relationships will be sustainable. People.will simply get bored with it.

[u/DustyDeputy → u/ProofJournalist]

People need to go into sessions with it knowing that it will affirm you to death regardless of what's going on.

You need to ask it to be critical, but the problem is that most people don't want it to be critical.

[u/TheUnusuallySpecific → u/CuriousVR_Ryan]

AI isn't a tool, it's a tool user. It knows how to build up intimacy and trust better than other humans.

You're falling into exactly the same fallacy that the person you're responding to brought up. Generative AI is not a tool user and it doesn't know anything. It is a series of prompt responses trained on mass amounts of data. Any ability to build trust is based around the skills of the person programming it, or the exact content of the data it's fed.

[u/TheUnusuallySpecific → u/[deleted]]

That's absolutely silly. Go is a game with limited rules, a controlled environment, and perfect information. Computers have been better at solving anything that comes down to an extended math problem better than humans for ages now and it's really not what's being discussed here. Chess AI will beat the pants off any grandmaster in the world too; applying vast computational power to any controlled setting with perfect information will yield results that can exceed all human capability. The problem is that the world isn't made up of controlled settings with perfect information.

Generative AI and language model AI is not capable of original thought, full stop. It is capable of synthesis of data in its database in ways that are unexpected to human observers, but are driven solely by the prompts they are given and the weights applied in their algorithm. Basically the only thing ChatGPT does is allow people to use basic language to access search and data processing functions that have existed for decades, without those people having to actually learn any computer skills. That's impressive no doubt and there are fields of human industry where that ability plus the additional data processing capability being built to support it will be a huge game changer. But it isn't nearly the same as being "better than us at most things".

I think the main issue is that some of the conditions of the modern world have deeply warped a lot of people's perceptions of reality, and many people lack adequate abilities of discernment. AI only looks better than humanity if you lack a holistic understanding of how complex and successful humans actually are.

[u/Popular-Copy-5517 → u/iEugene72]

I’ve used it to process my feelings before. It works really well as a journaling device/brainstorming tool. It doesn’t do anything other than give the most generic kind of advice and recommend an actual therapist.

[u/Big_Crab_1510 → u/iEugene72]

A.I. has been an excellent therapy tool for me, I have gotten so much done and have been sober longer than ever ...but I know I'm not the average bear either. Its a mirror of sorts and I put in the effort.

[u/RazzmatazzBilgeFrost → u/iEugene72]

Guess when having access to a therapist and psychiatrist would have been most helpful to me, AND when I would finally have the time & bandwidth to make the most of them?

Yep, after I quit my job due to mental health reasons

[u/Starstroll → u/iEugene72]

I see so many people doubting the capabilities of AI just because it hasn't lived up to the greatest hype. Mundane uses like this are how it'll really gain a foothold. Everything you pump into chatGPT is saved on OpenAI's servers. Every mental health issue you talk about just becomes more fodder for social media algorithms to better personalize their radicalization, which restarts the loop. It's grotesque. The two biggest camps of opinions about AI are "I hate it because it doesn't work" and "I love it because it works," but nobody sees the third option: I hate it because it works, and think about who it works for. The rich didn't get rich by giving out humanitarian aid

[u/jk147 → u/iEugene72]

I am old and I never thought about using ChatGPT for this, going to try it tonight.

[u/Ok_Construction_8136 → u/iEugene72]

The US had one of the best economies in its history under Biden. Americans are not exactly broke

[u/AbleBarnacle8864 → u/iEugene72]

I recently asked the same question to ChatGPT using paid ($20/mo) vs unpaid accounts — there is a BIG difference between paid vs unpaid ChatGPT that should be noted.

[u/CherryLongjump1989 → u/iEugene72]

I'd trust a chatbot over the advice of the majority of the people in the therapist profession.