Founder and CEO of Notle
In Taiwan and China, young individuals are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for mental health assistance. These tools offer immediate, discreet, and cost-effective support, particularly appealing to younger generations facing limited access to professional services and societal stigma surrounding mental health.
In the pre-dawn hours, Ann Li's anxieties felt overwhelming. She'd recently been diagnosed with a serious health problem, and she just wanted to talk to someone about it. But she hadn't told her family, and all her friends were asleep. So instead, she turned to ChatGPT.
"It's easier to talk to AI during those nights," the 30-year-old Taiwanese woman tells the Guardian. This sentiment echoes across many young people in Taiwan and China who are finding solace in AI-powered mental health support.
For many users like Yang, a 25-year-old Guangdong resident, AI chatbots represent their first interaction with any form of mental health support. The combination of difficult access to mental health services and cultural barriers makes AI an attractive alternative.
"Telling the truth to real people feels impossible. Only recently have I begun to realise that I might actually need a proper diagnosis at a hospital. Going from being able to talk [to AI] to being able to talk to real people might sound simple and basic, but for the person I was before, it was unimaginable."
In Taiwan, the most popular chatbot is ChatGPT. In China, where western apps like ChatGPT are banned, people have turned to domestic offerings like Baidu's Ernie Bot, or the recently launched DeepSeek. They are all advancing at rapid speed, and are incorporating wellbeing and therapy into responses as demand increases.
User experiences vary. Li says ChatGPT gives her what she wants to hear, but that can also be predictable and uninsightful. She also misses the process of self discovery in counselling. "I think AI tends to give you the answer, the conclusion that you would get after you finish maybe two or three sessions of therapy," she says.
Dr. Yi-Hsien Su, a clinical psychologist at True Colors in Taiwan, acknowledges the potential benefits while highlighting important limitations. "AI mostly deals with text, but there are things we call non verbal input. When a patient comes in maybe they act differently to how they speak but we can recognise those inputs," Su explains.
While AI chatbots show promise in making mental health support more accessible, experts caution against relying solely on these tools. The Taiwan Counselling Psychology Association emphasizes that AI can be an "auxiliary tool" but cannot replace the complexity and interpersonal depth of professional psychological care.
The future may lie in finding the right balance between AI assistance and human care, where technology serves as a bridge to professional help rather than a substitute for it.
Tom is the Founder and CEO of Notle with a vision for transforming mental healthcare through AI. He founded Notle to bridge the gap between technology and effective mental health support.
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