Does your therapist use AI?
Maybe. Some therapists have turned to AI to take notes and do their paperwork. Do you know if yours does?
You should know, because therapists are required to get consent. If you’re not sure, ask your therapist.
And ask for what you want. It’s up to you.
“Notes that write themselves.” —advertising slogan (Mentalyc)
Do you want your therapist’s notes to write themselves?
“Get back 5 to 10 hours each week” —advertising slogan (Blueprint)
No doubt AI would save me time! I spend hours a week doing what AI could do for me. With every decision, though, there are pros and cons. What are the cons?
“The subtleties of human feelings and experiences are still difficult for AI to fully comprehend.” —advertising slogan (SimplePractice)
Yikes! A couple things are going on here. They’re admitting AI has limits, and yet they’re implying that it has human experience (difficulty) and ability (comprehension). Let’s remember that computational systems do not comprehend. Human feelings and experiences are totally incomprehensible to AI. That’s the con.
I don’t want to turn my job over to AI. My job is to understand your feelings and experiences and hold conversations about your challenges and values. Does anyone expect AI to understand these conversations?
Why I choose to do my own notes. AI records you, analyzes your words, and turns them into notes. It’s being trained to process language at higher levels (for a deeper dive, see sentiment analysis). It has a long way to go. We’ve all tried talking with chatbots. They miss nuances, idioms, sarcasm, references to relationships, culture, and stuff from other times and places. They miss so much. Human interactions consist of more than just words. We use lots of nonverbal cues. When humans miss those, they get called robotic.
AI can capture your words in a counseling session, but it fails to comprehend what’s going on. I don’t want to turn that part, or any part of my job, over to a bot. Except just this once, I did try an AI generator for the image—did you catch it? 😊
Why I choose to do my own paperwork. Paperwork (between sessions) is the unexciting, solo part of my job. AI can summarize your words, analyze patterns, write treatment plans, and even diagnose you. Doing that myself requires me to think about you between sessions. If AI did that, I would reduce the time & energy spent thinking about you. I would be less engaged. So I choose to do my own paperwork.
In summary: A therapist’s job is to create a unique, healing relationship with a client that’s as beneficial as possible. If you’re looking for a therapist, ask yourself what amount of AI would be the most beneficial to you. What do you want?
Questions:
If your therapist wanted to use AI, and asked you for consent, how would you respond?
You can ask them:
Is it a problem if I say no?
How would AI enhance what we do here?
I’m asking you:
What do you want?
