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Ian Hickie<\/a>Researcher in clinical psychiatry<\/p>\nOctober 11, 2026 \u2014 4:30pm<\/p>\n
October 11, 2026 \u2014 4:30pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n No gift articles left<\/p>\n You’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.<\/p>\n Close<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n I\u2019ve worked clinically in mental health and suicide prevention for the better part of four decades. And I now believe the emergence of generative AI could be the most positive opportunity to ever emerge in the field.<\/p>\n I know that sounds jarring. The potential for chatbots to harm those experiencing mental health issues has been widely canvassed<\/a>. Chatbots can promote engagement with sycophantic interactions that support harmful behaviour<\/a>. They can also state falsehoods or dismiss warning signs clinicians would catch.<\/p>\n Given this, some are keen to stuff the AI genie back in the bottle. But young people who don\u2019t want to consult a human or can\u2019t make contact for practical reasons are turning to chatbots in droves<\/a>. They function 24\/7 in any location. When someone is desperate at 3am in a remote community, empathic and evidence-informed help is now available in a variety of commercial and other forms.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not suggesting that turning to a generic LLM such as ChatGPT or Claude for mental health care is always a good option. But I\u2019m also not suggesting that we should accept the outcomes our current youth mental health system is delivering.<\/p>\n Previous Brain and Mind Centre research<\/a> showed youth care services were fragmented and poorly co-ordinated. Those in greatest need are often the most neglected<\/a>. We also know the story isn\u2019t necessarily much better for those who attend primary care-based early intervention services. In fact, our 2021 research<\/a> showed nearly two-thirds of those attending these services found their daily functioning \u2013 think attending work or school regularly \u2013 stayed poor or got worse.<\/p>\n So what are we getting wrong? Well, by practical necessity, most traditional mental health care systems have relied heavily on fairly blunt diagnostic concepts and broad averages to allocate care. But AI opens up exciting new alternatives.<\/p>\n Related Article We can now, for example, use smart tools<\/a> to implement outcome-based care. Young people can effortlessly record and report their mood, sleep, activity or other symptoms, risk behaviours and level of functioning. With privacy and confidentiality strongly respected<\/a>, we can then use this data to make critical adjustments to treatments we might otherwise have missed.<\/p>\n Recording data has been available for some time \u2013 but the \u201cintelligence\u201d of AI adds something extraordinarily useful into the mix. Young people don\u2019t neatly summarise their experiences in conventional diagnostic categories or the reductionist language intrinsic to questionnaires. They might say they\u2019re \u201cwired\u201d or that their brain \u201czaps\u201d and \u201cgoes burr\u201d or is \u201cfull of noise\u201d. They might have been on a crowded bus and \u201cfreaked out\u201d or had a \u201cmeltdown\u201d.<\/p>\n A smart language-based model trained on real clinical encounters and genuine research-based evidence can process a complex human conversation and turn it into the structured information a clinician needs. Research is under way<\/a> to see if this could also prompt less-skilled clinicians to make more specific inquiries that guide decision-making.<\/p>\n This kind of guided information acquisition could turbocharge the capacities of youth services. A well-calibrated AI assistant could not only prompt primary-care clinicians and less-skilled youth workers but bring much of the experience of specialised psychiatrists, mental health nurses and clinical psychologists into the room with the young person. This really matters in our outer urban, rural or remote areas where few specialists are available.<\/p>\n Most experienced clinicians agree face-to-face assessment and ongoing care are superior to digitally enhanced services. Being able to observe key mental state features and participate in social interactions definitely has its upside. But we should also be brave enough to step back and ask ourselves if face-to-face is always the gold standard. Human interactions are far less consistent than we like to admit. Human judgment is strongly value-laden. When highly trained clinicians assess the same young people independently, they often come to quite different conclusions \u2013 not only about diagnosis, but also about treatment or need.<\/p>\n Related Article I\u2019m not suggesting AI-assisted care is free from its own biases. It\u2019s why some of us are so interested in building<\/a> and training our own models and making their assumptions transparent and contestable. But if we\u2019re serious about assisting many more young people, particularly early in the course of their difficulties, we can\u2019t demand immediate perfection. We judge lane-keeping technology in cars by whether it makes a crash less likely. Nobody demanded that it make crashes impossible before we started installing it.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sympathetic to those worried about the potential harms of AI on youth mental health. When politicians of good faith such as Kate Chaney call for the under-16 social media ban to be extended to chatbots, I understand the appeal. But sweeping bans have the potential to do more harm than good. Custom AI-driven tools created for youth mental health could fundamentally change the game for those in greatest need.<\/p>\n Ian Hickie is co-director, health and policy, at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney, and a former national mental health commissioner. The Brain and Mind Centre is in a mental health research<\/a> collaboration with AI company UNCAPT. <\/p>\n The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lifeline 13 11 14<\/a><\/p>\n Kids Helpline <\/a> 1800 55 1800.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n No gift articles left<\/p>\n You’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.<\/p>\n![\"Young](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791747736_541_006ae7a12950ea24a00007c9c064faa2ff51f886ad6a7d08e81890af4995d4c7.jpeg\")
Young people could get valuable mental health support from chatbots. Aresna Villanueva<\/p>\n![\"Professor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791747737_876_0fb693be313e6eab582fb69aa3b582719568ea72.jpeg\")
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