Seeking Late Night Life Lines: Experiences of Conversational AI Use in Mental Health Crisis
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866912795156545536 |
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| author | Ajmani, Leah Hope Ghosh, Arka Kaveladze, Benjamin Kim, Eugenia Namuduri, Keertana Nguyen, Theresa Okoli, Ebele Schleider, Jessica Ford, Denae Suh, Jina |
| author_facet | Ajmani, Leah Hope Ghosh, Arka Kaveladze, Benjamin Kim, Eugenia Namuduri, Keertana Nguyen, Theresa Okoli, Ebele Schleider, Jessica Ford, Denae Suh, Jina |
| contents | Online, people often recount their experiences turning to conversational AI agents (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) for mental health support -- going so far as to replace their therapists. These anecdotes suggest that AI agents have great potential to offer accessible mental health support. However, it's unclear how to meet this potential in extreme mental health crisis use cases. In this work, we explore the first-person experience of turning to a conversational AI agent in a mental health crisis. From a testimonial survey (n = 53) of lived experiences, we find that people use AI agents to fill the in-between spaces of human support; they turn to AI due to lack of access to mental health professionals or fears of burdening others. At the same time, our interviews with mental health experts (n = 16) suggest that human-human connection is an essential positive action when managing a mental health crisis. Using the stages of change model, our results suggest that a responsible AI crisis intervention is one that increases the user's preparedness to take a positive action while de-escalating any intended negative action. We discuss the implications of designing conversational AI agents as bridges towards human-human connection rather than ends in themselves. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_23859 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Seeking Late Night Life Lines: Experiences of Conversational AI Use in Mental Health Crisis Ajmani, Leah Hope Ghosh, Arka Kaveladze, Benjamin Kim, Eugenia Namuduri, Keertana Nguyen, Theresa Okoli, Ebele Schleider, Jessica Ford, Denae Suh, Jina Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence Computers and Society Online, people often recount their experiences turning to conversational AI agents (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) for mental health support -- going so far as to replace their therapists. These anecdotes suggest that AI agents have great potential to offer accessible mental health support. However, it's unclear how to meet this potential in extreme mental health crisis use cases. In this work, we explore the first-person experience of turning to a conversational AI agent in a mental health crisis. From a testimonial survey (n = 53) of lived experiences, we find that people use AI agents to fill the in-between spaces of human support; they turn to AI due to lack of access to mental health professionals or fears of burdening others. At the same time, our interviews with mental health experts (n = 16) suggest that human-human connection is an essential positive action when managing a mental health crisis. Using the stages of change model, our results suggest that a responsible AI crisis intervention is one that increases the user's preparedness to take a positive action while de-escalating any intended negative action. We discuss the implications of designing conversational AI agents as bridges towards human-human connection rather than ends in themselves. |
| title | Seeking Late Night Life Lines: Experiences of Conversational AI Use in Mental Health Crisis |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence Computers and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23859 |