61. How the New Illinois AI Therapy Law Impacts Therapists

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How the New Illinois AI Therapy Law Impacts Therapists

Are you using AI in your therapy practice? The new Illinois AI therapy law could change everything. In this episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI, I break down what this groundbreaking legislation means for therapists, what’s still allowed, what’s not, and how to stay compliant.

This law is a first-of-its-kind move to regulate AI in therapy, and it’s packed with implications that could impact therapists nationwide. Whether you’re already using AI tools or just curious, this is a must-listen to protect your practice and your license.

AI Tips You Don’t Want to Miss:

  • What the WOPR Act really says about AI’s role in therapy
  • Key restrictions: no clinical decisions, no direct client interaction
  • What AI can still do legally in Illinois therapy practices
  • New consent and documentation requirements to avoid $10,000 fines
  • How to turn your research into a 3-minute explainer video with Notebook LLM

Mentioned in this episode:

Connect with me:

Sponsored by Alma: www.helloalma.com/kym
Sponsored by Berries: www.heyberries.com/therapists

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey guys, happy Wednesday. I wanna check in with a couple of things. The big thing happening right now is this new bill that was passed in Illinois. I don’t know if you guys have heard about it yet. It’s the WOPR Act, which stands for Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act that just got passed in Illinois. It’s a big deal because it the first of its kind to start to regulate the use of AI in therapy before it’s been like wild, wild west. You know, everybody’s been using, of course we talk about in here all the time.

[00:00:33] But let me give you some key points. This matters and what basically instigated it was, you’ve probably seen the articles going around. There was one situation where somebody consulted ChatGPT, or one of the ais, I don’t even know which one. And basically the suggestion was use smaller amounts of meth instead of big amounts to like, like do harm reduction, that sort of thing.

[00:00:57] But of course that’s obviously awful advice for, you know, an AI to be giving somebody that’s asking for help. So it triggered bipartisan panic, essentially, you know, it, it went all through the media and that sort of thing. And then Illinois stepped up and they’ve passed legislation. So, you know, it, it, it’s one of the bills that’s passed quicker than any other bill in the history of Illinois is my understanding from what I’m reading.

[00:01:19] And it was a unanimous vote, basically saying AI is not allowed to be used in therapy in the state of Illinois. So what does this mean? It means a lot really. Let me go through, of course, I’ve taken notes and I, I made a YouTube video. I’m gonna talk about that in a minute, just how I made the video, which is just another thing I’m geeking out about, about ai.

[00:01:40] So I wanna share that too. But I’ll drop the link for the video to give you more details, but basically Okay. It’s, the WOPR, WOPR Act. Stands for wellness and oversight for psychological resources. And it’s not saying AI is banned, but its role is now clearly and legally limited in the state of Illinois, which, you know, I mean, it’s just a starting point.

[00:02:02] This could be national, it could be passed in every state. It could be like really controlling the health and wellness AI industry from here on out in the United States anyway.

[00:02:13] So what they’re saying AI can’t do now with this law that’s been passed?

[00:02:18] No independent clinical decisions. No direct interaction with clients. So, you know, there’s been a lot of talk around like, okay, can I make an AI bot that talks like me and understands my therapeutic approach and my clients can like consult it between sessions? This is a clear no, that cannot happen, at least in the state of Illinois.

[00:02:37] And I know there’s a lot of health and wellness companies that have been like moving towards that direction. So it’s kind of a big deal. It’s probably gonna halt a lot of. Stuff in its tracks, at least in Illinois. And like I said, it’s probably gonna go, you know, across the country, if not the world.

[00:02:51] Who knows? I mean, this could be a landmark decision that changes everything. It’s not allowed to do emotional analysis or diagnosis without any human oversight. So AI is not able to be used as a therapist at all in, like the mental health setting. which is, is really good also if you think about it, because I don’t know about you, but if you’ve heard about the insurance companies are all pushing for these AI screeners that are kind of like doing maybe some CBT, a little DBT on the front end.

[00:03:21] And of course this is a way for the insurance companies to save money, right? If they can like bypass paying a therapist and direct like an EAP client towards an AI chat bot that even breaches crossing the line of AI and therapy. This is saying you can’t do it, is my understanding, my interpretation of it.

[00:03:38] Of course, you know, this is brand new, so who knows what will come out of this, but that’s my thoughts already on it. So what AI can do based on this law, right? So we can still use it for drafting notes as long as it’s reviewed by the clinician, of course, we already know that using berries, anything like that.

[00:03:55] Of course you have to review it. You can’t just like copy and paste it and not ever look at the note or change things based on your own clinical decision making. But this law is clearly saying it must be reviewed by the clinician and signed off on by the clinician. It could be used to organize patient records or billing, which inside of my membership bill, like a boss. We are already using AI over there. And my new therapist, AI hub, I’ve put like a little billing assistant in there as well. It’s still in beta, so it’s not available for anybody yet, but I’ll be talking about that soon when I release it like to everybody. Scribe level support only, like I was saying.

[00:04:29] So never the decision maker in this process at all. Enforcement. Okay, so this bill is saying that there is gonna be a $10,000 per incident fine if a therapist is caught doing this. And it’s gonna be enforced by the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation, how they’re gonna do this. I have no idea.

[00:04:49] I mean, does it mean. You know, charts are gonna be audited by this Department of Professional Regulation, and they’re gonna then say yeah, okay, this looks AI generated. It doesn’t match the treatment plan. It doesn’t match this or that. It just looks like you copied and pasted this and didn’t give it any kind of oversight.

[00:05:04] I don’t know, does this mean there’s gonna be a committee auditing this stuff from the Department of Professional Regulation in Illinois to say. You know you didn’t give this any oversight, so we’re gonna fine you $10,000. And what will that lead to a licensing board hearing, possibly, you know, this is just where my mind’s going.

[00:05:20] Not none of that’s really saying that, but I see department of Professional Regulation and a $10,000 fine per incident. So this is something to really pay attention to. And again, this is just Illinois, so who knows. How this is gonna trickle down to all the other states nationwide, that sort of thing.

[00:05:35] Federal legislation, I don’t know. But it’s the first step and it’s a big deal, and we should really be paying attention to this. So therapists responsibilities with this must get explicit written consent before using AI tools. So before, today, before this got passed recently, I think it was just on August 4th is when it got passed.

[00:05:53] before there was a little bit of controversy around, do I have to have consent? I don’t see anything that says I have to have consent. This is saying you must have explicit written consent in your informed consent. And of course we were already doing that like as best practices, but there wasn’t anything that said you had to.

[00:06:11] This says you have to if you’re in Illinois. So, of course, like I said, this is probably gonna trickle down to other states. So if you’re not using an informed consent, do it. If you’re using Berries, heyberries.com/therapist. You guys know I love Berries. I’m a partner with Berries. They have an informed consent in there that you can use.

[00:06:27] Make sure you’ve, gone over it with your client. Make sure your clients are signing it. If you’re using any AI note taker, scribe, because it’s starting here in Illinois, but this could be nationwide, who knows how soon. When the other states get wind of this, this type of regulation must personally review and sign everything that the AI produces.

[00:06:45] Does that mean in our documentation we have to say, this was an AI generated note and I’ve reviewed and signed it? maybe that’s gonna be best practices now, just to make sure you don’t get in trouble if you’re in Illinois and the Department of Professional Regulation comes and tells you you need to do this, so this is stuff to think about.

[00:07:02] Only licensed humans can make final care decisions. That’s another piece of that. So, this is not pre-licensed clinicians or bachelor’s level clinicians being able to use AI and sign off on it if they obviously have to be supervised. And then we have to make sure as licensed humans, we are signing off on this and making sure that we’re signing off on it.

[00:07:22] So this is just super important. The big debate. So the supporters say. Yes, this is protecting the public. It preserves the therapy profession. It builds trust with our clients to know there’s a law in place and that you can be fined if you’re not reviewing the AI and what, you know, the output that it’s giving you.

[00:07:38] And then critics are saying, of course, that it could stifle innovation and scare off responsible AI development and mental health. You know, is this gonna stop AI innovation in its tracks or is it gonna help us? I mean, I know a lot of us have been super concerned. I’ve even seen it, people posting in all the therapist Facebook groups that their clients are using ChatGPT for therapy.

[00:07:59] They’re coming list of therapy. The summer slump is like no summer slump they’ve seen before. So all of this in my mind, contributes to clients or potential clients just reaching out to ai, which is super easy, affordable, anonymous, supposedly it’s not really anonymous. As their like mental health go-to when they’re like facing like a, just the like bio-psychosocial stressor, day-to-day, that kind of thing.

[00:08:20] So it’s a big deal you guys. Yeah. And I’m gonna drop a little explainer video that I made in the comments under this video. Check it out. The thing I’m super excited, I’m geeking out about this if you’re in the clinical AI club, I just posted like a walkthrough on how to do this, but basically Notebook LLM, which is a Google product, it’s free, which used to take your text based information and turn it into a podcast.

[00:08:43] Now you can take information like this. Drop it into Notebook LLM, which is free, and now they’ve got an option where you can click create a video. It created an explainer video of this, all of this content that I just shared with you in about three minutes. The video is excellent. It’s like all animated.

[00:09:02] The words are spelled correctly. It’s somebody else narrating. I don’t think there might be a way to put your own voice in there. I have to look at that a little bit more closely. I took the video, I. Made it based on all this research, kind of like directed it on what I wanted to say based on us and therapists and what I do and what we do and all that.

[00:09:19] And put it on YouTube. And I’m gonna drop the link so you can go watch the explainer video that I created with Notebook LLM, about this topic. It’s a little bit more in depth than what I talked about today, but it took me like three minutes. That’s the point. I did the research. The research didn’t take three minutes, but I did the research, I dropped it in and made this video.

[00:09:36] I put it on my YouTube. So for us as content creators. Therapist developing other income stream. This is like game changer for YouTube. People love watching these AI generated videos on YouTube. My dad, I was just at his house for eight weeks helping him get into assisted living. He just sits and watches like these AI generated videos about, you know, like Putin and Trump arguing.

[00:09:59] It’s all AI generated. It’s not even real, but he sits and watches these things and there’s like millions of views on these videos. So just think what real content. Could do for your social media game, for your YouTube game, and marketing for your private practice using something like Notebook, LLM and putting these videos up or even like content, and then maybe a little bit of yourself in the video too to explain it or in the middle, that sort of thing.

[00:10:23] Using something like Descript or Canva to just output this content, it’s just amazing to me. So that’s a little like marketing tip plus talking about this. This law that just went into effect on August 4th, 2025. Let me know what you think.

[00:10:38] Okay, talk to you guys later. Hope you have a great rest of the week. Bye.