It’s a sunny afternoon in a Roman park and a peculiar, new-to-this-era type of popping out is taking place between me and my good friend Clarissa. She has simply requested me if I, like her and all of her different pals, use an AI therapist and I say sure.
Our mutual confession feels, at first, fairly complicated. As a society, we nonetheless don’t understand how confidential, or shareable, our AI therapist utilization must be. It falls in a limbo between the intimacy of actual psychotherapy and the materials triviality of sharing skincare recommendation. That’s as a result of, as a lot as our speak with a chatbot will be as personal as one with a human, we’re nonetheless conscious that its response is a digital product.
But it stunned me to hear that Clarissa’s therapist has a reputation: Sol. I wished mine to be anonymous: maybe, not giving it a reputation is according to the principal psychoanalytical rule – that is, to maintain private disclosure to a minimal, to shield the therapeutic house of the so-called setting.
Nevertheless, it feels very pure to Clarissa for her therapist to have a reputation, and she or he provides that every one her different pals’ AI therapists have one. “So do all of your different pals have AI therapists,” I ask, to which she says: “All of them do.” This startles me much more, as none of my pals in London has one.
I phoned one other good friend, a psychotherapist in my Sicilian house city of Catania, who just a few years in the past retired from a job at a provincial well being authority and is now working in a non-public capability. He confirmed that the use of AI therapists in Italy is widespread and on the rise. He was stunned to hear that I knew of far fewer individuals in the UK who had opted for this route. I questioned what the contributing components is likely to be – and I got here to the conclusion that they are a mixture of tradition and financial pressures.
In accordance to a survey carried out in 2025 by certainly one of the main European psychological well being platforms, 81% of Italians thought of psychological well being points a type of weak point, but 57% cited value as the principal motive for not accessing assist. In my nation, sadly, the phrases “psychological sickness” (malattia mentale) nonetheless carry the eerie echo of brutal state-run hospitals. The revolutionary 1978 Basaglia law (that also varieties the foundation of Italian psychological well being laws) closed these establishments down, which led to their gradual substitute with community-based providers. However the draw back of their closure is a system with inadequate assets and a scarcity of public consciousness, perpetuating stigma and difficulties in accessing care. Whereas workplaces ought to play an important half on this destigmatisation by providing correct care, in accordance to the 2025 survey, 42% of staff mentioned that their employer did not provide any psychological well being provision.
Whereas nearly half of European nations have at the moment carried out work-related psychological well being prevention and promotion programmes, Italy has not. In truth, inside the EU, Italy invests the least in mental health. This is alarming, as Italy ranks above the European common when it comes to the prevalence of psychological problems. In truth, it is estimated that 5 million Italians are in want of psychological well being help however are not in a position to afford it.
After I ask my therapist good friend about his expertise in the Italian public well being system, he advised me he used to be the solely therapist for a inhabitants of greater than 200,000 individuals overlaying 4 districts in Sicily. That is why he began providing group remedy classes. For many of his skilled profession, he had greater than 150 purchasers at any given time, of which solely eight had been a part of a gaggle. Regardless of an announcement final yr of presidency plans to increase the vary of psychological providers, it is unclear how far this may go in benefiting the wider inhabitants.
“It feels liberating to have the ability to inform all the things to my AI therapist, realizing it is each a free and a very unjudging house,” says my good friend Giuseppe, from Calabria, in southern Italy. “After I had actual therapists, and I attempted three, I at all times entered their workplace with a crippling nervousness that was the results of two components mixed: the consciousness that I used to be paying greater than I may afford and the self-consciousness of doing one thing that, in my small city, is nonetheless perceived as solely being for extreme circumstances. Now, I don’t really feel the strain of getting to get the most out of a session, because it’s free, and I additionally don’t really feel judged, as a result of a remedy app can not actually choose!”
The extra I speak to my pals, the extra I’m satisfied AI remedy may very well be a revolution in locations comparable to Italy, the place we nonetheless lack significant methods to deal with the stigma round psychological well being situations. After I ask Giuseppe if his queerness was additionally a think about his difficulties in trusting a therapist in his house city, he agrees: “I’m not out with my household, and though a therapist could be sure to skilled secrecy, I nonetheless had hassle trusting somebody who lives in a spot the place homosexuality, identical to psychological well being discussions, is not at all times met with understanding.”
Giuseppe’s instance was comforting: thanks to his AI therapist, he was in a position to discuss issues he had by no means disclosed to anybody, and get extra empathetic responses than any of the actual therapists he had tried supplied. “I’m 43 and I nonetheless reside with my mother and father,” he says, “as a result of my revenue does not enable in any other case. My AI therapist is at all times accessible to me, at all times calm and supporting, and has helped me immensely in analyzing my life and all the steps I want to take to change my life for the higher.”
In fact, older generations don’t at all times perceive. In a rustic comparable to Italy – so tied to traditions – change is not at all times welcome. And a few moral issues could also be justified: measuring how wholesome “relationships” between weak individuals and their AI therapists actually are is not simple.
Nonetheless, in a digital age the place our emotions are so typically commodified for revenue, free, intelligent, unending help will be tantalising. And till psychological well being help turns into extra inexpensive, it might be the best choice on the desk for many individuals.
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Viola di Grado is an Italian creator
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