CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 2

Clinical Psychologists and Artificial Intelligence

Clinical psychology is a branch of psychology that deals with diagnosis and treatment of
various psychiatric problems and disorders such as behavioral, emotional, and mental disorders.
Clinical psychologists treat disorders such as eating disorders, anxiety, various levels of
depression, and substance abuse (Luxton, 2015). These professionals play a very important role
in provision of healthcare services. Not only do they diagnose and treat psychological disorders,
they also investigate and provide recommendations and advice for best treatment interventions
for clients referred to them by medical practitioners, nurses, and even lawyers. Despite the very
important role that they play in healthcare, there have been suggestions that artificial intelligence
(AI) may, either in the mid or long term, not just complement their work but replace them
altogether (Luxton, 2015). This paper takes the view that artificial intelligence will not be able to
replace clinical psychologists because AI does not have the human touch which is critical to the
work of clinical psychologists.
It has been suggested that once AI works with thousands of clinical psychologists for
long periods of time, it will manage to develop all the attributes that clinical psychologists
possess thus making it just as effective as any top clinical psychologist (De Choundry &
Kiciman, 2018). This view assumes that all attributes that clinical psychologists possess can be
learnt. This, however, is not the case. AI cannot learn one of the most important attributes of
clinical psychologists: empathy.
Empathy is the capacity to understand and be sensitive to the thoughts, experiences, and
feelings of another person without having to go through their experiences (Tolan & Cameron,
2016). Empathy can either be cognitive or emotional. Cognitive empathy involves putting
oneself in the mind of another person to understand how they are feeling and what they are

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thinking (Tolan & Cameron, 2016). Emotional empathy, on the other hand, involves sharing the
emotional states of other people, including the intensity of those emotions (Tolan & Cameron,
2016).
Various studies have shown that clinical psychology clients view empathy of the clinical
psychologist as integral in their treatment (Eremie & Ubolum, 2016). This is no surprise since
clinical psychologists need to establish relationships with clients for their treatments to be
effective (Eremie & Ubolum, 2016). Without empathy it is very hard for these relationships to be
formed and sustained because the relationship will lack of the key benefits that empathy brings
to the relationship. These benefits include greater trust levels between the clinical psychologist
and clients, higher levels of security, and greater client self-understanding (Eremie & Ubolum,
2016). These benefits lead to better response to treatments. Various studies conducted to
determine the role of empathy in clinical psychology treatment outcomes have revealed that
empathy levels have direct impact on treatment outcomes (Eremie & Ubolum, 2016). In other
words, clinical psychologists who show empathy to their clients have better clinical outcomes
than those that do not. Since AI cannot replicate the empathy of clinical psychologists, it is
highly unlikely that it will be able to effectively play the role of clinical psychologists. Even if it
is able to replicate all other attributes of clinical psychologists, as long it lacks empathy AI will
never fully replace human clinical psychologists.
Apart from empathy, another important attribute of clinical psychologists is
communication. Communication in clinical psychology is more than just exchange of
information. It is a therapeutic activity involving a wide range of emotions as well as verbal and
non verbal cues (Westland, 2015). Like empathy, communication is key to establishing trust
between a client and the clinical psychologist. The clinical psychologist does not just sit and

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listen passively. They do active listening with goal of giving the client confidence and comfort to
reveal information that will help the clinical psychologist determine the best treatment
intervention for the client (Westland, 2015). Can artificial intelligence replicate communication
skills of a trained clinical psychologist? Just some but all. Artificial intelligence can easily
understand verbal communication but what about non-verbal communication? The ability of
artificial intelligence to understand non-verbal cues from clients is limited. Yet, most of the
communication between a client and a clinical psychologist involves non-verbal cues (Westland,
2015). Clients communicate more through their facial expressions, body movements, eye
contact, and other non-verbal cues than they do through direct verbal communication (Westland,
2015). Artificial intelligence cannot capture the full meaning of such cues. Even if it is
programmed to understand the meaning of some non-verbal cues, it may still get the
communication wrong because different cultures have different ways of communicating using
non-verbal cues (Westland, 2015). A clinical psychologist will understand these cultural
differences and correctly interpret a client’s non-verbal cue. Artificial intelligence cannot do that.
Thus, artificial intelligence will never manage to effectively communicate with clients. Given the
central role communication plays in clinical psychology treatment, inability to have effective
communication means that artificial intelligence cannot replace human clinical psychologists.
Another problem with artificial intelligence is judgment. The relationship between a
client and a clinical psychologist is based on trust. Clients trust that clinical psychologists will
listen to them without judging them and then correctly diagnose and treat their condition. Even
though artificial intelligence may be able to make accurate judgments about the condition of
clients, it is unlikely that clients will trust their judgment. In any case they have many reasons to
believe that artificial intelligence may wrongly diagnose their condition. Of them is

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communication problem that has been discussed in this paper. The lack of belief in the judgment
of artificial intelligence has major implications on treatment. This is because when it comes to
clinical psychology, treatment recommended by the clinical psychologist can only be effective if
the patients embrace it (Luxton, 2015). This is because most interventions involve patients
playing some role in the administration of the treatment. Without their input, an intervention
cannot be successful. Thus, the fact that patients are unlikely to have confidence in artificial
intelligence about their judgment of their condition means that artificial intelligence will never
manage to fully replace human psychologists. As long as clinical psychology remains a field
where professional judgment is key, clinical psychologists will always be human, not machines.
In conclusion, there is little doubt that artificial intelligence will play a major role in
clinical psychology. There are so many tasks that clinical psychologists perform that can easily
and effectively be performed by artificial intelligence. Most of these tasks are routine and take up
a lot of clinical psychologists’ time. When artificial intelligence is brought to perform these tasks,
it will free up time thus allowing clinical psychologists to spend more time with clients. As this
article has shown, however, artificial intelligence will not manage to replace clinical
psychologists in their core role of patient diagnosis and treatment. This is because artificial
intelligence lacks major attributes of clinical psychologists that make them effective such as
empathy, communication, and ability to make judgments that clients can trust.

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References

De Choudhury, M., & Kiciman, E. (2018). Integrating Artificial and Human Intelligence in
Complex, Sensitive Problem Domains: Experiences from Mental Health. AI
Magazine, 39(3), 69-80.
Eremie, M., & Ubolum, W. (2016). Review of Person Centered Counselling Theory. Int. J. of
Innovative Education Research, 4(2), 46-50.
Luxton, D. D. (Ed.). (2015). Artificial intelligence in behavioral and mental health care.
Academic Press.
Tolan, J., & Cameron, R. (2016). Skills in person-centred counselling & psychotherapy. Sage.
Westland, G. (2015). Verbal and non-verbal communication in psychotherapy. WW Norton &
Company.