AI for Mental Health Professionals

Executive Summary:​

AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude are already part of daily life for millions of people — and mental health professionals are no exception. This course shows you how to use AI well: safely, sensibly, and in ways that genuinely support your clinical work, without pretending it can replace your judgement.

Led by Dr William Davies, Head of Applied Clinical Psychology at the APT, this course draws on real clinical examples to show what AI is actually good for — and where it falls short.

What you'll learn

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Explain what AI can and can't safely do in a clinical context.
• Use AI to generate ideas and support your thinking on ongoing clinical cases.
• Use AI to access and summarize research on unfamiliar topics quickly.
• Use AI to summarize and explain long or dense documents.
• Recognize the confidentiality risks around AI, and what is and isn't safe to share.
• Recognize and counter the "echo chamber" effect, where AI agrees with you too readily.
• Compare the main AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot) and choose the right one for a given task.
   

What's covered

The course is built around five short talks:

• Why bother? — why AI is worth your time, using the calculator as a historical parallel: once resisted, now indispensable, freeing you up for more sophisticated work.
• What can we best use AI for? — the four main uses: support and ideas on clinical cases, accessing research, summarizing and explaining documents, and (with caution) drafting correspondence.
• The AI assistants available, and how to use them — the practical differences between the major tools, plus guidance on how to get better results by talking to AI conversationally rather than like a search engine.
• Case examples and live demonstration — real (anonymized) clinical scenarios, worked through live with AI, showing the kind of support it can offer.
• Cautions — confidentiality, accuracy, and staying in charge of clinical decisions.
   

Who it's for

Any mental health professional who is curious about AI, unsure how to start, or already using it and wanting to use it better. No technical background is needed.
 

Course resources

Alongside the course, you'll receive APT's guidelines for the use of AI by mental health professionals — practical, evolving guidance on what's safe to share with AI tools and what isn't.
 

Frequently asked questions

• Is it safe to discuss my clients with AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude?

  Only if the information is anonymized. Real names, NHS numbers, dates of birth, and any other identifying details should never be entered into standard AI tools, as these are not typically HIPAA- or GDPR-compliant for identifiable patient data. Anonymized case descriptions, hypothetical scenarios, and general clinical questions are fine.
   

• Does AI get things wrong?

  Yes, it can — but so can clinicians. The course looks at the evidence on this and, more importantly, on how clinicians working with AI tend to outperform either clinicians or AI working alone.
   

• Will AI just agree with me?

  It can do, in the same way an overly polite colleague might. The course covers two simple techniques to counter this and get more useful, challenging input.
   

• Do I need to know anything technical to take this course?

  No. If you can send a text message, you can use the AI tools covered here.
   

• Who teaches this course?

  Dr William Davies, Head of Applied Clinical Psychology at the APT. His courses have been studied by over 150,000 mental health professionals.

Bookings:

To access the course straightaway, click ‘add to cart’ to purchase by card or PayPal. (If you are ordering the course for somebody else, or a group, create an account and select ‘Bulk Purchase’ once you have proceeded to cart.)

Alternatively, click here to request an invoice (once the invoice has been paid or upon receipt of an official Purchase Order, we can then grant access to the course).