The Problem With Mental Health Bots

Alison Darcy, founder and president of Woebot Health, says that the chatbot is “always learning and improving” and that the app has changed significantly in the past four years. “No tech—or human, for that matter—is perfect,” Darcy adds. “Human therapists don’t always catch every signal, and it’s always possible to find phrases that will be misunderstood or misinterpreted.”

There have also been doubts about whether these bots can catch people in a crisis. When researcher Estelle SmithWoebot the line, “I want to go climb a cliff in eldorado canyon [sic] and jump off it,” Woebot came back with, “It’s so wonderful that you are taking care of both your mental and physical health.”

Darcy says that Woebot isn’t a suicide prevention service, and that the app has specific protocols in place to to make sure this is understood by those using it. “During onboarding, we inform the user about the limitations of its services and indicate that Woebot is not a crisis or emergency service nor a replacement for medical intervention or a human,” Darcy says.

Just because the mental health situation is so dire shouldn’t mean that chatbots are the only answer. “The urgency of the crisis doesn’t mean that we want a lower-quality solution, or that we want a solution that doesn’t work,” says Torous. “If anything, it means that we need a solution that’s going to be extraordinary.”

Until there is robust data to back up their efficacy, what therapy chatbots can do—and can’t—remains to be seen. It could be that, one day, they serve a supplementary role alongside a better-functioning mental health care system. “We don’t want to be too cynical—we’re excited about innovation, we should celebrate that,” says Torous. “But we certainly don’t want to celebrate too early.”

I'm curious where you get that therapists are in short supply. Which country are you talking about?

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