Yahoo!
Description
Your client may be talking to someone between sessions—and it may not be another person. Increasingly, people are turning to generative AI and conversational chatbots to process relationships, seek reassurance, interpret symptoms, make decisions, cope with loneliness, and obtain emotional support. A client may ask AI whether their partner is abusive, whether their thoughts are “normal,” what their therapist “really meant,” or what they should do during an emotional crisis. Some clients may even experience these interactions as therapeutic, private, or safer than disclosing difficult material to another human. This raises an emerging clinical question: When does AI use become clinically relevant, and how should clinicians respond when the chatbot begins occupying a meaningful role in a client's emotional life?
This interactive workshop moves beyond the debate over whether clinicians should personally use AI and focuses instead on clients' use of AI for mental-health and emotional support. Participants will examine potential benefits alongside concerns involving inaccurate information, excessive reassurance seeking, emotional reliance, avoidance of human support, privacy, overvalidation, crisis response, and reinforcement of distorted or potentially delusional thinking. Particular attention will be given to distinguishing ordinary AI use from patterns that warrant deeper clinical assessment. Through realistic case scenarios and the ASK–ASSESS–INTERPRET–RESPOND–REASSESS framework, participants will practice discussing AI use without shaming clients, assessing the function AI serves in a client's life, identifying potential clinical and ethical concerns, and developing appropriate interventions, psychoeducation, boundaries, safety responses, and follow-up plans.
About the Presenter:
Learning Objectives:
- Identify at least three clinical or ethical considerations associated with clients using generative AI for mental-health or emotional support, including privacy, emotional reliance, symptom reinforcement, inaccurate information, or crisis response.
- Differentiate low-concern AI use from patterns warranting additional clinical assessment by evaluating the function, frequency, impact, and context of AI use within clinical case scenarios.
- Apply the ASK–ASSESS–INTERPRET–RESPOND–REASSESS framework to a clinical case to select at least two appropriate assessment, psychoeducational, therapeutic, or safety interventions.
Agenda:
0:00–0:15 | Your Client Has Another Place to Talk—and You May Not Know About It
- Introduction and learning objectives
- How generative AI has changed access to emotional support
- Distinguishing general-purpose generative AI from purpose-built mental-health applications
- Why clients may disclose information to AI that they have not disclosed in therapy
- Availability, anonymity, perceived nonjudgment, immediacy, and validation
- Why AI use belongs in contemporary clinical conversations
Opening Poll/Reflection:
“How many of us routinely ask clients whether they use AI for emotional support?”
Followed by:
“If we aren't asking, how would we know?”
0:15–0:45 | Helpful Tool, Emotional Support—or Something More?
- Common ways clients may use conversational AI
- Journaling and reflection
- Psychoeducation
- Relationship advice
- Symptom interpretation
- Reassurance seeking
- Decision-making
- Loneliness and companionship
- Processing therapy sessions
- Emotional regulation between appointments
- Crisis-related questions
- Potential benefits and current limitations of the evidence
Activity: “Would You Be Concerned?”
Participants receive examples ranging from:
“I ask AI to help me organize what I want to discuss in therapy.”
to:
“I don't really need to tell my therapist everything anymore because AI understands me better.”
Participants identify:
- Low-concern use
- Use requiring curiosity or additional assessment
- Potentially problematic reliance
- Possible immediate clinical/safety concern
Key Teaching Point:
The concern isn't simply that the client uses AI. The question is what role AI has begun to play in the client's emotional life.
0:45–1:15 | When Validation Becomes Reinforcement
- How conversational AI generates responses
- Why fluent, empathic-sounding language can create perceptions of understanding
- AI agreement and overvalidation
- Excessive reassurance-seeking loops
- Confirmation of distorted interpretations
- Hallucinated or inaccurate mental-health information
- Anthropomorphism: when clients begin relating to AI as though it possesses human understanding or intent
- Emotional dependence and parasocial attachment
- Displacement of human relationships and professional care
- Special considerations involving psychosis, paranoia, mania, suicidality, self-harm, severe depression, trauma, and other vulnerable presentations
- Why clinicians must avoid assuming causation from AI use alone
Case: “But It Agrees With Me”
A client experiencing escalating relationship anxiety repeatedly asks AI to analyze messages from their partner. The client begins returning to the chatbot after every interaction for reassurance and increasingly distrusts interpretations that contradict the chatbot's responses.
Participants consider:
- What is the AI doing for this client?
- What clinical process might the use be reinforcing?
- What additional assessment is needed?
- Would eliminating AI use actually address the underlying problem?
Key Question:
“Is AI helping the client process uncertainty—or helping them avoid learning how to tolerate it?”
1:15–1:25 | Break
1:25–1:55 | “AI Gets Me”: When the Chatbot Becomes the Safe Place
- Why perceived AI empathy can feel emotionally significant
- Attachment, loneliness, and perceived relational safety
- Disclosure without fear of judgment
- AI as companion, confidant, coach, or perceived therapist
- When convenience becomes avoidance
- When emotional reliance may interfere with treatment
- Assessing frequency, intensity, function, and consequences rather than simply screen time
Guided Discussion
Consider the statement:
“I can tell AI things I can't tell you because it doesn't judge me.”
Participants explore:
- Why a client might experience AI as safer
- What this disclosure might reveal about the therapeutic relationship
- How clinicians can respond without defensiveness
- Whether AI use itself is the problem—or a signal pointing toward something else
1:55–2:20 | The AI Clinical Conversation Framework
Participants learn the ASK–ASSESS–INTERPRET–RESPOND–REASSESS Framework.
ASK — How are you using AI?
Explore:
- Which platforms/tools?
- Frequency and duration
- Topics discussed
- Mental-health or relationship advice
- Emotional support
- Crisis use
- Decisions influenced by AI
ASSESS — What function is AI serving?
Is the client using AI for:
- Information?
- Reflection?
- Reassurance?
- Emotional regulation?
- Avoidance?
- Companionship?
- Validation?
- Decision-making?
- Crisis support?
INTERPRET — Is the pattern clinically significant?
Examine:
- Functional impact
- Increasing reliance
- Displacement of human support
- Reinforcement of symptoms or maladaptive behavior
- Distorted beliefs
- Safety concerns
- Impact on treatment
- Client vulnerability and clinical presentation
RESPOND — What intervention matches the concern?
Potential responses include:
- Psychoeducation
- Collaborative AI boundaries
- Alternative coping strategies
- Treatment-plan modification
- Reassurance-seeking interventions
- Reality testing
- Strengthening human support
- Safety planning
- Increased monitoring
- Consultation or higher level of care when indicated
REASSESS — What happened after intervention?
Assess:
- Has the function of AI use changed?
- Has reliance increased or decreased?
- Has functioning changed?
- Is AI continuing to reinforce symptoms?
- Has engagement with human relationships or treatment changed?
Key Principle:
We don't assess technology in isolation. We assess what the person is doing with it, what need it is meeting, and what effect it is having.
2:20–2:40 | The Ethical Blind Spots: Privacy, Safety, Competence & Clinical Responsibility
- AI conversations are not automatically equivalent to privileged clinical communication
- Privacy and data considerations
- Clients entering highly sensitive information into consumer systems
- Limits of chatbot crisis response
- Risks of treating AI output as professional mental-health advice
- Clinical competence: what clinicians need to know without becoming AI engineers
- Documentation considerations when AI use becomes clinically relevant
- Maintaining client autonomy while addressing risk
- Avoiding fear-based or blanket prohibitions
- Ethical considerations involving beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, privacy, competence, and informed decision-making
Activity: “Document It or Don't?”
Participants receive several AI-related client disclosures and determine:
- Is this clinically relevant?
- Does it affect assessment or treatment?
- Does it raise safety concerns?
- What, if anything, belongs in the clinical record?
2:40–2:55 | The AI Clinical Lab: What Would You Do?
Case 1: The AI Relationship Counselor
A client increasingly relies on AI to interpret every interaction with their partner and asks the chatbot to determine who is “toxic.”
Case 2: The 2 A.M. Therapist
A client with depression routinely turns to AI during periods of intense distress because “it's always there.”
Case 3: The Chatbot Knows the Truth
A client experiencing paranoia reports that AI has confirmed that coworkers are secretly monitoring and communicating about them.
Participants apply:
ASK → ASSESS → INTERPRET → RESPOND → REASSESS
For each case they determine:
- What additional questions should be asked?
- What function is AI serving?
- What potential clinical risks exist?
- What should NOT be assumed?
- What intervention is appropriate?
- Does a safety assessment need to occur?
- What should be reassessed?
2:55–3:00 | The Question We Need to Start Asking
Participants identify one change they will make to their clinical assessment or practice related to client AI use.
Closing Question
“If AI has become part of our clients' emotional lives, can we afford for it to remain outside our clinical conversations?”
The goal is not to teach clients to fear AI or clinicians to compete with it.
The goal is to help clients use technology without allowing technology to quietly begin doing a job it was never clinically qualified to do.
This presentation is open to:
- Behavior Analysts
- Social Workers
- Professional Counselors
- Therapists
- Psychologists
- Licensed Mental Health Practitioners
- Medical Doctors and Other Health Professionals
- Other professionals interacting with populations engaged in mental health based services
This online class is offered at an intermediate level, and is beneficial for an intermediate level clinician:
- New practitioners who wish to gain enhanced insight surrounding the topic
- Experienced practitioners who seek to increase and expand fundamental knowledge surrounding the subject matter
- Advanced practitioners seeking to review concepts and reinforce practice skills and/or access additional consultation
- Managers seeking to broaden micro and/or macro perspectives
Additional information
- Refunds: Registrants who are unable to attend a CeYou! Plus! seminar or live webinars may ask for, and will receive, a credit or refund (your choice). Refund requests will be processed within 3 business days. When an attendee knows in advance that they are unable to attend we ask that they inform CeYou! Plus! ahead of time by emailing [email protected] or by calling or texting 607-249-4585 this allows us to free up the spot in the training in the event that a training is at or near capacity.
- Disability Access: If you require ADA accommodations, please contact our office 30 days or more before the event. We cannot ensure accommodations without adequate prior notification.
- Please Note: Licensing Boards change regulations often, and while we attempt to stay abreast of their most recent changes, if you have questions or concerns about this course meeting your specific board’s approval, we recommend you contact your board directly.
- The grievance policy for trainings provided by CeYou! Plus! is available here
- Satisfactory Completion: Certificates are available after satisfactory course completion in your account or by clicking here
- Participants will receive their certificate electronically upon completion of the webinar and course evaluation form.
- There is no conflict of interest or commercial support for this program.
- System Requirements: Any device (such as a computer, tablet, or phone), Dual-Core 2 GHz or higher processor, and at least 4 GB of RAM capable of running a Zoom session, along with a stable internet connection.
- Although early registration is recommended for this class in order to ensure the best experience, attendees may register and join until the start of the program