Therapy's 'human touch' is nearing its sell-by date
Human-ness was therapy's biggest defence against AI. It may not be enough anymore.
Support my work from India
Or from elsewhere in the world
A few weeks ago I wrote an article on the deepening crisis in psychotherapy, drawing parallels with the failures of my former industry, journalism. In the piece I argued that therapy will pay dearly for its neglect of the rapid incursion by artificial intelligence-based tools as the confidante to our inner lives. This isn't hyperbole: In April, Harvard Business Review announced that in 2025, the top three reasons people are using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT include 👇🏾
2. Organising life (new use that didn't exist last year)
3. Finding purpose (new use that didn't exist last year)
Source: HBR
Despite this earthquake playing out in real time, the mental health sector isn't talking nearly enough about developing technological awareness and competency among professionals. Younger patients could well be moving wholesale to clinically unsound AI 'therapy' platforms as their first port of call, bypassing trained human therapists altogether. But the establishment discourse around therapy remains wedded to the romance of the 50-minute in-person session, entirely absenting the profession from the technology conversation. This stodginess has allowed tech giants, as well as VC-funded upstarts, often with little respect for the intricacies of mental health care, to dictate the future of the industry.
I didn't expect my despair to find an ally in a venerated figure from modern psychotherapy – Paul Newham, the man credited with a revolution in expressive art therapies. His assessment of the gatekeeping in the field was so damning, in fact, that it made my angst sound like a child's plaint.
