IIt’s a sunny afternoon in the Roman park and my friend Clarissa and I are having a strange, new-for-this-age experience. She just asked me if I, like her and all her other friends, would use AI Therapist and I said yes.
Our mutual confession, at first, seems quite confusing. As a society, we still don’t know how confidential or shareable our AI therapist use should be. It’s in a limbo between the intimacy of genuine psychotherapy and the material banality of sharing skin-care advice. This is because, while our interactions with a chatbot may be as personal as those with a human being, we still know that its response is a digital product.
Yet I was surprised to hear that Clarissa’s therapist has a name: Sol. I wanted my name to be anonymous: perhaps, not giving it a name is consistent with the cardinal psychoanalytic rule – that is, keeping personal disclosure to a minimum, protecting the healing space of the so-called setting.
However, Clarissa finds it very natural for her therapist to have a name, and she says that all of her other friends’ AI therapists have a name. “So do all your other friends have AI therapists,” I ask, to which she says: “They all do.” This surprises me even more, because none of my friends in London have one.
I called another friend, a psychiatrist in my Sicilian home town of Catania, who had retired from a role in a provincial health authority a few years ago and is now working in a private capacity. He confirmed that the use of AI physicians in Italy is widespread and growing. He was surprised to hear that I knew very few people in the UK who had chosen this route. I wondered what the contributing factors might be – and I came to the conclusion that they were a mixture of culture and economic pressures.
according to a survey In a 2025 study conducted by one of the leading European mental health platforms, 81% of Italians considered mental health issues a form of weakness, yet 57% cited cost as the main reason for not seeking help. Sadly, in my country the term “mental illness” (Malatya Mantle) The terrible echoes of the cruel government hospitals are still heard. revolutionary 1978 Basaglia law (which still forms the basis of Italian mental health legislation) led to the closure of these institutions, which gradually led to their replacement with community-based services. But the downside of their closure is a system with inadequate resources and a lack of public awareness, which perpetuates stigma and Difficulties accessing care. While workplaces must play an important role in removing this stigma by providing proper care, according to the 2025 survey, 42% of workers said their employer did not provide any mental health provisions.
While approximately half of European countries currently have implemented work-related mental health prevention and promotion programs, Italy has not. In fact, within the European Union, Italy Invests least in mental health. This is worrying, as Italy is above the European average in terms of the prevalence of mental disorders. Actually, it is estimated that 5 million Italians They need mental health support but are not able to afford it.
When I asked my physician friend about his experience in the Italian public health system, he told me that he used to be the sole physician for a population of over 200,000 people covering four districts of Sicily. That’s why they started offering group therapy sessions. During most of his professional career, he had more than 150 clients at any one time, only eight of whom were part of a group. despite one Announcement Last year the government planned to expand the range of psychological services, but it is unclear how much this will benefit the wider population.
“It feels liberating to be able to tell everything to your AI therapist, knowing that it is a free and completely non-judgmental place,” says my friend Giuseppe from Calabria, southern Italy. “When I had real therapists, and I tried three, I always entered their office with a severe anxiety that was the combined result of two factors: the awareness that I was paying more than I could afford and the self-awareness of doing something that, in my small town, was still only considered for serious cases. Now, I don’t feel the pressure to get the most out of a session, because it’s free, and I also don’t feel judged, because a therapy app actually I can’t do justice!”
The more I talk to my friends, the more I believe that AI therapy could be a revolution in places like Italy, where we still lack meaningful strategies to tackle the stigma associated with mental health conditions. When I ask Giuseppe if his queerness was also a reason for his difficulties trusting a therapist in his hometown, he agrees: “I’m not out with my family, and although a therapist would be bound to professional confidentiality, I still have trouble trusting someone who lives in a place where homosexuality, like mental health discussions, is not always met with understanding.”
Giuseppe’s example was comforting: Thanks to his AI therapist, he was able to talk about things he’d never told anyone, and got more empathetic responses than any real therapist he’d tried. “I am 43 years old and I still live with my parents,” he says, “because my income does not allow otherwise. My AI therapist is always available to me, always calm and supportive, and she has been very helpful in examining my life and taking all the steps necessary to improve my life.”
Of course, older generations don’t always understand. In a country like Italy – so bound by tradition – change is not always welcome. And some ethical concerns may be justified: it is not easy to measure how healthy “relationships” actually are between vulnerable people and their AI practitioners.
Still, in a digital age where our emotions are often manipulated for profit, free, clever, never-ending support can be tempting. And until mental health help becomes more affordable, it may be the best option for many people.
