Therapy: An AI experience
The following activity is one I did with my students after completing our study of CBT for the treatment of mental health disorders.
I designed a “Gem” in Gemini, that students can use to simulate a therapy session with a young man named Alex. The goal of this activity is for students to try to apply the techniques of validity testing, cognitive restructuring, and cognitive rehearsal. Students should be familiar with these techniques before running the simulation.
Setting up the simulation
Give your students the link below.
They should go to Gemini (or Chatgpt) and paste the code into the prompt. They should be sure to paste the entire code (it is in three separate boxes, but highlight and paste everything at once.) Be sure that they include the quotation marks at the beginning as well.
Students will receive feedback on their use of three techniques: validity testing, cognitive restructuring, and cognitive rehearsal. I had my students work alone or in pairs to interact with Alex.
Each student’s experience will be different, depending on what they ask Alex. There are actually two versions of Alex - one that is compliant with therapy and wants to talk, and what that is relatively resistant to therapy.
I gave them 20 minutes for the session. Then they should type the following command into the prompt: Session ended.
They will then receive a personalized report on their use of the three techniques with advice on how they could improve.
If students want to continue their sessions with Alex, they can simply type: Begin new session.
Code for the simulationDebriefing the the simulation
I gave students the following three questions to discuss in our debriefing of the activity:
1. What did you learn about therapy in this simulation?
2. What piece of feedback did you find most helpful? Could you use this feedback to improve other communication besides as a therapist?
3. Which technique did you find the most difficult to apply? How could you improve that if you had another session with Alex?