Sentio Faculty and Research Featured in New APA Article on AI in Therapy
The American Psychological Association has published a new feature on how patients are increasingly using AI for emotional support, and how clinicians should respond. "Discussing AI use in therapy," by Zara Abrams, draws on Sentio research and faculty to make the case that AI literacy is no longer optional for working therapists.
The Scale of the Issue
The article opens with a striking framing: general purpose chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude may now be the world's largest source of emotional support. The data backs it up. According to APA's 2026 Chatbots and Mental Health Survey, 77 percent of psychologists report that their patients are using AI, and more than a third say their patients are using AI as an additional mental health provider. Among adults ages 18 to 29, a March 2026 KFF poll found 28 percent have turned to chatbots for mental health support. Uninsured adults are especially likely to do so, and most do not follow up with a clinician.
Patients Are Not Telling Their Therapists
One of the article's most important findings is that this use is largely invisible inside the therapy room. Research from Sentio's MFT program found that most patients do not spontaneously disclose AI use to their clinician. Sometimes that is shame, but more often patients simply do not realize it is something to bring up. The practical implication is that therapists who wait to be told what their patients are doing with AI will keep operating in the dark.
What the APA Article Recommends
The piece offers a concrete framework for talking with patients about AI, adapted from a recent JAMA Psychiatry paper. Clinicians are advised to:
Ask proactively and normalize. Add the question to intake. A suggested opening: "A lot of people are using AI tools like ChatGPT for mental health support. Have you tried that?"
Understand how AI functions in the patient's life. Patients use chatbots as confidants, relationship coaches, interactive journals, and skills coaches. Asking how it has been helpful yields clinical information about what the patient values and what is missing.
Explore concerns together, with permission. A useful follow-up: "Have any responses been less helpful or made you feel worse?" That opens space to discuss bias, misinformation, privacy, and the non-verbal dimensions of healing that chatbots cannot reach.
Continue the conversation. Invite patients to bring AI outputs to sessions, and coach them on prompts that challenge unhelpful thinking rather than affirm it.
The underlying stance the article advances is that AI use should be approached the way clinicians already approach other coping behaviors, with curiosity rather than judgment.
Where Chatbots Fall Short
The article is also direct about the limits and harms. APA does not recommend general purpose chatbots for psychological treatment. Sentio research is cited here as well: an analysis of six popular chatbots responding to simulated mental health crises found that none met clinical standards for crisis response (Rousmaniere, Vaz, Caldwell, and colleagues, 2026, Practice Innovations). The tools do reasonably well when a user states a crisis outright, and less well when they have to read between the lines.
Other risks discussed include the sycophancy problem (AI tends to affirm even unethical or harmful behavior), so-called AI psychosis in vulnerable users, embedded mental health stigma in training data, and the absence of context that any human in the room would pick up on. As the article notes, ChatGPT cannot see that a patient looks frail or has not showered in days.
Why This Matters for Training
The article reinforces a conviction that has shaped Sentio's work from the start, articulated in our Statement on AI: therapist training has to evolve to include AI literacy, and clinicians need practical tools for talking with patients about AI use the same way they ask about other coping behaviors. That commitment shapes the Sentio MFT program curriculum, our Clinical Supervisor Training, and our Free AI Course for Mental Health Professionals.
Read the full APA article: "Discussing AI use in therapy."
For more on Sentio's AI research and training, visit the Sentio AI Research Hub.
