AI and Anxiety

 At night, Ann Li's anxieties felt overwhelming. She had recently been diagnosed with a serious health problem, and she wanted to talk to someone about it. But she had not told her family and her friends were asleep. So she turned to ChatGPT.

"It's easier to talk to AI during those nights," said LI, 30, who lives in Taiwan.

In China, Yang, 25 of Guangdong, had never seen a mental health professional when she started talking to an AI chatbot this year. Yang said it was difficult to access mental health services and she could not confide  in family or friends. "Telling the truth to real people feels impossible," she said.

Anxiety
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)
Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

But she was soon talking to the chatbot "day and night". Li and Yang are among a growing number of Chinese speaking people turning to generative AI chatbots instead of professional human therapists.

Experts say there is huge potential for AI in the mental health sector but they are concerned about the risks when people turn to the technology, rather than human beings, for medical assistance.

There are few official statistics but mental health professionals in Taiwan and China report rising rates of patients consulting AI before, or instead of, seeing them...

Rates of mental illness are rising in Taiwan and China, particularly among younger people. Access to services is not keeping apace - appointments are hard to get and expensive. Chatbot users say AI saves them time and money, gives real answers, and is more discreet in a society where there is still stigma around mental health...

In Taiwan, the most popular chatbot is ChatGPT. In China, where western apps are banned, people have turned to domestic offerings such as Baidu's Ernie Bot, or the recently launched DeepSeek...

User experiences vary. Li said ChatGPT gives her what she wants to hear, but that can also be predictable and uninsightful...

Nabi Liu, 27, a Taiwanese woman based in London, has found the experience fulfilling. She said: "When you share something with a friend, they might not always relate. But ChatGPT responds seriously and immediately. I feel as if it's genuinely responding to me."...

The Taipei Counselling Psychologist Association said AI could be an "auxiliary tool" but couldn't replace professional assistance "let alone the intervention and treatment of psychologists in crisis situations".

(Helen Davidson, The Guardian, 2025)

Rates of mental illness are rising in Taiwan and China, particularly among younger people. Why is this? Why is it that rates of mental illness in the West and the East, in young people, are growing? What are the factors that are contributing to this rise? And why is this rise in mental illness so much more pronounced in the young rather than the old? Do the young not believe that being sad, or forgetful or being fidgety or unsettled is normal? Has there been too much protection of the young in the real world and too little protection in the online world?