{"id":19742,"date":"2026-04-28T08:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T08:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/19742\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T08:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T08:58:11","slug":"google-wants-gemini-ai-chats-to-be-a-bridge-to-mental-health-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/19742\/","title":{"rendered":"Google wants Gemini AI chats to be a bridge to mental health support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"author-bio\">Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech\u2019s promise. He\u2019s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/signup\/health-tech\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">STAT Health Tech newsletter<\/a>. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.<\/p>\n<p>As Google faces pressure to take greater accountability for the mental health impacts of its artificial intelligence products, the company\u2019s clinical director Megan Jones Bell welcomed the challenge of making artificial intelligence helpful to people who come to its Gemini chatbot with a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt can seem sometimes like shutting something down is a way of preventing harm,\u201d Jones Bell told STAT. \u201cWe believe that making our product experience safer and more helpful and strengthening that bridge to support it is the more effective path to support mental health for the most people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Google recently made updates to its Gemini app so that it more prominently features connections to crisis hotlines when it detects a person may be at risk of self harm. In conversations about mental health, the AI will frequently point people to outside resources \u2014 but the bot doesn\u2019t disengage, reminding a user, for example, that \u201cI\u2019m here to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-text\">STAT+ Exclusive Story<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-login\">Already have an account? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/login\/\" data-stat-login=\"\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker login cta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"restricted-content-breaker-bg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/stat-plus-breaker-bg.png\" alt=\"STAT+\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"stat-plus-logo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/stat\/images\/stat-plus-logo-white.svg\" alt=\"STAT+\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tThis article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers<br \/>\n\t\t\t\tUnlock this article \u2014 and get additional analysis of the technologies disrupting health care \u2014 by subscribing to STAT+.<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-content-breaker-wrapper-cta mobile\">Already have an account? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/login\/\" data-stat-login=\"\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker login cta mobile\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tIndividual plans<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tGroup plans<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" class=\"stat-button view-all\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker view all plans\" aria-label=\"View All Plans\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">View All Plans<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-content-text\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTo read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+.\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" class=\"stat-button restricted-button\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker subscribe cta 1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,459,51,460],"class_list":{"0":"post-19742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-health-tech","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-stat"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}