Published on in Vol 11 (2024)

Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/59479, first published .
The Opportunities and Risks of Large Language Models in Mental Health

The Opportunities and Risks of Large Language Models in Mental Health

The Opportunities and Risks of Large Language Models in Mental Health

Journals

  1. Mansoor M, Ansari K. Early Detection of Mental Health Crises through Artificial-Intelligence-Powered Social Media Analysis: A Prospective Observational Study. Journal of Personalized Medicine 2024;14(9):958 View
  2. Ma Y, Zeng Y, Liu T, Sun R, Xiao M, Wang J. Integrating large language models in mental health practice: a qualitative descriptive study based on expert interviews. Frontiers in Public Health 2024;12 View
  3. Ferrara E. Large Language Models for Wearable Sensor-Based Human Activity Recognition, Health Monitoring, and Behavioral Modeling: A Survey of Early Trends, Datasets, and Challenges. Sensors 2024;24(15):5045 View
  4. Van Meter A, Wheaton M, Cosgrove V, Andreadis K, Robertson R, Laroia G. The Goldilocks Zone: Finding the right balance of user and institutional risk for suicide-related generative AI queries. PLOS Digital Health 2025;4(1):e0000711 View
  5. Levkovich I. Evaluating Diagnostic Accuracy and Treatment Efficacy in Mental Health: A Comparative Analysis of Large Language Model Tools and Mental Health Professionals. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education 2025;15(1):9 View
  6. Miller T, Durlik I, Kostecka E, Łobodzińska A, Łazuga K, Kozlovska P. Leveraging Large Language Models for Enhancing Safety in Maritime Operations. Applied Sciences 2025;15(3):1666 View
  7. A. Rutter L, Edinger A, Lorenzo-Luaces L, ten Thij M, Valdez D, Bollen J. Anxiety and Depression are Associated with More Distorted Thinking on Social Media: A Longitudinal Multi-Method Study. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2025;49(4):712 View
  8. Creswell Báez J, Victor B, Dysart C, Goldkind L. “I Don’t Understand It, but Okay”: An Empirical Study of Mental Health Practitioners’ Readiness to Use Large Language Models. Journal of Technology in Human Services 2025;43(2):142 View
  9. Kirkeby-Hinrup A, Stenseke J. The psychology of LLM interactions: the uncanny valley and other minds. Journal of Psychology and AI 2025;1(1) View
  10. Bunge E, Desage C. A Framework for Evaluating Mental Health Artificial Intelligence-based Conversational Agents. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science 2025 View
  11. Jin Y, Liu J, Li P, Wang B, Yan Y, Zhang H, Ni C, Wang J, Li Y, Bu Y, Wang Y. The Applications of Large Language Models in Mental Health: Scoping Review. Journal of Medical Internet Research 2025;27:e69284 View
  12. Torous J, Linardon J, Goldberg S, Sun S, Bell I, Nicholas J, Hassan L, Hua Y, Milton A, Firth J. The evolving field of digital mental health: current evidence and implementation issues for smartphone apps, generative artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. World Psychiatry 2025;24(2):156 View
  13. Swinger N, Baseman C, Ryu M, Abdullah S, Wiese C, Sherrill A, Arriaga R. There's No "I" in TEAMMAIT: Impacts of Domain and Expertise on Trust in AI Teammates for Mental Health Work. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2025;9(2):1 View
  14. Scholich T, Barr M, Wiltsey Stirman S, Raj S. A Comparison of Responses from Human Therapists and Large Language Model–Based Chatbots to Assess Therapeutic Communication: Mixed Methods Study. JMIR Mental Health 2025;12:e69709 View
  15. Ni Y, Jia F. A Scoping Review of AI-Driven Digital Interventions in Mental Health Care: Mapping Applications Across Screening, Support, Monitoring, Prevention, and Clinical Education. Healthcare 2025;13(10):1205 View
  16. Kim M, Hwang G, Chang J, Chang S, Roh H, Park R. Performance of Open-Source Large Language Models in Psychiatry: Usability Study Through Comparative Analysis of Non-English Records and English Translations. Journal of Medical Internet Research 2025;27:e69857 View
  17. Su H, Sun Y, Li R, Zhang A, Yang Y, Xiao F, Duan Z, Chen J, Hu Q, Yang T, Xu B, Zhang Q, Zhao J, Li Y, Li H. Large Language Models in Medical Diagnostics: Scoping Review With Bibliometric Analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research 2025;27:e72062 View
  18. Linardon J, Messer M, Anderson C, Liu C, McClure Z, Jarman H, Goldberg S, Torous J. Role of large language models in mental health research: an international survey of researchers’ practices and perspectives. BMJ Mental Health 2025;28(1):e301787 View
  19. Gorelik A, Radin A, Bogdan R, Stamatis C. Improving Mental Health Care Access with Technology: Addressing the Screening-to-Referral Bottleneck. NEJM AI 2025;2(7) View
  20. Chow J, Li K. Large Language Models in Medical Chatbots: Opportunities, Challenges, and the Need to Address AI Risks. Information 2025;16(7):549 View
  21. Gu J, Liu J, Zeng L, Yu Y, Qiu Y, Yue Y, Tong M, Yang F, Zhang X. Comparing ChatGPT and validated questionnaires in assessing loneliness and online social support among college students: a cross-sectional study. Scientific Reports 2025;15(1) View
  22. Sobowale K, Humphrey D. Evaluating the Quality of Psychotherapy Conversational Agents: Framework Development and Cross-Sectional Study. JMIR Formative Research 2025;9:e65605 View
  23. Park J, Zhou A, Chu S, Lee S. Integrating generative AI into psychoeducation: Ten strategies across organizational, scholarly, and individual domains. Theory Into Practice 2025;64(4):465 View
  24. Bucci S, Zhang X, Di Basilio D, Richardson C, Berry N, Berry K, Edge D, Haddock G. “It’s like having a friend in your pocket.” the service user experience of the Actissist digital health intervention for early psychosis: a qualitative study. BMC Psychiatry 2025;25(1) View
  25. Garcia B, Chua E, Brah H. The problem of atypicality in LLM-powered psychiatry. Journal of Medical Ethics 2025:jme-2025-110972 View
  26. Allen J, Earp B, Wilkinson D. AI-assisted consent in paediatric medicine: ethical implications of using large language models to support decision-making. Journal of Medical Ethics 2025:jme-2024-110624 View
  27. Xu Y, Fang Z, Lin W, Jiang Y, Jin W, Balaji P, Wang J, Xia T. Evaluation of large language models on mental health: from knowledge test to illness diagnosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry 2025;16 View
  28. Chen I, Alsentzer E. Redefining Bias Audits for Generative AI in Health Care. NEJM AI 2025;2(9) View
  29. Cazares M, Miño-Ayala J, Ortiz I, Andrade R. Designing Trustworthy AI Systems for PTSD Follow-Up. Technologies 2025;13(8):361 View
  30. Bucher A, Egger S, Vashkite I, Wu W, Schwabe G. “It’s Not Only Attention We Need”: Systematic Review of Large Language Models in Mental Health Care. JMIR Mental Health 2025;12:e78410 View
  31. McBain R, Cantor J, Zhang L, Baker O, Zhang F, Burnett A, Kofner A, Breslau J, Stein B, Mehrotra A, Yu H. Evaluation of Alignment Between Large Language Models and Expert Clinicians in Suicide Risk Assessment. Psychiatric Services 2025;76(11):944 View
  32. Tan K, Cervin M, Leman P, Nielsen K, Kumar P, Medvedev O. AI meets psychology: an exploratory study of large language models’ competence in psychotherapy contexts. Journal of Psychology and AI 2025;1(1) View
  33. Lee S, Rheu M, Zhuang J. The ChatGPT Effect: Investigating Shifting Discourse Patterns, Sentiment, and Benefit–Challenge Framing in AI Mental Health Support. Behavioral Sciences 2025;15(9):1172 View
  34. Vowels L, Marcantonio T. Exploring How Large Language Models Understand Sexual Communication in Hypothetical Sexual Situations. The Journal of Sex Research 2025:1 View
  35. Yankouskaya A, Babiker A, Rizvi S, Alshakhsi S, Liebherr M, Ali R. LLM-D12: A Dual-Dimensional Scale of Instrumental and Relational Dependencies on Large Language Models. ACM Transactions on the Web 2025 View
  36. Kilinc M, Gurcan F, Soylu A. LLM-Based Generative AI in Medicine: Analysis of Current Research Trends With BERTopic. IEEE Access 2025;13:157026 View
  37. Hua Y, Siddals S, Ma Z, Galatzer‐Levy I, Xia W, Hau C, Na H, Flathers M, Linardon J, Ayubcha C, Torous J. Charting the evolution of artificial intelligence mental health chatbots from rule‐based systems to large language models: a systematic review. World Psychiatry 2025;24(3):383 View
  38. You C, Ghosh R, Vilaro M, Venkatakrishnan R, Venkatakrishnan R, Maxim A, Peng X, Tamboli D, Lok B. Alter egos alter engagement: perspective-taking can improve disclosure quantity and depth to AI chatbots in promoting mental wellbeing. Frontiers in Digital Health 2025;7 View
  39. Boit S, Patil R. A Prompt Engineering Framework for Large Language Model–Based Mental Health Chatbots: Conceptual Framework. JMIR Mental Health 2025;12:e75078 View
  40. Collins A, Lekkas D, Heinz M, Annor J, Ruan F, Jacobson N. ChatGPT as therapy: A qualitative and network-based thematic profiling of shared experiences, attitudes, and beliefs on Reddit. Journal of Psychiatric Research 2025;191:277 View
  41. Cao P, Zhang Y, Zhang C, Chen W, Liu Y, Xu S, Xu M, Jin W, Xu J, Wang D, Wang W, Wang X, Wang W, Ren Y, Zhao J, Li R, Liu K. A Multimodal Depression Consultation Dataset of Speech and Text with HAMD-17 Assessments. Scientific Data 2025;12(1) View
  42. Zhang R, Meng H, Neubronner M, Lee Y. Computational and ethical considerations for using large language models in psychotherapy. Nature Computational Science 2025;5(10):854 View
  43. Lin C, Cheng C, Xia Y, Wang R, Zhang L, Han L, Hai D, Dai C, Dai T, Cao L, Zhu X, Chen H, Zeng L, Ren C, Yang D, Wang Y, Zhang M, Mo Z, Chen Y, Shuai J, Yu R, Peng Y. Internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia: The future of insomnia treatment with large language models. Sleep Medicine: X 2025;10:100157 View
  44. Ben-Zeev D. To AI, or Not to AI: That Is Not the Question. Psychiatric Services 2025 View
  45. Wang Y, Li M, Wang S, Fang Y, Sun J, Lu L, Yan W. Large language models in clinical psychiatry: Applications and optimization strategies. World Journal of Psychiatry 2025;15(11) View
  46. McBain R, Bozick R, Diliberti M, Zhang L, Zhang F, Burnett A, Kofner A, Rader B, Breslau J, Stein B, Mehrotra A, Pines L, Cantor J, Yu H. Use of Generative AI for Mental Health Advice Among US Adolescents and Young Adults. JAMA Network Open 2025;8(11):e2542281 View
  47. Ghorbian M, Ghobaei-Arani M. Large language models for mental health diagnosis and treatment: a survey. Artificial Intelligence Review 2025;59(1) View
  48. Brady O, Nulty P, Zhang L, Ward T, McGovern D. Dual-process theory and decision-making in large language models. Nature Reviews Psychology 2025 View
  49. Romeo V. Immersive Virtual Reality Environments as Psychoanalytic Settings: A Conceptual Framework for Modeling Unconscious Processes Through IoT-Based Bioengineering Interfaces. Bioengineering 2025;12(11):1257 View
  50. Gazit L. AI as a Group Mediator: A Conceptual Framework for Triadic Chat-Based Therapy. International Journal of Systemic Therapy 2025:1 View
  51. Liu L, Franklin R, Cheong J, Cong T, Byun J, Oh A, Torous J. H3-MOSAIC: multimodal generative AI for semantic place detection from high-frequency GPS on H3 grids in mental health geomatics. International Journal of Health Geographics 2025;24(1) View
  52. Djordjevic D, Vasan N. The Stanford Brainstorm Social Media Safety Plan (SMS): Introducing a New Tool (Preprint). JMIR Mental Health 2025 View
  53. Hudon A, Stip E. Delusional Experiences Emerging From AI Chatbot Interactions or “AI Psychosis”. JMIR Mental Health 2025;12:e85799 View
  54. Xu S, Yan Y, Ding Y, Li F, Zhang S, Tang H, Luo C, Li Y, Liu H, Mei Y, Gu W, Qiu H, Wang Y, Qiu J, Yang T, Wang Z, Zhang Q, Geng H, Han Y, Shao J, Opel N, Bing L, Zhao M, Xu Y, Jiang X, Chen J. Identifying psychiatric manifestations in outpatients with depression and anxiety: a large language model-based approach. npj Mental Health Research 2025;4(1) View
  55. Carini A, Taietta E, Stella M. Exploring the Link Between the Emotional Recall Task and Mental Health in Humans and LLMs. Information 2025;16(12):1057 View

Books/Policy Documents

  1. Shi Y. Advanced Intelligent Computing Technology and Applications. View
  2. Chatterjee S, Dindarian A, Rengaraju U. Revolutionizing Youth Mental Health with Ethical AI. View
  3. Chatterjee S, Dindarian A, Rengaraju U. Revolutionizing Youth Mental Health with Ethical AI. View
  4. Gerdes A. Ethical and Social Impacts of Information and Communication Technology. View

Conference Proceedings

  1. Lim M, Ku J, Oh G, Lee S, Kang Y, Kim J. 2024 15th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence (ICTC). A Family-History Based Conversational AI System Using LLM View
  2. Meng H. Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Leveraging Human-AI Partnership Approach to Unravel Human Psychological Constructs View
  3. Skeggs A, Mehta A, Yap V, Ibrahim S, Rhodes C, Gross J, Munson S, Klasnja P, Orben A, Slovak P. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Micro-narratives: A Scalable Method for Eliciting Stories of People’s Lived Experience View
  4. Sachdeva P, van Nuenen T. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. Normative Evaluation of Large Language Models with Everyday Moral Dilemmas View
  5. Elwahsh S, Stern N, Singh A, Ayobi A. Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces. Linguistic Diversity and Mental Well-Being: Co-Designing Custom AI Chatbots with Multilingual Mothers View
  6. Ge Z, Hu N, Li D, Wang Y, Qi S, Xu Y, Shi H, Zhang J. 2025 IEEE 41st International Conference on Data Engineering Workshops (ICDEW). A Survey of Large Language Models in Mental Health Disorder Detection on Social Media View
  7. Schuller K, Alghamdi S, Lee J, Song Y. 2025 IEEE/ACIS 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications (SERA). Improving mental health literacy using AI: A Scoping Review View
  8. Steenstra I, Bickmore T. Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents. A Risk Ontology for Evaluating AI-Powered Psychotherapy Virtual Agents View
  9. Joshi Y, Gupta N, Mishra D. 2025 World Skills Conference on Universal Data Analytics and Sciences (WorldSUAS). The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health Support: Present Implementations, Innovative Tools, and Research Horizons View
  10. Kian M, Zong M, Fischer K, Velentza A, Singh A, Shrestha K, Sang P, Upadhyay S, Browning W, Faruki M, Arnold S, Krishnamachari B, Matarić M. 2025 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). Engagement and Disclosures in LLM-Powered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Exercises: A Factorial Design Comparing the Influence of a Robot vs. Chatbot Over Time View
  11. Wang X, Perez A, Parapar J, Crestani F. Proceedings of the 34th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. TalkDep: Clinically Grounded LLM Personas for Conversation-Centric Depression Screening View