ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Digital Mental Health
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1606291
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Generative Artificial Intelligence for Mental HealthView all articles
Balancing Risks and Benefits: Clinicians’ Perspectives on the Use of Generative AI Chatbots in Mental Healthcare
Provisionally accepted
- 1Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
- 2Brain and Mental Health Hub, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia, Melbourne, Australia
- 3School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The use of generative-AI chatbots has proliferated in mental health, to support both clients and clinicians across a range of uses. This paper aimed to elucidate the perspectives of mental health clinicians regarding the risks and benefits of integrating generative-AI chatbots into the mental health landscape. Twenty-three clinicians participated in a 45-minute virtual interview, in which a series of open-ended and scale-based questions were asked, and a demonstration of a mental health chatbot’s potential capabilities was presented. Participants highlighted several benefits of chatbots, such as their ability to administer homework tasks, provide multilingual support, enhance accessibility and affordability of mental healthcare, offer access to up-to-date research, and increase engagement in some client groups. However, they also identified risks, including the lack of regulation, data and privacy concerns, chatbots’ limited understanding of client backgrounds, potential for client over-reliance on chatbots, incorrect treatment recommendations, and the inability to detect subtle communication cues, such as tone and eye contact. There was no significant finding to suggest that participants viewed either the risks or benefits as outweighing the other. Moreover, a demonstration of potential chatbot capabilities was not found to influence whether participants favoured the risks or benefits of chatbots. Qualitative responses revealed that the balance of risks and benefits is highly contextual, varying based on the use case and the population group being served. This study contributes important insights from critical stakeholders for chatbot developers to consider in future iterations of AI tools for mental health.
Keywords: Generative AI, Chatbots, Mental Health, Mental health clinicians, Benefits Risks
Received: 05 Apr 2025; Accepted: 13 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hipgrave, Goldie, Dennis and Coleman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lyndsey Hipgrave, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.