Show HN: Couples therapy with AI and Therapists – all in the same chat room (therapytalk.io)
Here’s how it works: * Three participants in one chat room: You, your partner, and an AI therapist assistant. * Therapist oversight: Licensed therapists regularly review the chat, guide the AI, and update therapy plans to ensure real progress.
Why we built this: A user wrote to us:
"Hi
I want to use the website for couples therapy and go for the £80 a month sessions. I was curious to know if there will be a way or method so me and husband can use the chat at the same time and have our own labels such as names, so whenever we have a session the ai can distinguish which message is from who without having to specify it each and every time. I hope it makes sense.
Kind regards "
We build this feature in 2 days (awful lot of refactoring to accommodate additional user in the chat room) and we have this user as paid user.
While many people have used ChatGPT for individual therapy, this concept of couples therapy as a shared experience is entirely new.
8 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 33.2 ms ] threadThis is a form of personal attack and putting someone's LinkedIn profile.
If you think you are Sherlock - I must say go and read the comment twice - it reads loosely "It can be useful, didn't think about this" It is an honest comment. And I did share the launch with my friends/family/network today. Even we never planned this feature - it was the user who suggested this and we built this feature in two days.
Think about your actions before acting on it.
Ai maybe able to use some sort of formulaic structured therapy like CBT but will never be able to manage human intuition, projections, projective identification, phenomenology, transference, counter-transference and the all important interpersonal, intrapersonal relationship and quality free association and dream analysis as per Freud and Lacan.
You know that same CBT that claims to cure depression, eating disorders and others after 12 sessions. Yet all the research I have read comes to the same conclusion, that the symptoms return not long after a course of CBT finishes.
A CBT ptractitioner trains the client to be his own therapist by teaching him or her CBT, the ABC's of CBT so that the client can use that to help themselves. But people with depression for instance to do not have the capacity to continually monitor themselves when they are depressed every day. This is not therapy,
For me and most of my colleagues CBT is a brainwashing technique and to be honest CBT has never been allowed in any of the charitable organisations I worked for for many years.
CBT is cheap. CBT practitioners do not have to engage in any personal therapy, It takes just a year to train as a CBT therapist wheras I and my colleagues have spent the absolute minimum of 6 years training to Masters level and then a lifetime of continued professional development.
Here in the UK you can get a good couples therapist for £80 for the 50 minutes and you wont be filling any forms every week. nor risking the eventul and pretty much guaranteed intrusive hack and all your personal private sessions spread all over the internet
How does AI guarantee confidentiality? it cannot, Without confidentiality there is no trust which is fundamental to all good therapy
- You mentioned ALL research says symptoms return after 12 sessions + CBT being not effective: I will quote: "..on average, 40 months after the end of therapy. A long-term benefit was also seen in terms of remission of symptoms. In view of the fact that, at baseline, most CoBalT participants had severe and chronic depression, with physical or psychological comorbidity, or both, these results are noteworthy and have clear implications for clinical practice." from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
- Re: £80 for 50 minutes in person 1 session Vs £80 for month-long support
- We don't aim to replace human therapists or the profound human elements you mentioned—intuition, transference, and interpersonal relationships. Instead, we aim to augment and complement. Ideally, we would like to place ourselves as proving support between sessions.
- We're not saying this approach is for everyone or every situation, but we do believe it can help where traditional therapy might be inaccessible.
- For confidentiality, we have BAA / HIPPA compliant
I’d be happy to discuss further if you have additional thoughts.