The past few months have been slow on the AI-Therapy blog, but rest assured that we’ve been very busy. We have reached some major milestones.

Science Magazine

In July we were featured in a Science Magazine special issue on Artificial Intelligence. The article is called “The synthetic therapist”, and gives an overview of the current state of the art for administering evidence based clinical psychology via computerized therapy. The article describes an Overcome Social Anxiety user’s experience with the  program:

[…] the program assumed the role of full-fledged therapist, guiding her through a regimen of real-world exercises for taking control. It sounds like a typical success story for clinical psychology. But no human psychologist was involved.

There is an open access podcast where the author, John Bohannon, shares his thoughts on the field (a link can be found on this page). The article itself is behind a paywall, but can be downloaded here for those with institutional access (note the article refers to AI-Therapy as CBTpsych, which is its original name).

Granville Youth Health Centre, Vancouver Canada

AI-Therapy is excited to announce that we have received a grant from St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation’s Enhanced Patient Care Fund. The Inner City Youth Program provides care for at-risk youth in Vancouver’s inner-city area. We will be working with ICY to develop an online social anxiety treatment specifically targeted towards this population. Stay tuned for more updates on this.