TheraBot

In March 2025, Dartmouth researchers published results from the first-ever clinical trial of an AI therapy chatbot, providing care comparable to “gold-standard cognitive therapy” and showing improvements across depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.

THE DETAILS:
Therabot was trained on evidence-based therapeutic practices with built-in safety protocols for crises, with oversight from mental health professionals.

Users engaged with the smartphone-based chatbot for an average of 6 hours over the 8-week trial, equivalent to about 8 traditional therapy sessions.

The AI achieved a 51% reduction in depression symptoms and 31% reduction in anxiety, with high reported levels of trust and therapeutic alliance.

Users also reported forming meaningful bonds with Therabot, communicating comfortably, and regularly engaging even without prompts.

These results are consistent with the WYSA Findings.

WHY IT MATTERS:
With both the stigma surrounding mental health care and the lack of access to quality care, AI assistance is a low cost, easy to scale solution and can be even more effective and trusting than a human therapist.

For our world of organisational behaviour, it shows the effectiveness of shifting human behaviour and creating meaningful bonds with an AI agent, that is well-formed, with the right knowledge base and guard rales.

This is some of the work that has inspired our development of an AI Agent to replace the traditional 'leader' role in organisations. Watch this space for more details.

Source
LINK to the original article: https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/03/first-therapy-chatbot-trial-yields-mental-health-benefits?_bhlid=188ef8b64336158e7c11155be8b1334957070054