Public Statement

The use of AI in psychotherapy, and its impact on human psychology and mental health, is much discussed in the counseling field. As counselors, we are working to figure out the role of AI agents in our profession and how it will affect our work. AI has the potential to greatly impact how we generate knowledge, search for answers and relate to one another. 

In the therapy world, there is serious talk of training AI agents and chatbots to take the place of live human interaction. And, tools such as AI notetakers, schedulers, treatment planners and clinical report writers are already standard options in many electronic health record systems, including the one we use at IMF Counseling, SimplePractice.

We have had several questions from our clients and about our use of these products. That is why I want to be transparent about our policy on the use of AI in our practice. 

At IMF counseling we do not use AI products that interface with any client personal health information. We have not enabled AI in our electronic health systems. Furthermore, we do not use AI on our telehealth platforms (Google Meet and Zoom). It is prohibited by IMF Counseling policy for staff to enter any client information into AI systems. In addition, we do not use AI to generate any client or public facing material or interactions (phone calls, emails, texts, blog posts, web content, articles etc).

That is not to say there is not a role for AI at IMF Counseling. As a practice, we use Google Workspace to host our email and to get our work done. Google’s AI, Gemini, is integrated in the platform. And, we use it for such tasks as proofreading, researching and summarizing articles and other non-clinical tasks. Additionally, I anticipate some internal business practices will be augmented with AI agents.

If at any point our policy on the use of AI changes, we will be transparent about that, communicate clearly, and keep you informed. 

As a counseling practice we have talked about our own experiences with AI. And, as the adaptation of AI expands, it is understandable that people turn to these products to explore and try to address complex problems of living. We want to talk to you about how this technology has impacted you so we can make sense of it together.

Know that at IMF Counseling our passion is creating human relationships and strengthening bonds between people. We remain focused on that passion no matter what changes AI, or any other technology, brings.

Written by Jeremy Duke, LPC, Practice Owner