The Ethics of AI as Therapists

Earn 1 hour of continuing education by joining OT Potential after taking this course.

Course Description

The landscape of healthcare has been changed forever with the introduction of AI.

Already, 1 in 3 adults are turning to chatbots to ask health related questions. For younger adults under age 30, the shift is even faster—nearly 30% now use AI specifically for mental health and emotional support.

Amid these broad changes is a specific question for us as therapists: 

What happens when the chatbot starts to play the role of therapist?

This service is already being offered by tools – like Abby – “Your AI Therapist.”

This raises so many questions for us- and at the heart of the questions is a moral and ethical one of turning our trust from individual humans to LLMs. Today, we’ll walk through the broad ethical considerations with Megan Cornish is a licensed clinical social worker turned strategist who builds and scales ethical mental health brands.

We’ll discuss the ethics of this shift- and what our ethical duty is to respond, particularly in our day to day sessions with clients, who are likely beginning to use AI.

Not to be dramatic: but this is the conversation of our generation. 

This course was designed to help you meet your ethics requirements for your CE.

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OT Potential courses are presented as live webinars, then released on-demand video and audio via the OT Potential Podcast. Attendance in the live webinar will be indicated on your certificate. Learn more about how our courses help meet live webinar requirements, and OT CEU requirements overall.

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Learning Objectives

1. You will be able to recognize how the ethical considerations of AI therapists may intersect with your own therapy sessions. 
2. You will be able to identify how your own occupation-based therapy delivery may be shaped in the future by the presence of AI therapists.

Agenda

Intro (5 minutes)

Discussion (40 minutes)

1. Tell me your story of this bio line, how did you make this transition: I’m a licensed clinical social worker turned strategist who builds and scales ethical mental health brands
2. What is your overall mood right now related to AI and therapy? 
3. Let’s begin by talking about disconnect you see between tech companies wanting to scale and the work provided by therapist.
4. I’ve personally been concerned that AI to support therapists is a bunch of lip-service–and what people are building is aimed at replacing therapists- Is this founded? 
5. I want to linger on the ethical concerns outlined in this study. What jumped out to you in this study? Here’s the areas fo ethic concerns:
   • Lack of Contextual Adaptation
   • Poor Therapeutic Collaboration
   • Deceptive Empathy
   • Unfair Discrimination
   • Lack of Safety and Crisis Management. 
6. Individual therapists commit ethical violations as well. But, how is it different when chatbots do?
7. What is our ethical duty as individual therapists to respond to AI as chatbots? 
8. What are our options for protecting our patients and the integrity of healthcare delivery? 
9. What is your big existential dread for AI, and what is your big existential hope?

Live Q&A (10 min)

Closing (5 min)

Supporting Research and Journal Articles

• Ethical decision-making for AI in mental health: the Integrated Ethical Approach for Computational Psychiatry (IEACP) framework
• Generative AI Mental Health Chatbots as Therapeutic Tools: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Their Role in Reducing Mental Health Issues
• AI and Ethics in Mental Health: Personal Reflections on the Future of Psychiatry

Target Audience/Educational Level

Our target audience is occupational therapy practitioners who are looking to learn about starting an OT practice. The educational level is introductory.

Financial and Non-financial Disclosures

It is the policy of OT Potential to disclose any financial and non-financial interest the provider or instructor may have in a product or service mentioned during an activity. This is to ensure that the audience is made aware of any bias of the speaker.

We here at OT Potential have no financial stake in this topic.

Speakers

Megan Cornish, LICSW

Megan has a Master’s degree in social work from the University of Washington, and is a licensed clinical social worker with hands-on experience in clinical mental health. For years, Megan assumed she’d practice as a social worker until retirement.

She planned on supporting her creative, entrepreneurial drive (and financial obligations) with her writing side hustle, but ended up devoting most of her time to one-on-one clinical work.

Then… her career path changed. As a result of a cross-country move and new family obligations, Megan was forced to walk away from her social work dream job — but vowed not to walk away from her commitment to mental health.

And with the mental health industry’s radical changes, she had the chance to improve mental health outcomes on a larger scale with her unique combo of mental health and communication skills.

Over the past several years as a marketer for mental health companies, Megan has had the honor of working with some of the world’s most exciting mental health startups. She has joined the team at Therapists in Tech, a non-profit organization that helps center clinician voices in the mental health tech space, and also launched a podcast, Hot Commodity: the collision of mental health and tech. In it, Megan examines the most pressing mental health topics with clinicians, leaders, and stakeholders.

Sarah Lyon, OTR/L

Sarah’s passion is helping fellow OT practitioners translate evidence into daily practice. Sarah earned her BA in religion from St. Olaf College, then earned her master’s degree in occupational therapy from New York University in 2011.

Since then, she’s worked in numerous facilities, including a critical access hospital, an acute trauma hospital, and a state inpatient psychiatric hospital. Sarah is the founder/owner of OT Potential. Read more about OT Potential here.

This course was designed to meet your continuing education requirements

We designed the courses in the Club to meet the requirements for “online” and “independent/self-study” courses. To verify the requirements from your specific state (within the US), check out our post, OT Continuing Education Requirements. If you are outside of the United States and have questions, please contact us.

We are proud to be an AOTA Approved Provider and to meet the requirements for your NBCOT renewal.

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