{"id":567633,"date":"2026-07-03T21:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/567633\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T21:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:46:14","slug":"barriers-to-understanding-how-many-people-use-ai-for-mental-health-support-an-estimate-and-narrative-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/567633\/","title":{"rendered":"Barriers to understanding how many people use AI for mental health support: an estimate and narrative review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Based on our inclusion criteria, we have listed the surveys included from our search in Table 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Table 2 Variables from surveys included in this review<\/b><\/p>\n

The results of this study are presented in Table 3<\/a>a, d<\/a>. Mean use percentages were calculated for individual categories. For surveys in which questions regarding AI use case were free response, the largest value that fits as a mental health usage has been used in calculations.<\/p>\n

Table 3 a Mean percent Use of AI for mental health by survey sample size; b % Use of AI for Mental Health by population type; c Use of AI by specific mental health use case; d Use of AI for Mental Health by survey method<\/b><\/p>\n

Additionally, we present the weighted average for the estimated percent population using AI for mental health, as shown in Fig. 2<\/a> below.<\/p>\n

Fig. 2<\/b>\"Fig.<\/p>\n

Estimated percent of population using AI for mental health by participant type and sample size.<\/p>\n

In addition to using percentages, we also investigated willingness to use AI chatbots for mental health support (see Table 4<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Table 4 Willingness to use AI for mental health support<\/b><\/p>\n

Table 4<\/a>. Willingness to use AI for mental health support. Surveys that did not list time of survey conduction have been dated based on time of publication and are listed with an (*).<\/p>\n

Additional studies<\/p>\n

Due to the variation in methods of measuring AI use for mental health, three studies could not be coded for in Table 2<\/a>, thus we present a discussion of those two studies here.<\/p>\n

Anthropic, the parent company of Claude chatbot, ran a 2025 study using their collection of 4.5 million conversations users have had with Claude3<\/a>. Researchers first identified and flagged phrases and words that they determined would count as an \u201caffective conversation.\u201d Of 4.5 million, they found 131,484 affective conversations with Claude. From this, they identified that 2.9% of all Claude conversations were affective.<\/p>\n

OpenAI in collaboration with MIT, conducted a 2024 survey investigating users’ experiences with ChatGPT10<\/a>. The authors collected 4,076 responses, of which 2333 were power (frequent) users, and 1743 were control (average) users. The authors then created classifiers (loneliness, vulnerability, self-esteem, problematic use, and potentially dependent), for which they would be able to identify which users perceived their conversations with ChatGPT to be emotional. The results show that of power users, \u226518% reported using affectionate language with ChatGPT, <4.5% expressed desire for feelings, and \u22655% sought support. These same values among control users were <18%, \u22642.5%, and \u226412%, respectively.<\/p>\n

A recent and widely read study was published by Harvard Business Review in 20251<\/a>. The author of this study was contacted for more information regarding the methodology of this study, and additional details of the study were provided by personal communication. This study used Reddit Forums to track and collect uses of AI for mental health. In this most recent publication, the researchers noted that in 2025, mental health support is the most common use case of AI.<\/p>\n

Harm<\/p>\n

Among the surveys that measured or asked respondents about harmful incidents with an AI chatbot, the most common concern and harm listed was data security and privacy. Albikawi et al. conducted a survey in February of 2025 and measured harm using a participant perception scale, which found that data storage and data privacy were listed as concerns by participants. Additionally, a study by Rousmaniere et al. noted that 9% of respondents reported harm or inappropriate responses from an AI chatbot and that in less than 1% of those cases did AI encourage harmful behavior. A more recent survey conducted in the UK reported that of individuals who use AI for MH support, 11% experienced triggering or worsening of psychosis symptoms, 11% were given harmful information about suicide, 11% felt more anxious or depressed after AI use, and 9% experienced triggering of self-harm or suicidal thoughts11<\/a>. An additional study also identified that 41.2% of respondents reported that a chatbot gave them wrong advice12<\/a>. Three surveys also note concerns about privacy and security, with the number of respondents reporting concerns ranging from 37\u201377%13<\/a>,14<\/a>,15<\/a>. Lastly, an additional survey mentioned that 27% of respondents expressed concern about AI, but did not clarify or define \u201cconcern\u201d 16<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Based on our inclusion criteria, we have listed the surveys included from our search in Table 2. Table…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[276],"tags":[3547,147730,18,910,135,475,62062,2100,19,17,5518,7482,167,502,4226,70984,14644,147729],"class_list":["post-567633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-biomedical-engineering-biotechnology","tag-data-mining-and-knowledge-discovery","tag-eire","tag-general","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-informatics","tag-health-promotion-and-disease-prevention","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mathematics-and-computing","tag-medicine-public-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychology","tag-scientific-community","tag-social-sciences","tag-special-purpose-and-application-based-systems"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116858244218307660","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}