With therapy hard to get, people lean on AI for mental health. What are the risks?
Jackie Lay / NPR
Kristen Johansson's therapy ended with a single phone call.
For five years, she'd trusted the same counselor — through her mother's death, a divorce and years of childhood trauma work. But when her therapist stopped taking insurance, Johansson's $30 copay ballooned to $275 a session overnight. Even when her therapist offered a reduced rate, Johansson couldn't afford it. The referrals she was given went nowhere.
"I was devastated," she said.
Six months later, the 32-year-old mom is still without a human therapist. But she hears from a therapeutic voice every day — via ChatGPT, an app developed by Open AI. Johansson pays for the app's $20-a-month service upgrade to remove time limits. To her surprise, she says it has helped her in ways human therapists couldn't.
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"I don't feel judged. I don't feel rushed. I don't feel pressured by time constraints," Johansson says. "If I wake up from a bad dream at night, she is right there to comfort me and help me fall back to sleep. You can't get that from a human."
AI chatbots, marketed as "mental health companions," are drawing in people priced out of therapy, burned by bad experiences, or just curious t
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