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[00:00.68] Glenn Cohen of Harvard Law School said, “If you’re really worried about people using your app for mental health services, you want a disclaimer that’s more direct…”

[00:13.43] He suggested, “This is just for fun.”

[00:17.94] Still, chatbots are already playing a role due to an ongoing shortage of mental health professionals.

[00:27.24] Britain’s National Health Service has begun offering a chatbot called Wysa to help with stress, anxiety and depression among young people.

[00:42.11] This includes those people waiting to see a therapist.

[00:47.43] Some health insurers, universities, and hospitals in the United States are offering similar programs.

[00:56.46] Dr. Angela Skrzynski is a family doctor in the American state of New Jersey.

[01:04.69] When she tells her patients how long it will take to see a therapist, she says they are usually very open to trying a chatbot.

[01:15.85] Her employer, Virtua Health, offers Woebot to some adult patients.

[01:23.29] Founded in 2017 by a Stanford-trained psychologist, Woebot does not use AI programs.

[01:33.37] The chatbot uses thousands of structured language models written by its staff and researchers.

[01:45.59] Woebot founder Alison Darcy says this rules-based model is safer for health care use.

[01:52.50] The company is testing generative AI models, but Darcy says there have been problems with the technology.

[02:03.13] She said, “We couldn’t stop the large language models from… telling someone how they should be thinking, instead of facilitating the person’s process.”

[02:16.14] Woebot’s finding was included in a research paper on AI chatbots published last year in Digital Medicine.

[02:26.76] The writers concluded that chatbots could help with depression in a short time.

[02:33.14] But there was no way to study their long-term effect on mental health.

[02:39.78] Ross Koppel of the University of Pennsylvania studies health information technology.

[02:47.74] He worries these chatbots could be used in place of treatment and medications.

[02:55.18] Koppel and others would like to see the FDA review and possibly regulate these chatbots.

[03:04.48] Dr. Doug Opel works at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

[03:09.79] He said, “There’s a whole host of questions we need to understand about this technology so we can ultimately do what we’re all here to do: improve kids’ mental and physical health.”