Artificial Intelligence in College Mental Health: Opportunities, Risks and Realities

Course overview

This 4.5-hour workshop introduces clinicians to generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its growing role in mental health care, with a focus on the college student population. The session opens with a plain-language foundation in what generative AI and large language models are, how these systems produce conversational responses, and why they have spread so quickly into everyday use. It then examines how college students and young adults are already turning to AI chatbots and mental health apps for support, and what this shift means for campus counseling centers and colleges and universities more generally. Participants will review the current peer-reviewed evidence on AI-based conversational agents, including demonstrated benefits for depression and anxiety as well as documented limitations, safety concerns, and ethical considerations. They will also review the ways in which professionals can use generative AI to improve their work. The workshop includes two guided live demonstrations, Elomia, a consumer-facing mental health chatbot, and Therapy Trainer, an AI-based clinical training platform, used to illustrate both client-facing and clinician-facing applications. Interactive small-group exercises give participants the opportunity to apply practical criteria for evaluating these tools and to consider how generative AI may responsibly fit into their own clinical and institutional contexts.