Research shows that AI chatbots can improve mental health

new artificial intelligence (AI) study in New England Journal of Medicine Published Who is nejm An AI chatbot called Therabot shows how people suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) can significantly improve their symptoms in just two months. anxiety Disorders (GADs) and eating disorders.

“Generated artificial” Intelligence (gen-ai) Chatbots are promising by building highly personalized and effective mental health streets on a large scale, addressing the common user engagement and retention issues among digital treatments,” said senior authors Nicholas Jacobson and Michael Heinz, Daniel McInz, Brianatuchaya Avan, Abutachayayanyan Abigail Salzhauer and Tess Griffin, senior authors of Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College.

In this new study, Dartmouth researchers provided mental health treatment in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) using chatbots powered by Gen-AI.

“This is the first RCT to demonstrate the effectiveness of a complete gen-ai Treatment “Chatbots to treat clinically-level mental health symptoms,” the researchers wrote.

Depression, anxiety, eating disorders

depressionAlso known as major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it is a mental disorder common in the United States and worldwide. An estimated 21 million adults, or 8.3% of US adults, experienced a massive episode of depression in 2021. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 280 million people worldwide suffer from depression. To put this global figure into context, the current US population is 347 million per review of the world population, so the global total estimated total of 280 million depression is equivalent to about 80% of the total US population.

Another common mental health disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, affects 6.8 million adult Americans, or 3% of the US population, according to the American Anxiety & Depression Association. Patients with systemic anxiety disorder are overly anxious and worried about multiple events and activities on days not available for at least six months. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders5th edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR).

An estimated 28 million Americans, or 9% of the US population Eating disorders Lifelong, according to the Deloitte Access Economics report. Eating disorders include bulimia, bulimia nervosa, and anorexia nervosa.

Generated AI, AI chatbot, LLMS

Generated AI, also known as Genai or Gai, is a machine learning model that can generate new content such as text, images, and videos. The genai chatbot generates human-like content. Examples of Genai chatbots include Openai’s ChatGpt, Google Gemini (formerly Google Bard), Microsoft Copilot, Meta’s Llama 2, Anthropic’s Claude, and Xai’s Grok.

Therabot is an AI chatbot that uses a type of deep learning model called the Generating Large-Scale Language Model (LLM). ChatGpt, Gemini, Llama2, and Grok are examples of generator AI chatbots with LLM architecture. Large-scale language models are classes of AI foundation models trained with vast amounts of data to understand and generate content in a human-like way.

AI Chatbot Therabot is a text-based, multi-threaded app compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones. Therabot was tweaked to mental health conversations created by mental health experts, including clinical psychologists and board-certified psychiatrists who were on the research team. Furthermore, conversations were peer-reviewed with evidence-based modalities consisting primarily of a structured form of talk therapy, which is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective psychological treatment for anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and other mental illnesses.

Cognitive behavioral therapy emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a first-line therapy for major depressive disorders and many anxiety disorders. Early CBT pioneers include Aaron Temkin Beck, founder of cognitive therapy, MD (1921-2021) and founder of Rational Emotional Behavior Therapy (REBT), psychologist and psychotherapist Albert Ellis (1913-2007).

The core principle of cognitive behavioral therapy is that psychological problems are based in part on false or useless thoughts and behaviors, allowing you to learn how to better cope. Cognitive behavioral treatment usually involves attempting to change unhelpful patterns of thought and behavior to alleviate symptoms and improve daily life.

This study was randomly divided into two groups, a control group with 104 adults and an experimental group of 106 adults who received a terabot intervention out of 210 adult participants with clinically significant symptoms of anxiety, depression, or eating disorders.

“Therabot was well-utilized and highly rated user reviews,” a researcher at Dartmouth reported.

Among participants who received the terabot intervention, the average use was >6 hours during the study period. Furthermore, participants found it to be comparable to human therapists.

Overall, participants using Therabot experienced clinically significant improvements in symptoms over the course of 8 weeks. Specifically, on average, symptoms decreased by 51% for those diagnosed with depression, 31% for those with general anxiety disorders, and 31% for those diagnosed with eating disorders according to the release of Dartmouth College.

“While fine-tuned Gen-AI chatbots offer a viable approach to deliver dedicated mental health interventions at scale, further research using larger clinical samples is needed to confirm their effectiveness and generalizability,” the scientists concluded.

Copyright©2025 Cami Rosso