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Pei-chen is among the young people, both from Taiwan and other Asian countries, who turn to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to address their mental health problems, taking advantage of the latest technological advances to deal with their daily suffering. These new applications are especially helpful in cultures like the Taiwanese one, where the population tends to be more evasive when it comes to sharing their emotions with strangers, says to EFE Yi-fang Chiu, president of the Taiwanese Multicultural Accompaniment Association (TMCA). “Western therapy often emphasizes verbal catharsis, emotional expressiveness, or individual agency, but these concepts are very foreign to some Taiwanese. Taiwanese people are more emotionally repressed, indirect, and more reluctant to talk about their needs or their true feelings,” he explains.24-hour support available
Although there are still no official data on how many young people turn to AI to manage their psychological distress, some international analyses, such as a recent study published by Harvard Business Review, suggest that mental health is among the main motivations for using ‘chatbots’ today. Chiu subscribes to this thesis upon noting that more and more people are using ChatGPT or other language models “to regulate their emotions”, a trend that, he assures, will only increase in the coming years. “Why are more and more clients using this? Because it’s efficient, it’s available 24/7; it gives immediate answers, sometimes in just one or two seconds, and in therapy you have to schedule an appointment, wait until that appointment and then you have 50 or 60 minutes to process it all,” he points out. For Jen-ho Chang, from the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica in Taiwan, the “unlimited” memory, personalization, and accessibility make artificial intelligence software an interesting counterpoint to therapy with humans, and even more so in a “digital island” like Taiwan, “familiar” with AI devices. That technological development contrasts with an alarming social landscape: the proportion of suicide deaths among people aged 12 to 17 in Taiwan has increased from 12.5% to 18.4% in the last five years, becoming the second leading cause of death in adolescents, according to the Taiwan Alliance for Children’s Welfare.Will AI Replace Psychologists?
AI may seem smarter, be available all the time, and do everything it is ordered to do; however, there is something it has not yet been able to replicate: the warmth of human interaction, the immediate relief of seeing ourselves supported by another person, of knowing that we are not alone, that there is someone who listens to us. “The ‘heart’ of therapy basically consists of healing and connecting, and in some cultures being accompanied is already something transformative in itself,” says Chiu, who warns of the inherent risks of seeking help only from ‘chatbots’, a “safe listener” that, sometimes, “oversimplifies things”. “Users dependent on or addicted to AI can delay the work of relational depth, when, in some cases, that is what they really need (…). AI can offer quick cognitive solutions, but without true integration,” he explains. While it enables many people to openly express their emotions, AI can also sometimes become a double-edged sword: a large part of the therapeutic process involves not only venting, but also questioning and transforming perceptions of reality, an exercise that ‘chatbots’ still cannot do. In fact, Jen-ho Chang believes that for “really serious” problems, such as schizophrenia, AI “is not going to detect illusion or deception, and the human is required for diagnosis.” “AI can assist in some therapeutic processes, although it will not replace the entire therapeutic process,” emphasizes the researcher, who instead bets on “combining” traditional therapy with artificial intelligence to achieve more comprehensive results.Meanwhile, for people like Pei-chen, ChatGPT has already become a silent and faithful confidant; a bodiless algorithm, without emotions or its own critical thinking, but whose company is enough to soften, at least in part, the edges of pain.
