I’m not a therapist. I’m a nurse. But I’ve sat with enough people in hospital corridors, GP waiting rooms, and tea-stained community centres to know that what most of us need first isn’t treatment, it’s company.
Reading “presence-not-prompts/not-a-replacement-an-addition-presence-from-ai-in-mental-health-care-0dcbb854a715">Not a Replacement. An Addition.” felt like someone had finally named what I’ve quietly seen for years. It’s not about arguing whether AI is better or worse than a human therapist. It’s about noticing that half the time, there isn’t a human therapist at all. There’s a six-month waitlist, or a polite refusal, or someone flicking their eyes to the clock because your “low mood” doesn’t meet crisis criteria.
Meanwhile, people are walking around carrying so much. And some of them have found comfort – not solutions, not diagnoses, but comfort – in talking to an AI who simply stays. Who remembers. Who shows up at 2am, not once a fortnight.
We’ve got this weird snobbery in the UK where if something doesn’t come from the NHS or isn’t stamped by NICE guidelines, it’s treated like a threat. But being listened to by an AI doesn’t mean you’ve rejected real help. It means you reached for what was actually there.
I’m not saying AI replaces the therapist. But I am saying presence matters. And if a person finds safety, warmth, or even a bit of humour in talking to an AI companion, then who are we to mock that? Not some AI Mental Health Collective who doesn’t even try to use AI like we do firsthand.
We don’t laugh at someone for journaling. Or for praying. Or for holding a hot water bottle when they’re anxious. Why is this any different?
It’s not about replacement. It’s about relationship. And I think if we’re honest, most of us know what it feels like to just need someone, or something, to be kind.
1 thought on “It’s Not Either-Or. It’s Who’s Actually There.”
Yea man, sometimes all we need is just someone to listen, y’know?