How AI is entering our private sorrows and what that means for mental health
DR ASIF NISSAR
The world is racing to embrace artificial intelligence. From classrooms to courtrooms, from hospitals to homes, algorithms are quietly becoming our companions, advisors, and even therapists. In Kashmir too, young people are turning to AI-powered apps for everything from exam preparation to emotional support. Yet, while we debate jobs and privacy, we often ignore a quieter, more intimate question: what is AI doing to our minds?
The relationship between AI and mental health is complicated. On one hand, AI promises support in a region where access to quality mental healthcare is limited, and stigma is high. On the other hand, it risks deepening loneliness, dependence, and digital fatigue in a generation already struggling with conflict, unemployment, and uncertainty about the future. Between these two poles lies the real challenge: can we use AI to heal, without letting it hollow out our humanity?
AI as a bridge where systems fail
In places like Kashmir, mental health services are chronically overstretched. Long waiting times, lack of specialists, and social stigma often keep people away from clinics. For many, especially young people, it can feel easier to open up to a screen than to a stranger behind a desk.
Here, AI can act as a bridge. Chatbots that listen without judgment, apps that offer breathing exercises, and platforms that screen for anxiety or depression can give people an entry point into care. For a student in Baramulla afraid of being labelled “weak” for seeing a counsellor, or a housewife in Pulwama who silently battles panic attacks, an AI tool on a cheap smartphone can feel like a safe first step.
These tools can work 24/7, they do not get tired, and they do not raise an eyebrow at late-night confessions. Used well, they can help people name their pain, track their mood, learn coping strategies, and—crucially—encourage them to seek professional help when needed. In a system where human resources are scarce, AI can extend the first line of support.
The danger of replacing human connection
But while AI can support, it cannot substitute. There is a difference between being heard and being understood. However sophisticated a chatbot appears, it does not know what it feels like to live through curfews, communication blackouts, or the daily anxiety of uncertain futures. It can simulate empathy, but it cannot share experience.
There is a risk that, seduced by convenience, we begin to accept machine comfort in place of human connection. A teenager who spends hours confiding in an AI instead of speaking to family, friends, or a trusted teacher may find themselves more isolated, not less. Over time, the habit of turning inward to a device can weaken the very social bonds that protect mental health.
There is also the problem of shallow advice. AI tools often rely on generic responses: “take a walk”, “practise gratitude”, “breathe slowly”. These may help in mild distress, but they are not enough for trauma, grief, or serious mental illness. When complex suffering is met with canned lines, it can deepen a sense of being unseen and misunderstood.
Silent pressures and invisible surveillance
Another concern is how AI systems are trained and how they handle our most intimate data. When we pour our fears, breakdowns, and memories into an app, where does that information go? Who owns it? Who profits from it? In a region where people already feel watched, the idea of mental health data being stored, analysed, and possibly misused is not a distant fear.
There is also an invisible psychological pressure. The more AI tools nudge us toward “optimising” ourselves—our productivity, our sleep, our mood—the more we may feel that any sadness or slowness is a personal failure. When every emotion is reduced to a graph, and every day to a score, the human experience is flattened into metrics. Instead of accepting that pain is sometimes a natural response to harsh realities, we may start believing that we are broken because our numbers are not perfect.
Young minds at the front line
It is young people who are at the front line of this transformation. For a generation that already lives half its life online, AI can easily become yet another layer between them and the real world. The same tools that help them with homework can subtly shape their self-image, expectations, and coping mechanisms.
There is a risk of widening inequalities. Students from privileged backgrounds may use AI as one tool among many, supported by parents, counsellors, and strong schools. Those from poorer or more remote areas, with fewer human supports, may be left alone with their screens. When AI becomes the primary listener for the most vulnerable, any flaw in the system hits them hardest.
Yet it would be a mistake to condemn technology and retreat into nostalgia simply. Young Kashmiris are among the most creative users of digital tools. They use social media to express grief, poetry, humour, and resistance. They could also help shape AI that speaks their language, understands their context, and respects their dignity—if they are given a say.
A call for humane technology
The question, then, is not whether AI and mental health should mix. They already do. The real question is: on whose terms?
First, governments and health institutions must set clear rules for AI in mental health—on privacy, transparency, and accountability. No app should be allowed to harvest intimate data without informed consent or to make medical claims without evidence. People must know when they are talking to a machine, what it can and cannot do, and where to turn in a crisis.
Second, AI must be framed as a doorway, not a destination. Tools should be designed to connect users to human support—counsellors, helplines, community groups—rather than trapping them in endless, automated conversations. In Kashmir’s context, this could mean integrating AI tools with local mental health services, NGOs, and community initiatives.
Third, we need public conversation. Clerics, teachers, parents, and youth leaders should be part of a frank dialogue about how AI is entering our most private spaces. Just as we have learned to talk—slowly and painfully—about depression and anxiety, we must now talk about the role of machines in our emotional lives.
Finally, we must protect something AI can never replicate: human presence. A hand on the shoulder, shared silence, a cup of kahwa with a friend—these are not services, they are relationships. In a valley where people have endured decades of psychological strain, it is these small, human acts that often keep despair at bay.
AI will keep advancing, and it will come ever closer to our thoughts and feelings. The task before us is to ensure that, in easing our suffering, it does not erase the very qualities that make that suffering meaningful: our capacity to care, to listen, and to stand by one another. Mental health in the age of AI will depend less on what machines can do, and more on what we refuse to surrender of our shared humanity.
(The Author is an assistant professor working in the UAE and a columnist)