Past event
The Therapy Room in 2030: AI, Human Roles and the Future of Mental Health Care
About the event
Imagine that it is 2030. Maya’s watch notices that she has slept badly, that her voice sounds different and that she has stopped taking her usual evening walk. She speaks to it on the way home. It remembers what happened before her last appointment, responds naturally and helps her put the week into words. With her permission, the system prepares a summary for her therapist: recurring themes, behavioural patterns, possible risk signals and a suggested focus for the next session. By the time Maya enters the therapy room, the technology has already influenced what was noticed, what was remembered, how the problem was described and what the practitioner sees first. So who is the client now? What does the practitioner already know? Whose interpretation enters the room? What can be delegated, and what should remain distinctly human? About the workshop The Therapy Room in 2030 is a participatory, research-informed futures workshop for psychologists, counsellors, psychotherapists, clinical social workers, practice leaders and others working in mental health and wellbeing. This is not a prediction exercise, a technical class or a product demonstration. We will use a plausible 2030 scenario to examine choices that professionals and organisations are beginning to face now. Together, we will explore a future in which AI is conversational, multimodal and continuously available; moves across phones, watches, glasses, homes and healthcare systems; develops longer-term memory; and appears increasingly confident, empathic and knowledgeable. We will ask what happens when clients use AI before, between and instead of professional care, and when practitioners receive AI-generated summaries, risk flags, recommendations and documentation. What we will explore How AI may change what the client brings into therapy and what the practitioner knows before a session begins How the roles of client, practitioner, organisation and technology may need to be renegotiated A 2030 reinterpretation…
