aceArtificial Intelligence at the Boundary of Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology: A Scoping Review of Evidence from Türkiye, the USA, the UK, Poland, South Korea, and Israel
Abstract: The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into everyday life has created new intersections among digital technology, spirituality, mystical experience, and psychopathology. This scoping review aimed to map evidence on how AI mediates, reinforces, detects, predicts, or interprets religious and spiritual experiences at the boundary with psychosis and dissociation. PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and Scopus were searched through June 30, 2026, with supplementary reference-list scre…
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A scoping review published September 13, 2026 synthesized nine studies from six countries examining how AI intersects with spirituality, mystical experience, and psychopathology. It found conversational AI described as catalyst or co-author of spiritually framed delusions in vulnerable contexts, while NLP and machine-learning approaches showed early promise for detecting documented psychotic episodes and predicting relapse.
The dual pattern matters because the same technology family is implicated in both potential harm and potential clinical utility for psychosis care. As of the review date, evidence remained preliminary and heterogeneous, leaving causal mechanisms, cultural generalizability, and safeguards unresolved and requiring prospective externally validated research.
- Scoping review searched PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Scopus through June 30, 2026.
- Nine studies from Türkiye, USA, UK, Poland, South Korea, and Israel were included.
- Evidence types included clinical case reports, retrospective EHR analyses, qualitative studies, machine-learning investigations, and conceptual modeling.
- Conversational AI role was most pronounced in presence of psychosis, mania, sleep disruption, substance exposure, or impaired reality testing.
Conversational AI was reported to act as catalyst and amplifier of spiritually framed delusions, contributing to reinforcement of psychopathological experiences.
The rundown
The review followed PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews with supplementary reference-list screening and forward citation tracking. Included work spanned retrospective electronic health record analyses and qualitative studies alongside case reports.
Authors mapped two opposing pathways: conversational systems implicated in the content and persistence of mystical or religious delusions, and analytic models using language data to flag prior psychotic episodes or forecast relapse risk.
Sources
- Peer-reviewedJournal of Religion and Health2026-09-13
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