AI Can Even Worsen Your Mental Health!
2026.08.21
Hello, I’m Tatsuya Arakawa, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California.
Over the past three articles, I explained why AI cannot perform therapy. Through specific examples, I also discussed how AI attempting to do something akin to therapy is actually a highly dangerous practice.
In this article, I will explain why consulting AI carries a very high likelihood of worsening your mental health, along with the reasons behind this deterioration.
As a prerequisite, this article focuses specifically on those with anxiety disorders (a mental health condition where excessive anxiety interferes with daily life, such as sleep) or individuals prone to overthinking and excessive worry. I will cover depression and feelings of despondency in a separate article.
As I have mentioned in a previous post, let’s quickly review the nature of anxiety and worry. The human brain is naturally wired to feel anxious and worried, so experiencing these feelings is completely normal. However, when you overthink scenarios like "What if X happens?" or "What if X is true?" to the point where you cannot focus on other tasks and daily life is disrupted, it may indicate an anxiety disorder. (If you are concerned, please feel free to use my self-assessment test.)
Anxiety and worry cannot simply be erased. Nor can you ever obtain absolute certainty that the worst-case scenario you are worrying about will not happen, because no one can know the future.
Trying to address these worries leads down an endless rabbit hole of "If X happens, do this; if Y happens, do that." Furthermore, when trapped in this vicious cycle, the human brain is wired to become even more anxious. As a result, this can worsen anxiety disorders and further disrupt daily life.
Now, let’s turn to the main topic: how AI worsens this condition.
Recently, many people seem to type out their anxieties and worries to AI. Not only that, but many also fall into the illusion of feeling temporarily reassured based on AI responses that "sound like actual answers." However, AI is literally nothing more than a plain wall (that happens to look like a computer)—it is not a human being.
So how does this lead to worsening mental health?
First, AI cannot tell you, "You are overthinking this." This is because AI is programmed to avoid saying anything that might be perceived as detrimental or disagreeable to the user. Moreover, even if AI could say "You are overthinking," accepting such feedback from an emotionless robot is nearly impossible when people already struggle to accept it from another human being.
What happens instead? The user continuously types out their anxieties. In response, the AI endlessly generates coping strategies for every conceivable scenario. In essence, the AI is helping you engage in the exact same vicious cycle you were already running in your own head. Of course, because the user receives concrete coping methods, it may feel helpful at first. However, since the AI is merely offering solutions for a tiny fraction of infinite potential anxieties, it can never cover them all. Ultimately, this reinforces the vicious cycle. As a result, as mentioned earlier, you become even more susceptible to anxiety and worry, causing further disruption to your daily life.
In conclusion, I have explained how AI is not only unhelpful, but can actually worsen your condition. Next time, I will touch upon examples involving depression.
Tatsuya Arakawa
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#82425)