Assessing the Effectiveness of ChatGPT in Delivering Mental Health Support: A Qualitative Study [Letter]

Dear editor

We have perused the research article titled “Assessing the Effectiveness of ChatGPT in Delivering Mental Health Support: A Qualitative Study” by Fahad Alanezi.¹ This study’s strengths include the following: 1) Qualitatively assessing patients’ perspectives regarding using ChatGPT for mental health support; 2) The findings of the research indicated that ChatGPT possesses the capability to offer mental health assistance, particularly in psychoeducation and accurate information related to causes, symptoms, treatment options, assistance in relaxation techniques, stress reduction, and coping skills. 3) The study employed NVivo software to support data analysis to investigate specific information from the transcripts comprehensively.

Nevertheless, this study encountered certain constraints: 1) The utilisation of ChatGPT-3, despite the availability of ChatGPT-4. Subsequently, it is vital to obtain responses from respondents in the study of satisfaction and comprehension regarding the utilisation of ChatGPT through audiovisual content, design, and web page layout. 2) Each individual has distinct qualities and characteristics; thus, the algorithm’s potential bias and incompleteness might lead to inaccurate results and affect patient information; 3) The article did not specify suppose the ChatGPT employed was a model version of the ChatGPT language created explicitly for mental health research; 4) The article should provide further details regarding the HIPAA compliance of the ChatGPT deployed. This pertains to concerns surrounding patients’ privacy and the safety of their data from unauthorised access through hacking.

This study recommends several additional areas for further research: 1) Utilising ChatGPT 4.0, which offers numerous benefits compared to previous ChatGPT;² 2) It is essential to evaluate ChatGPT concerning a consultation with a licenced mental health professional. This information could determine whether ChatGPT should be the primary option or solely utilised to supplement clinical consultation. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a comparative study. 3) It is essential to consider the transparency and ethical utilisation of patient information and the potential bias in the data employed for the ChatGPT algorithm.³