In the previous two articles on AI-based therapy, Iāve detailed why AI therapists are poised to transform the mental health care industry and why many clients will prefer AI therapists over human ones. Here, weāll look at how human therapists can remain indispensable as cheap, AI-based therapy becomes widely available.
Ben Caldwell
An AI therapist can’t really do therapy. Many clients will choose it anyway.
It just isnāt the same, I hear over and over, from psychotherapists shrugging away concern over artificial intelligence. An AI therapist canāt really empathize. It canāt truly understand. It canāt build a therapeutic relationship with depth and connectedness the way a human therapist can.
As a therapist myself, I agree with all of these statements. An AI therapist is not equivalent to a human therapist. Like many therapists, I tend to focus on the ways that AI falls short.
But for clients, in many ways, an AI therapist is better than a human one.
AI therapy is about to make therapy a lot cheaper
āIām in L.A. We have a lot of therapists,ā Angelle Haney Gullett told the Washington Post in 2022. āSo itās just kind of wild to me that that many people are at capacity.ā She had contacted 25 different therapists after her father passed away, knowing that she needed help. Even though she was willing to pay cash, not one would take her. No one would even put her on a waiting list.
Sheās not alone. Tens of thousands of Americans struggle to access mental health care even when they know they need it, and even when their health insurance covers it. But for clients like Angelle, mental health care is about to get much easier to access. Itās about to get a lot less expensive, too. This will happen thanks to artificial intelligence. AI therapy is already here, and it’s about to upend US mental health care.
The Social Work Compact is bad public policy
The Social Work Compact is an interstate compact, or a form of agreement between individual states. If adopted by enough states, it will allow social workers in participating states to apply for a single, multi-state license that would give them practice privileges in all other participating states. As of January 15, 2024, only Missouri has adopted the compact. Several other states will consider legislation to join the compact this year. They should choose not to do so.
Therapy and coaching: Understanding the differences
Itās not unusual for private practice therapists to seek to expand their practices through coaching. Some clients will engage in coaching, but not therapy, because of the stigma they associate with therapy. At the same time, some therapists note that the unregulated nature of coaching means that anyone can call themselves a ācoach,ā regardless of qualifications. So ācoachingā sometimes carries stigma in the world of licensed therapists.
Setting aside stigma, though, what are the actual differences between coaching and therapy? How different do these practices need to be in order for therapists to engage in both?