AI Is Changing Mental Health Care: Therapists, We Need Your Voice
AI Is Changing Mental Health Care faster than most therapists realize, and right now the loudest voices shaping that change are tech founders, VCs, and insurance companies, not the clinicians actually in the room with clients. In this episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI, I get into why that’s been bugging me for months and what I think we need to do about it.
I walk through what’s actually happening behind the scenes right now, states passing AI legislation, insurance companies quietly testing AI triage chatbots, and ethics boards writing position statements, almost all of it without real clinician data behind it. Then I share what Berries is doing about that gap and how eight minutes of your time can help make sure the future of AI in mental health gets shaped by therapists instead of everyone else.
AI Tips You Don’t Want to Miss:
- The free quiz that matches you to the right AI tool, from Claude to Manus to Berries.
- Manus’s 300 free daily credits, and why they’re enough to start creating AI-generated graphics and video.
- The real energy cost of AI notes, and why it’s smaller than most therapists think.
- A full practice website built in two hours for under $40 using AI tools alone.
- The eight-minute survey that could decide whose data shapes the future of AI in mental health care.
Mentioned in this episode:
Survey | The State of AI in Mental Health Practice 2026: https://tally.so/r/MeM8jM
The Therapist’s AI Cheat Sheet: https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/AICheatSheet
The AI Website Blueprint for Therapists: https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/AIwebsite
Connect with me:
- Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
- Join the Clinical AI Club: www.clinicalaiclub.com
Sponsored by Alma: www.helloalma.com/kym
Sponsored by Berries:www.heyberries.com/therapists
Sponsored by Auralink Pro: Start your free trial and use code KYMTOLSON for 20% off www.auralink.com/pro
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of “Run Your Private Practice with AI” podcast. I’m excited to be here today. so much I wanna talk to you guys about, but something really grabbed my attention this week, so I wanna talk about that. I wanna start with something that’s honestly been bugging me for months.
[00:00:17] Every single headline about AI and therapy right now, it just seems to be like, “Here’s the hot take. The robots are coming for your job.” It’s like panic posting. Like, every report is about how AI is going to fix mental health care and all of that, you know, by deploying bots and I’m just seeing stuff everywhere like, “Oh you know, if you train your ChatGPT the right way, it’s gonna help you with your mental health,” and all that stuff.
[00:00:42] And that’s just not what I’m seeing, and obviously as therapists, we’re not seeing that. And I think the people that are really writing that the most are the people that have something to gain from it, of course. Like, people that have never really sat in the room with clients, like tech founders you know, people that are backing, like VCs that are backing, like, these companies, that sort of thing.
[00:01:05] Research out there that who knows who’s conducting it, but I’m just seeing this a lot, right? That there’s a fix for the mental health crisis, and it’s like the CBD,
[00:01:14] CBT chatbot, you know, things like that. It’s just, it’s driving me nuts, so I wanted to talk about it. And you guys know I’m the clinical consultant for product development for Berries, and Berries is awesome. Like, I don’t you know, I’m not trying to like get you to go use Berries or anything. I’m just saying like the co-founders, Tal and Yuval, they are like phenomenal people.
[00:01:35] So they decided they wanted to do this survey, and I’m gonna talk about it in a little while. But, you know, as a marketer and as somebody that’s like sharing Berries with the world, I’m like, “Oh, okay. Well, we gotta make sure that we, you know, get them on the email list so they can know more about Berries and all this stuff.”
[00:01:51] And they were like, “We don’t even care about that. Like literally, we wanna put this survey out there so we can figure out how to better serve you know, therapists basically, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists in the world of using AI to help them run their practices.” And both of them have backstories about, you know, needing therapy.
[00:02:10] Tal’s got some amazing stories about that, so does Yuval that they’ve shared and that’s what led them really and still drives them to this day to create Berries. So they’re never gonna sell to VCs hopefully. There’s never been any talk about like, “Oh, we’re gonna get some venture capitalists backers to grow the platform.” Nothing like that.
[00:02:30] So anyway, all that being said I feel like decisions are being made about our profession and we’re not showing up to the table as much as we should. Now, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m in the AI world, so I do follow other clinicians. Maria Badillo, you guys might know her. Dr. Rachel Wood. You know, these are therapists that are out there doing a lot of really good work around AI and helping the field and that sort of thing.
[00:02:57] But really, decisions about our profession, I feel like are made maybe being made right now with like insurance companies who are starting to bring AI in or you know, these VC firms that are basically bringing in like this like AI tech that they’re trying to like sell to the mental health crisis essentially, you know, that sort of thing.
[00:03:16] And I am seeing like data come out. I don’t know, again, who’s backing this data about like, oh, just you can use this CBT chatbot that’s gonna cure everything, that kind of thing. So anyway what I’m not seeing is a lot of research based on like therapists and the work we’re doing and like how is AI showing up for us in the therapy room, that sort of thing, and with the clients that we’re working with.
[00:03:39] I’ve seen a couple of things, like the APA report just came out. I put that in my weekly newsletter and I continue to follow that stuff. And there is some research out there, but it’s not like mainstream, right? So anyway, today I wanna talk to you about why that matters, what I feel like it’s costing us, and one small thing I’m asking you to do about it as a clinician using AI or interested in using AI in your practice or just in your life in general.
[00:04:05] And it takes about eight minutes, and that’s a survey that I’m gonna put the link to at the bottom, but I wanna talk about it a little bit first. So let me tell you what’s actually happening out there, because I don’t think it’s on most therapists’ radars.
[00:04:16] So Illinois passed a law this year restricting how AI can be used in therapy regarding chatbots. Other states are drafting their own versions of this right now. I was trying to keep up track with it on my newsletter, but then, you know, I use AI to help me write my newsletter, and a lot of the legislation out there, it’s like not even up to date online.
[00:04:36] So I really– I had to recant a whole email newsletter like two weeks ago because some of it was incorrect. So there is a lot of legislation out there. Some of it’s getting killed, you know, before it gets signed, some of it’s passing, but a lot of it has to do around um, chatbots and that therapists need to be the end-all be-all of even like chatbot information that’s being sent through to our clients.
[00:04:58] Thank God, right? There’s legislation and there are a couple of states that already have laws on the books that are like protecting that resource, saying chatbots are not okay to be used in their state unless the therapist is on the back end approving the information that comes out of it. Now, insurance companies, they’re quietly starting to ask questions about AI-assisted documentation.
[00:05:20] This is, , interesting, right? Because the– they’re asking questions, but they’re also like starting to introduce, like Aetna, for example, is starting to introduce, I believe in 2027. I don’t have all the information, but basically they’re talking about introducing like AI-assisted chatbots on the front end that are doing psychoeducation and then the chatbots deciding if it should be passed off to a real therapist.
[00:05:43] And then if it does get passed off to a real therapist, it’s almost like an EAP triage that it’s gonna do. Like, so it’s gonna do the in an app and then give it to an EAP therapist to see if a couple sessions will suffice face. And if that doesn’t work, then they’re gonna like triage it out to like a real therapist, you know, whatever that means, but somebody that can actually do the deeper work.
[00:06:04] So I’m already seeing that with Aetna, and who knows what’s gonna happen, right? ‘Cause the insurance companies, they don’t want to pay for our services. So if AI can help with some of the pieces, they’re gonna do that. I’m seeing ethics boards are writing position statements. So if you go over to the APA or I was just reading something that the NESW put out about its statements around AI. So all of that is out there right now.
[00:06:27] The rules for how AI shows up in our work, they’re being written as we speak. And in my opinion, there’s a problem with that, right? When regulators and tech companies start writing these rules, they are working from whatever data they can get their hands on or the data that they want to work from, right?
[00:06:47] I mean, data’s good, but it’s like biased. You know what I mean? Of course we know that And almost none of that data, except for this recent APA study I saw about psychologists and how they’re using AI in their practice, is coming from really clinicians describing their actual lived experience with AI, what they’re seeing in the therapy room.
[00:07:07] I keep seeing headline after headline that clients are, what? 26% of clients are using AI before they even get to a therapist, right? I even posted something on my Instagram today, a study that I was reading about 26% hit ChatGPT with their mental health problem, and then if they are, like, not satisfied with the answer, but of course a lot of times they are because AI is like, wants to please you, right?
[00:07:34] But if it’s not, then they’re like further saying into ChatGPT like, “Well, can you help me find somebody to assist me?” And one, if we’re not even showing up on AI, we’re not gonna show up there, right? If you’re relying just on Google SEO your Google listing, that sort of thing, SEO on your website, if you haven’t optimized that for AEO and GEO, you’re probably not gonna show up.
[00:07:57] So like the standards for our field are getting set by everybody except the people in the field, is essentially what I’m saying. I’m seeing that more and more, and that’s bothering me, and I hope that bothers you too to hear that.
[00:08:10] So here’s what Berries did about it, and I’d say we at Berries did about it, ’cause I’m part of the team there.
[00:08:16] I’m their clinical consultant, but also Tal and I meet every single week, and we have deep, deep conversations about Berries and how it’s serving clinicians and how we can do a better job
[00:08:27] And I, I like to be fully transparent about like what we’re doing at Berries and how we’re trying to support you and that sort of thing
[00:08:33] So our team put together a research survey, and it’s called “The State of AI in Mental Health Practice in 2026.” The whole point is to actually ask clinicians, not tech people, not, you know, potential financial backers or anything like that. Therapists, counselors, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, and yes, even like interns and students.
[00:09:00] This is a total side note, but Tal and I got invited to a class, social work and AI class at NYU to present about Berries and, how to integrate AI into your practice to students that aren’t even clinicians yet which was really cool. So this survey is even open to interns, you know, trainees, people just starting out, and students of course.
[00:09:23] So all of it is gonna get compiled into a report, the AI in Mental Health Practice Report 2026 that we’re putting out into the world. So when people talk about what AI is doing to mental health care, there’s gonna be real data from real clinicians behind that information or that survey or that information that we’re gathering from actual clinicians. So we’re really excited about it just to get like the real raw data with no you know, influence behind it, money or you know, everything I’ve talked about, insurance companies, that sort of thing.
[00:09:56] Nothing behind it influencing. That’s it. That’s the mission. Get us therapists into the data set so we can really start making informed decisions around our marketing and our careers and, you know, all of these things that I talk about you know, how we’re having to pivot as clinicians, right?
[00:10:15] If that many people are hitting ChatGPT first, we are going to be seeing less and less clients in the therapy room, so we need to capture that audience. We need to figure out how we’re gonna help them. And I feel like this survey is really a good starting point for that to see where therapists are, where maybe therapists aren’t even familiar with AI and the things we can be doing with AI to help us move faster, more efficiently, serve more people, that sort of thing.
[00:10:37] Now, some of you might have just heard me say AI survey and you’re already assuming it’s like a cheerleading thing where the answer is supposed to be AI is wonderful, adopted everywhere, but it’s really not that.
[00:10:48] It’s really important to us and me and Berries that you are super honest, on this thing. Like, if you’re like, “I hate AI, and here’s the reasons I don’t use it,” there’s sections in there that ask, like, “Why aren’t you using AI?” Because we, we wanna know about that, and we wanna help keep you informed about it.
[00:11:04] Like, you guys might have heard an episode I did recently. A big thing I always hear, and you guys probably hear too, is the energy consumption, right? What a lot of therapists don’t know, and I’ve done a ton of research on this, is that you know, you could write 266 AI notes and the amount of energy spent for that would be the amount of energy just to like charge your phone overnight one night.
[00:11:25] You know, and a lot of maybe therapists don’t have that information, but what I wanna know is what is keeping you back from it and why, and can we compile information or do our own research on how to help bridge that gap or educate better or say, “You know, right, you’re right. Yeah, you, you shouldn’t use AI for that, and here’s why.”
[00:11:46] We totally agree with it. So that’s more about what this is about. The survey is just as much for maybe skeptics as it is for AI enthusiasts, maybe more for skeptics. We wanna hear from you too. really because if the only people who fill this out are like huge AI users, the report’s gonna be garbage, right?
[00:12:03] So it’s gonna be biased already. It tells a fake story. So if you’re worried about AI, if you think it’s being oversold, if you’ve tried it and you hated it, if you have serious ethical concerns, you are exactly the therapist whose answers are gonna make this report super honest and real with what’s happening with AI in the mental health field right now.
[00:12:25] So I guess I’m saying please don’t sit out on this one because you think your opinion doesn’t fit the narrative. concerns or like fear or inability to even understand how to use AI is the data set that we’re looking for. We want it. We wanna hear more about it. We want to help you, and we wanna understand like really what’s going on out there from therapists, not from these like biased reports that are out there in the world right now.
[00:12:52] And here’s one of the things that I’m really most curious about to seeing the results. Now, for me, AI has really helped me with my burnout, but in another way, it’s actually driven me to do more because I can. I have the capability to scale at 10 times the amount of what I used to be able to scale. I used to be at a two times level, now I’m at a 10 times level.
[00:13:16] That’s actually the name of a book that I read, which is so good. But AI’s helping with that, right? So it can help– Obviously, it’s helped me with my documentation and my burnout that way, but it’s also kind of like opened the door to so much more. And I’m hearing this, I just got like five emails this week about you know, “Kim, I really like AI, but I don’t even know where to start.
[00:13:34] I’m super overwhelmed about it.” And I actually created like a free guide to like highlight all of the major AIs and then where to start, and then also show you how to like save credits, which one’s the best to use for your use case, that sort of thing. So I’m gonna link that down at the bottom below too so you guys can get that.
[00:13:56] It’s like an interactive quiz, and it gives you solutions, tells you which AI and why. You know, like it compares Claude and Perplexity and ChatGPT and Manus and Berry… I put Berries on there. Gemini’s on there, NotebookLM, and it gives you like ideas of what you can do with these different things too.
[00:14:14] So you take the quiz, and then it’s like, “This would probably be the best one for you to use right now,” and start small with one thing and just try it and make sure it helps you, that kind of thing. So because it, yes, it helps with burnout, but it’s also super overwhelming, and that’s what I’m hearing over and over and over again from the therapists I’m talking to every day.
[00:14:31] They’re just super overwhelmed and there’s so much information. I get it too. I mean, it’s just like every day it’s like a new tool. I’m like, “How am I gonna have time to learn this and share it with my members in the Thera AI Hub and the Clinical AI Club?” It’s overwhelming, even for me, somebody that eats, sleeps, and breathes AI.
[00:14:47] So I totally get that. Anyway, so part of what I wanna know about the survey is like, is it actually helping reduce therapist burnout? Does it save you time on your notes? Does it take the administrative burden off your plate? Are you getting your evenings and weekends back because you’re using AI? And I do believe that.
[00:15:08] I mean, I live it in a lot of ways, but like I said, it also has opened the door to do a lot more stuff that I could probably lock myself in a room for two weeks and not, do all the stuff I wanna do with AI right now with just how, much it’s exploding with all the different capabilities like video, AI-generated videos and graphics and social media and all of that.
[00:15:26] It’s just super overwhelming. But anyway, that’s what we wanna hear. Is it actually helping you or is it making your life worse because you’re overwhelmed with it? And I don’t actually know if it’s true across the board. I use so much AI that, you know, I think everybody’s using that much, but maybe not.
[00:15:41] So I wanna know, like, are you using an AI note taker? Is it helping you? Are you getting out of the office earlier or are you not? Are you spending tons of time still editing your AI-generated notes? Or are you like, “Hell no, I’m not using AI-generated notes,” and you know, “I’m gonna, spend every weekend for the rest of my life doing notes.
[00:15:59] I’ll die on that hill.” You know, that kind of thing. And with that, I mean, with that part about is it making you more burnt out, right? You’re learning new tools. You’re second-guessing what the output is saying. You’re deep diving into research about things that you’re not sure about. You’re worrying about whether you did it right. You’re worried that I’ve gotta manage one more system.
[00:16:17] Like, all of that is real, too, and this survey kinda gets down into that, so we wanna, we wanna know that, too, to be able to help you with that down the road. you know, I’m the product development, right? So if our survey comes back and it’s like, “Yeah, this is great, but we actually just need help with marketing or writing our websites,” like, who knows?
[00:16:35] I mean, that might be something we put into Berries down the road if we get that kind of feedback from everybody that takes the survey.
[00:16:41] So anyway, I, I generally don’t know the answer for what’s going on right now. I mean, I hear anecdotally out there what’s happening, but I don’t know. So this survey is going to measure all of that. It asks about clinician wellbeing directly, not just did you save time using AI this week? That kind of thing.
[00:17:00] It’s asking like generally, like we wanna know like how are you doing?
[00:17:03] And we wanna know how do you feel about the work that you’re doing right now?
[00:17:06] And, you know, I don’t know if this interests you guys at all. I, I think it would. I hope it does. So we can’t wait to get all the answers back and to be able to compile it, like, in a meaningful resource to be able to give back to you to help guide your practice or to help give you more information about what other clinicians are doing and how they’re using it or, or not using it, and where, you know, most people fall with how they’re feeling about AI in general.
[00:17:30] And the last thing, I mean, people worry about with surveys like this, right? You can give the option to give your information if you want to, but everything is kept confidential, of course. Everything gets reported in an aggregate only, so nobody’s gonna see, like, Kim, therapist licensed from Virginia said, you know, “I hate AI,” or, “I use AI all the time,” or, “I’m worried that I’m not HIPAA compliant with my AI use,” like that kind of thing.
[00:17:54] That’s not gonna come out in the survey. It’s all aggregated, you know, to give us like meaningful information that we can use down the road and to help you all, like I said before.
[00:18:03] So anyway, all that being said, it felt important for me to just record this episode to share the survey. I’m recording this on July 20th, 2026 right now. We just released the survey today, so it’s gonna be out for a month gathering results. So hopefully, if you guys will, you’ll go take the time to take it
[00:18:25] It takes about eight minutes. It’s like about 15 short pages that you click through with, you know, multiple choice. Couple of them are, like, collecting answers, that kind of thing. I’ll put the link down in the show notes. And because we know your time is worth something, everybody who completes it gets entered into a drawing for one of 10 $100 Amazon gift cards, so that’s nice, right?
[00:18:48] you might get some money from doing it too, which I think is pretty cool. Worst case scenario, you spend eight minutes putting clinicians on the map and actually recording what’s happening right here, right now, 2026, July 2026, and giving real research to real therapists and the people behind Berries that just genuinely, deep down, want to help therapists.
[00:19:12] Give you some answers, some introspection, and some guidance on where this whole thing is taking us in the future. And you might win 100 bucks, so that’s not a bad trade
[00:19:24] And hopefully, I mean, my hope anyway is that it starts conversations about regulations and standards and shows up where those conversations are already happening, like the, clinicians that I mentioned that are doing really good work around this research, the APA, all of that
[00:19:40] And I really, I want it to be our voices out there. I want a therapist to be able to point to it and say, “That’s us. That’s what we’re doing. That’s where we are in 2026. This is how therapists are using AI in the world right now.” And you can count on it that’s gonna be accurate and hopefully non-biased, and help guide the future of clinicians in AI mental health care.
[00:20:04] And Right now, the biggest conversation happening about the future of our work is AI. And most of us are pretty much silent unless you’re in some of the therapist Facebook groups, and there are a handful of people that just, you even mention AI in there and they just totally lose it. I mean, go off, tell you you’re a h- horrible human being, all that stuff.
[00:20:25] So you guys are probably seeing that as well. I want the survey to reflect what’s really happening, not just like that small handful in the Facebook groups that are just like, total jerks about anybody that’s using AI to help with their practice or their business.
[00:20:38] So anyway, go to the link in the show notes I will put the link to the survey. I’m also gonna put the link to that freebie that I mentioned that starts with a quiz and then takes you, down sort of, not the rabbit hole, but just like a choose your own adventure almost. Like where are you stuck right now?
[00:20:54] Where are you wasting the most time? And guide you to the best AI tools to help you run your practice or your business and not get in that like, “Oh my God, there’s so much coming at me, I’m just not gonna use it at all.” That’s the purpose of that too, is to help you like say,
[00:21:09] “Okay, notes, probably Berries,” or writing blog posts, right? You probably wanna use Claude for that. Or I need to create graphics. I don’t know how to do that. Manus is fantastic at that these days. So that guide sort of like walks you down and tells you what to use. And a lot of these platforms have like free tiers. Like Manus gives you 300 credits a day.
[00:21:30] You could totally use Manus for some really cool things and not even ever have to pay for it. But a lot of people don’t know that because they’re so overwhelmed with the tool. So I hope you’ll check out that free tool I gave you too.
[00:21:40] And of course, I’ll give a little plug for the Thera AI Hub. I’m really excited, kind of nervous, but I built out two websites using AI to build my website. So if you go to aifortherapist.com, that’s totally built by AI. So on the fourth, fifth, and sixth of August, I’m going to be hosting a three-day webinar where we start– we write out the copy on day one.
[00:22:06] Day two, I show you how to set up a website that you can interact with. And then day three you know, the whole website will be up, ready to use. And then I’m gonna show you like SEO, AEO, and GEO. So I’ll put the link down below to that too if you wanna come join us in that webinar. Thera AI Hub members, Clinical AI Club members, you get it included, of course.
[00:22:28] And everybody else, it’s $127 for a three-day workshop, and you’ll leave with a fully functioning brand new website. If you’ve been struggling with your website at all or spending thousands and thousands of dollars of trying to create one, this is gonna make it super easy for you. I think it took me two hours to do aifortherapist.com and $36 on Manus to build that thing out.
[00:22:48] So I’ll put the link down below for you. Okay. Have a great day.