ace[Therapeutic chatbots in psychiatry: Between relational simulation and the reshaping of care]
Introduction: The rapid development of conversational agents, or chatbots, in mental health is part of a broader transformation of digital psychiatry. Alongside advances in artificial intelligence, digital phenotyping, and ecological momentary interventions, therapeutic chatbots challenge not only the practical organisation of care but also its epistemological and relational foundations. This article aims to critically examine their place in psychiatry, particularly with regard to therapeutic alliance, agency, a…
Chatbots may produce modest short-term improvements in depressive and anxiety symptoms and boost engagement with digital interventions.
Chatbot effects appear less consistent over the medium term, and concerns remain about data confidentiality, reliability, clinical integration and human oversight.
The evidence is drawn from a narrative review, and the authors report that medium-term effects are less consistent and that confidentiality, reliability, integration and oversight concerns remain unresolved.
Evidence
- Peer-reviewedL'Encéphale2026-10-21
How should this claim be treated?
Truvace Impact Record TRV-2026-2208, v1: “[Therapeutic chatbots in psychiatry: Between relational simulation and the reshaping of care].” Truvace, 2026-10-23. /record/TRV-2026-2208 (accessed at citation time). sha256 77aa00be028c765c…
Calibration history
Every change to this record since certification, in the open. None yet — the reading has held since it entered the record.
Certified into the record
How to verify without trusting this page
Fetch the canonical text of any version from /api/record/TRV-2026-2208 and hash it yourself — for example shasum -a 256 on the saved canonical field. The result must equal content_hash, and each version’s text ends with prev:followed by the prior version’s hash (version 1 chains to 64 zeros). If a single character of any version had been altered since certification, the chain would not reproduce.