My patients use ChatGPT for therapy. Now I use it too | Sarah Dargouth
TL;DR
Clinical psychologist Sarah Darghouth writes that her patients already use ChatGPT or Claude as therapy companions: for relationship decisions, emotional framing and concrete suggestions for difficult conversations. She acknowledges the appeal: AI is immediate, structured and sometimes useful. One patient used AI advice to repair a fight with his wife; another ended a relationship after ChatGPT echoed her own gut feeling.
Nauti's Take
The strong part is Darghouth’s honesty: she does not defend human therapy from professional pride, but from her own ambivalence. That is where the piece becomes useful.
AI can deliver fast clarity, but fast clarity is not always care. If mental health support starts to look only like clean answers, we lose the part where people endure uncertainty, contradict themselves and still feel seen.
Briefingshow
The essay moves the debate from AI replacing therapy to AI already being in the room. That matters because people will not wait for perfect regulation when they need support, reassurance or a decision at night. The real question is not whether people will use these tools, but how therapists, platforms and users handle something that is useful, seductive and risky at the same time.
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