General-purpose AI as a source of mental health support amongst 24,000 adolescents in England

We explored adolescents’ use and experiences of general-purpose AI/LLM platforms for mental health support in a community sample of 24,132 students in England. Overall, 2.7% (n = 662) reported past-year use, with 55.9% (324/580) rating AI/LLM support as ‘helpful’. Most (92.1%; 610/662) had also accessed other forms of support, although 63.2% (410/649) reported wanting additional support.

Both use and perceived need for additional support were concentrated amongst minoritised and more psychosocially vulnerable groups. We thank all the students who took the time to participate in the OxWell Student Survey, and the many staff at participating schools for the considerable time and planning they put into conducting the survey during school hours. Fullwood from Brighter Futures Together for her invaluable contribution to the overall OxWell study strategy.

We thank many colleagues in local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, including D. We are grateful to the wider OxWell Study Team for their support and insight throughout the design and delivery of the study, and extend special thanks to S. White for his preparation of the dataset and statistical advice.

This research was funded by the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Oxford and Thames Valley at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, with support from Liverpool City Council and Oxfordshire County Council. ES was additionally supported by an NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Award (NIHR304151). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Hannah Okechukwu, Holly Bear, Mina Fazel & Emma Soneson Correspondence to Holly Bear or Emma Soneson. H.B. holds a research advisory consultancy with Girl Effect (girleffect.org), a non-profit organisation that connects girls to services to improve their health and education. This consultancy was arranged through Oxford University Innovation under a formal written agreement.

H.O., M.F., and E.S. declare no financial or non-financial competing interests. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.