“ChatGPT overcomes three major, long-known barriers to mental health support: it’s free, it’s accessible, and the support is around-the-clock. When therapy services have long waiting lists and huge fees, it feels snobbish and ableist to say no one should ever use AI as an alternative.

As a language-learning model, ChatGPT responds to any prompt or journal entry with personalised responses engineered to be thoughtful, validating, and empathetic. It’s a place where grief and all-consuming thoughts can be voiced with anonymity and without judgment.

Unlike a psychologist’s office, the conversation can continue back and forth for as long as a person needs, free of charge. And unlike speaking to a friend, the responses are crafted from a deep and broad knowledge of psychology - or, at least, from internet psychology. Herein lies the issue.

The question we may need to ask ourselves is whether ChatGPT usage is driving us towards a better quality of life and real-world relationships, or away. Do we need yet another route for reliance on screen time to bridge our loneliness? Or do we want to live in a more well-connected, supportive society?

But when the conversation feels heavily directed to placing blame at an individual citizen level, we should always be wary of distracting from a much larger, multi-billion-dollar elephant of a problem ”

-Grace Isabella, Shit You Should Care About (Substack)