‘If AI is the only place people feel heard, that’s a societal problem’ — why one charity is pushing back on mental health chatbots

As we’ve covered before on TechRadar, a growing number of people are turning to AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini for something they were never really designed to do: provide mental health support.

According to new research from suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), around 1 in 4 people in the UK are now using AI tools for mental health advice. Among Gen Z, that figure jumps to 42%, suggesting a generation increasingly comfortable opening up to chatbots rather than people.

On one level, the appeal is obvious: AI is free, instant, and always available. There are no waiting lists, no awkward conversations, and importantly, no cost barrier, at least for the basic versions. But that convenience is masking a more complicated reality.

The affordability issue

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has already urged caution around using tech for mental health support, and CALM’s findings suggest many people are relying on tools that aren’t designed, regulated, or clinically validated for that role.

At the same time, there’s a deeper issue driving this shift: affordability.

CALM’s research found that Brits are set to spend £2.3 billion(1) on mental health apps in 2026, with some people making difficult trade-offs to access support. Around 23% say they would prioritise paying for these apps over heating their homes, while 28% would choose them over basic necessities like food. I found that shocking.

That’s the affordability gap that CALM is trying to address with its new CALMzone app, a free, expert-backed mental health toolkit designed to offer support without the risks or costs associated with many existing options. You can download it for iOS and Android.

Unlike AI chatbots, CALMzone doesn’t attempt to simulate human conversation or generate responses on the fly. Instead, it focuses on evidence-based techniques created by mental health professionals, offering structured support for issues like stress, anxiety, and low mood.

In the zone

The idea is to provide something that sits between doing nothing and needing crisis intervention – a space for what CALM describes as “daily maintenance” for mental health.

“We’re in the midst of a really concerning wave of increasing stigma when it comes to conversations around mental health,” said CALM CEO Simon Gunning. “It’s clear that people need somewhere to turn when things start to bubble over, and more immediate, targeted relief is needed”.

For some users, chatbots can feel like a safe, judgment-free space to open up. But they also come with well-documented limitations, including hallucinations, lack of clinical oversight, and the potential for misleading or inappropriate responses.

CALM’s approach is deliberately more cautious. To find out more and why it’s staying clear of AI for now, I caught up with CALM’s Head of Services, Wendy Robinson, to find out more about their unique approach.

GB: What does CALMzone deliberately not do that some AI-driven mental health tools currently do?

WR: The CALMzone app very intentionally doesn’t pretend to be a human being. The language is very personable and accessible, but when it comes to mental health, having a piece of tech imitating a conversation with a human being isn’t something we can ethically endorse.

There have been lots of stories in the media over the past couple of years that are particularly centred around AI chatbots, and we had the potential to include this functionality in CALMzone. For some people, AI chatbots can appear to be a useful resource, but the tech behind AI has evolved far too rapidly for any kind of regulation or clinical practice to safeguard it. In the field of suicide prevention, this is a risk we simply can’t afford to take.

We’ve taken the tried and tested ‘old school’ approach where everything within our app has been created by a human being — not just a human being, but an expert in their field — and we don’t currently enable machine learning to tailor the user’s experience. Instead, we monitor anonymous user behaviour and their in-app feedback on activities to tailor their experience and recommendations.

GB: Why was it important to keep CALMzone completely free, rather than offering a premium tier to fund it?

WR: Our guiding principle is that happiness is a right, not a privilege.

As a charity, we wanted to ensure there were no barriers to accessing this wonderful product. Its purpose is to help as many people as possible, not to make money.

The world is so challenging at the moment as people continue to struggle with the rising cost of living, and there’s a direct link between money worries and mental health – yet we’ve identified there’s a staggering cost behind mental wellness.

We were in a unique position to address this thanks to the very generous gift from Mind Ease. After eight years of investment and development, they donated the app in its entirety to our charity, which means users are getting a genuinely premium product at no cost.

We’ll be continuing to fundraise to ensure that we don’t ever have to charge users to access this life-saving digital support.

GB: Gen Z are clearly comfortable turning to AI for emotional support — what should governments, charities, and tech companies be learning from that behavior right now?

WR: Turning to AI chatbots for mental health support is indicative of a societal problem, not just an issue with our health infrastructure. Of course extensive waiting lists for mental health support are likely to be a significant reason that people are turning to other more immediate means — investment in these services as part of the NHS 10-year plan is welcome, although it’s a fraction of what the sector actually needs to turn this around — but it also points to a return to the stigma that we’ve worked so hard to remove.

As party politics rage, mental health is often made a scapegoat for a lot of the economic problems the UK is facing. 'Just the ups and downs of life' is becoming a slogan for people undermining the experiences of people struggling with anxiety and depression, and our concern is that this stigma is leading to young people, especially, becoming increasingly insular and isolated when it comes to their mental health.

So what can we learn from this? That people need immediate support, they need opportunities for human connection in seeking this, and we need to return to empathy and support rather than demonising people’s experiences.

GB: If current trends continue, what worries you most about how young people will seek mental health support in five years’ time?

WR: If current trends continue, our biggest concern is that young people lose the opportunity to experience being helped by another human being, and fear being ridiculed for speaking about this openly.

It’s clear that AI continues to have issues when it comes to hallucinations, so unless people are being hyper vigilant in vetting the information they’re presented with, there’s no guarantee of its efficacy or effectiveness. It may even lead to greater harm.

And the introduction of paid ads within ChatGPT opens us up to a whole new world of ethical considerations. How will they safeguard people confiding in LLMs about their mental health and prevent them from being marketed to as a result?

Our app won’t solve many of these issues, but we hope that encouraging everyone to regularly maintain good mental health by using it will prevent more people reaching a point of crisis, ensure they are accessing clinically-proven and reliable techniques, and go some way in addressing the growing wave of stigma.

(1) Data from Censuswide shows 41.5% of UK Respondents estimate they will spend on average £6.72 per month on mental health apps in 2026, multiplied by 12 months, equals £80.64 for the year. Extrapolation based on a UK population estimate of 69,487,000 per Office for National Statistics, released November 2025.

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