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Patient experience and psychologists' attitudes toward AI in psychological treatment: A topic-modeling study

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is entering psychological treatment, yet research remains dominated by symptom outcome trials, leaving two questions under-researched: how patients experience AI therapy tools, and how psychologists regard the AI applications they may be asked to adopt. We applied topic modeling (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to two Swedish-language corpora to contrast lived use with anticipated use. The first corpus comprised interview data from 11 patients who had engaged with a conversat…

By the Truvace desk2 min read1 sourcePeer-reviewedTRV-2026-1577· cite & verify
Patient experience and psychologists' attitudes toward AI in psychological treatment: A topic-modeling study
Conversation with a Sam Harris chatbot (51169748740) by Steve Jurvetson from Los Altos, USA. Public domain

In brief

Researchers applied topic modeling to two Swedish-language text collections: interviews with 11 patients who used a conversational AI assistant while being treated for social anxiety disorder, and 1551 open-ended answers from 808 psychologists and psychology trainees about two hypothetical AI uses.

The work matters because AI therapy research has focused mostly on symptom outcomes, leaving lived patient experience and clinician attitudes thinly studied. The patient group was small, so the findings can suggest hypotheses but do not establish how widely these views are held or whether the tools improve care.

Main points

  1. Patients used the AI to analyze social situations and to work through difficult feelings.
  2. Patients compared the AI throughout with a human therapist.
  3. Psychologists were enthusiastic about AI Virtual Patients as a clinical training tool.
  4. The Digital Twin between-session avatar prompted questions about authorship and responsibility.
  5. Concerns about relational loss and the balance of utility versus risk appeared in both psychologist scenarios.

The gain

Patients with social anxiety who used a conversational AI assistant valued its privacy and constant availability and said it helped them avoid the stigma of seeking help.

The rundown

The patient data came from 11 people who had engaged with a conversational AI assistant during treatment of social anxiety disorder. Their accounts covered using it to analyze social situations and handle difficult feelings, and they described it as private and always available.

The psychologist data came from survey respondents who included licensed psychologists, psychologists in clinical internship, and psychology master's students. They answered about a Digital Twin acting as a between-session avatar and AI Virtual Patients used in clinical training.

Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, the team chose a four-topic solution for each corpus based on interpretability and lexical distinctness. The comparison contrasts lived use by patients with anticipated use by psychologists.

Sources

  1. Peer-reviewedInternet Interventions2026-09-18

The debate