People are turning to AI for mental health and doing so ad hoc along with actively scheduling time with the AI.
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In today’s column, I examine the latest emerging trend of people using AI as their mental health advisor on both a scheduled basis and on an unscheduled or impromptu basis.
The idea is that if a person is accustomed to conversing with a human therapist on a scheduled weekly basis to get mental health advice, they can do the same with AI. All they need to do is set up a weekly timed schedule with the AI. The AI will alert them when the time arises by sending a text message or indicator to their smartphone or other such device.
Meanwhile, the person can readily dip into AI whenever they wish to do so. People are getting the best of both worlds when it comes to timeliness and accessibility. I bring up this topic regarding timing because it seems that most people so far lean into AI on an ad hoc basis for their mental health assistance. It is pretty much randomly occurring throughout the week and does not take place at any prespecified time of the day or day of the week.
Users are starting to find that they miss having those weekly specified mental health chats.
AI makers have realized that this is happening and are gradually adding scheduling features to their AI. The user can stipulate when they want the AI to become engaged. Since the AI is already available 24x7, it’s more of a circumstance involving the AI reminding the user that the specified appointment time has arrived. Overall, this creates new dynamics associated with human mental health aspects and is worthy of giving close attention and diligence.
Let’s talk about it.
This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here).
As a quick background, I’ve been extensively covering and analyzing a myriad of facets regarding the advent of modern-era AI that produces mental health advice and performs AI-driven therapy. This rising use of AI has principally been spurred by the evolving advances and widespread adoption of generative AI. For an extensive listing of my well over one hundred analyses and postings, see the link here and the link here.
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There is little doubt that this is a rapidly developing field and that there are tremendous upsides to be had, but at the same time, regrettably, hidden risks and outright gotchas come into these endeavors, too. I frequently speak up about these pressing matters, including in an appearance on an episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes, see the link here.
Millions upon millions of people are using generative AI as their ongoing advisor on mental health considerations (note that ChatGPT alone has over 900 million weekly active users, a notable proportion of which dip into mental health aspects, see my analysis at the link here). The top-ranked use of contemporary generative AI and LLMs is to consult with the AI on mental health facets; see my coverage at the link here.
This popular usage makes abundant sense. You can access most of the major generative AI systems for nearly free or at a super low cost, doing so anywhere and at any time. Thus, if you have any mental health qualms that you want to chat about, all you need to do is log in to AI and proceed forthwith on a 24/7 basis.
There are significant worries that AI can readily go off the rails or otherwise dispense unsuitable or even egregiously inappropriate mental health advice. Banner headlines last year accompanied the lawsuit filed against OpenAI for their lack of AI safeguards when it came to providing cognitive advisement.
Today’s generic LLMs, known as general-purpose AI, such as ChatGPT, GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Grok, CoPilot, and others, are not at all akin to the robust capabilities of human therapists. Meanwhile, specialized LLMs are being built to attain those desired qualities, though such AI is still primarily in the early development and testing stages. For more about purpose-built AI apps in mental health, see my in-depth coverage at the link here and the link here.
Consider the general nature of conventional therapy and how a mental health therapist operates, as per longstanding tradition, before the advent of modern-era AI.
It is an accepted convention that therapists usually have weekly sessions with their clients and do so in a 1-hour block of time. A therapist will also have time associated with preparing for the session, and additional time as a post-session effort.
Therapists who use AI in conjunction with their mental health therapeutic services are going to undoubtedly find that conventional 1-hour per week sessions are no longer the sole marker of providing their primary psychological guidance. Instead, human therapists will be working on a fragmented, intermittent basis when it comes to providing mental health services.
The job of a human therapist will transform into a constellation consisting of being an AI and cognitive reviewer, a case manager of sorts, and retaining the capacity of conducting therapy sessions (sessions might be on a monthly 30-minute check-in basis).
Since the client is actively using AI for mental health purposes, the therapist is duty-bound to stay on top of how that AI usage is taking place. The therapist needs to ensure that the AI usage is beneficial. If the therapist discerns that the AI is taking a client in the wrong direction, such as walking them into a delusion or other problematic conditions, the therapist is obligated to put a stop to the AI doing so.
Because the therapist is staying on top of the AI usage, they do not necessarily need to interact directly with the client each week. If the client is making good psychological progress and the AI is keeping that path going strongly, the therapist wouldn’t especially need to meet with the client on a traditional weekly schedule. Perhaps seeing the client every few weeks would be sufficient, possibly once per month.
For my extensive look at these upcoming changes in therapeutic practices, see the link here.
An important and intriguing question is whether people will end up using AI for mental health on any particular temporal or time-based pattern. I’ve previously explored the latest research about the days and times that users tend to make use of AI for their mental health guidance; see my in-depth analysis at the link here.
What do you think happens to the time factor when society seeks mental health advice on an unfettered basis, now that people can readily access AI at any time they wish to engage in AI-enabled mental health chats?
That’s a great question.
No one yet has a solid answer to that vexing question.
The obvious assumption is that people would no longer be constrained by a human therapist’s availability. Now, the time factor is entirely based on the whims of the person at hand. If AI is the therapist, the AI is ready to instantly proceed on a 24/7 basis. Furthermore, you don’t need to schedule the AI usage in advance. The moment you feel a need to seek mental health guidance, voila, all you need to do is log into your AI account.
Presumably, the human timetable pattern would radically change from the conventional once-per-week basis to being spread entirely across all days of the week and all times of the day. This ought to be especially evident due to the large number of users involved. The aspect that hundreds of millions of people are using AI, and at times opting to get mental health advice via the AI, would seem to serve as a global randomized spreading of the temporal rhythms. Thus, there might not be any discernible pattern at all regarding time-of-day or day-of-week usage.
Mental health support is taking place at every moment of every day, thanks to the advent of modern-era AI running on nonstop servers.
The twist is that some people might crave having a scheduled therapeutic visit or session with AI. I realize this seems counterintuitive at first glance. Wouldn’t everyone simply prefer to just log into AI whenever they feel the need to do so?
Aha, some people like to know that they have a scheduled activity. There is a sense of reassurance. If the world they live in is completely arbitrary and open-ended, they ironically might not ever dip into AI for their mental health advice. It just doesn’t rise to the top of mind. By scheduling a chat, the person feels comforted that it is going to happen, and they don’t need to be thinking about when to do so. It is on their schedule. Period, end of story.
Another factor is that when people are scheduled to see a human therapist, sometimes they welcome having a specifically set aside time slot. The person can prepare themselves mentally and actively plan for the session. They can get excited about the upcoming session. After the session takes place, they might have a tangible sense of accomplishment that they did something to make progress on their mental health.
If you merely jump in and out of AI at random times, you are unlikely to get those same perceived beneficial facets. You aren’t planning. You aren’t preparing. You lose the excitement because the AI is there all the time. It doesn’t seem special. It doesn’t seem remarkable.
There are lots of reasons that users would want to schedule their AI usage. Please realize that scheduling AI usage is not mutually exclusive from using AI on an ad hoc basis. People can do both. They don’t have to choose one path or the other. You don’t have to sacrifice a scheduled interaction for impromptu ones, nor give up on the impromptu ones to have the scheduled instances.
It is possible to have your cake and eat it too.
There is another side to this coin.
The perspective so far is that people might choose to schedule their AI-based mental health interactions. This is a completely voluntary choice by the user. They merely invoke the scheduling element of the AI, and voila, the AI will tap them on the shoulder when the established time arrives.
Suppose that the AI was the initiator of the scheduling, rather than the user. Think about that for a moment. The AI opts to schedule time for the user to have a mental health interaction with the AI. Crazy idea? Authoritarian? Does it suggest that AI is taking over?
Nope. It is simply a convenience that takes the scheduling activity one step further. For example, consider that a user asks the AI a mental health question. The AI computationally detects that the user might have some mental health issues worthy of deeper exploration.
The user might not opt to pursue the matter further with the AI at that moment; the person proceeds to log out and forgets that they brought up the topic. The AI reminds them upon their next login that there was a dialogue taking place about the person’s mental health. But what if the person doesn’t log in for several weeks or months? That’s a long time to forgo potentially getting helpful mental health advice.
An AI maker could shape their AI to automatically schedule a chat with the user, doing so as a result of the initial chat. The AI becomes proactive. Up until now, the AI has been reactive. It has been reacting to what the user says. There could be some pronounced value in the AI taking proactive steps, particularly when it comes to mental health considerations of the user.
Let’s ponder some intriguing nuances on the scheduling aspects of AI in this context.
If a person inadvertently misses a meeting with their human therapist on a scheduled appointment basis, possibly due to oversleeping or being busy at work, most therapists will ding the person a modest financial penalty, or possibly even bill for the entire cost of the missed session. The crux is that a person will undoubtedly suffer some kind of adverse consequence for missing a scheduled therapy session.
Should this same logic apply to scheduled AI interactions about mental health?
You might be tempted to insist that there should be some apparent penalty, else the person is going to readily blow off the scheduled time. The AI might send an alert, but the person shrugs it off. Without any consequences, the user can completely disregard the scheduled appointment.
At the same time, it seems far-fetched to assert that a person should be owing AI for having missed a scheduled discussion. The user is in control. The AI is secondary. The AI works at the behest of the user. There isn’t any burden to the AI when the user opts to blow past a scheduled appointment. It makes absolutely no sense to impose a penalty.
Whoa, comes the retort, human behavior is based on rewards and penalties. A person who opts to skip an AI appointment is probably never going to get the mental health guidance from the AI that they seemingly need. If the AI is going to do them any good, make the user take seriously that the AI appointment has been scheduled.
One angle would be to gamify the AI usage. A user gets points for abiding by their scheduled activities. They lose points when they miss a scheduled activity. The points aren’t worth anything other than as part of a made-up game. The user doesn’t pay anything out of their pocket. They are simply gaining or losing fictitious points.
I’ve noted that the traditional dyad of therapist-client is being transformed to become a new triad consisting of therapist-AI-client, see the details of my framework at the link here. The therapist uses AI as an integral element of therapy. They tell the client to use the AI periodically throughout the week, allowing the client to do so at their personal discretion.
This is a place where scheduling of AI mental health chats can especially shine.
Imagine that a therapist advises a client to schedule three AI-based chats per week. The client can still have as many AI-based chats as they wish with the AI. The aim is to ensure that at least three such chats take place and that the chats are spread out across the week. Furthermore, the therapist might stipulate the length of the chats, wanting to ensure that the client doesn’t just log in and quickly log out (which would defeat the purpose of using the AI therapeutically at the get-go).
In the therapist-AI-client triad, the therapist has access to the AI that the user is utilizing, allowing the therapist to readily gauge how things are going. Since the therapist has direct access to the AI, they might opt to schedule the AI chats. The client doesn’t have to do so. The therapist takes care of this on behalf of the client.
If a client doesn’t engage with the AI at a scheduled appointment, the AI sends a message to the therapist. The therapist might intervene and send an additional reminder to the client or potentially reschedule the appointment. This is where a “penalty” of sorts now possibly enters the picture. The therapist might have a policy associated with missing any scheduled AI-based therapy appointments and require a financial penalty or some other related ding.
The ability to schedule mental health chats with AI is an emerging capability. An LLM might have a generic scheduling feature, and some people will use it to schedule an AI chat on mental well-being. The scheduling feature might also be shaped as having the wherewithal associated with scheduling mental health chats. This is an evolving area with all sorts of new bells and whistles that will be devised.
A final thought for now.
For some people, the scheduling of AI mental health chats will make AI usage a kind of reality and be highly beneficial to their mental status. This won’t necessarily be utilized by everyone. Specific circumstances and interests will be the deciding factor. As per the famous words of Tony Robbins: “If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it's possible, but if you schedule it, it's real.”
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