While we may not turn back the overall wave of AI (Artificial Intelligence) impact on our lives, awareness of its dark side of its use by teens can save lives. Teens have easy access to AI interfaces and are subject to an increasing mental health crisis. The result has already taken the lives of a few teens. Several lawsuits by parents against generative AI sites highlight real world stories of how the responses by these AI programs contributed to the suicides of several depressed teens. This study built on these tragedies by surveying how many teens are using these AI interfaces for mental health help.
As the paper’s citations note, almost 1 in 5 US teens report an episode of major depression in the past year, yet 40% of these reported receiving no mental health care. While I will note here that the conventional response of therapy and medications for teen depression is also inadequate for the other 60%, we are simply looking at an even worse situation when any of those teens look to an AI program for help during such mental health crises.
Gleaning from a 50% response rate by over 2100 teens, the authors report that 13% of the respondents said they look to generative AI for mental health advice. This rate was even higher for those 18 to 21 years old at 22%. About two-thirds did so monthly and 92% reported that the advice was helpful.
With generative AI, we are still dealing with a computer program designed to interact with humans by mimicking human responses, providing human-like interactions. The results of this generative AI still depend on the design inputs by humans. Any “values” such as valuing life or happiness or other human behavior depends on what the designer put into it. However, given the complexity and the proprietary secrets of the design in competition with other AI, there is little to no transparency over what we can expect from interacting with an AI for mental health needs. We also don’t have clear studies to demonstrate whether these AI interactions are truly helpful or not. We do have several cases of clear harm done, several teens dead by suicide
To be fair, as I mentioned earlier, the conventional approach to teen mental health has its own rap sheet of failures. Some anti-depressants have warnings that teens may have an initial higher risk of suicide after starting meds. We don’t have great outcome studies showing that many of the commonly used meds even work. We have many teens committing suicide without any interaction with AI. Modern medicine is constantly trying to apply band-aids that don’t truly cover the emotional wounds.
In the end, I am explicitly stating that we have a teen mental health crisis that is growing unanswered and that generative AI may be even worse than our current answer. We need to look for real solutions and deal with the AI issue before more die. For some patients, that means identifying and treating biological conditions like PANS and PANDAS (where an infection or toxin triggers brain inflammation leading to mental health symptoms). Further, we as a society must support families and churches with resources and training to meet those dealing with stress and trauma where they need help. Helping these teens and young adults restore healthier, more abundant emotional lives requires more than medicine alone can offer through either conventional approaches or potentially dangerous AI ones. More psychologists, psychiatrists, and school counselors, whether human or AI, will not solve our problems.
Original Article:
McBain RK, Bozick R, Diliberti M, et al. Use of Generative AI for Mental Health Advice Among US Adolescents and Young Adults. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(11):e2542281. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.42281
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
Dr. Eric Potter graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School and then went on to specialize in internal medicine (adult) and pediatric care, spending significant time and effort in growing his medical understanding while caring for patients from all walks of life.
