> The other day a good friend of mine with mental health issues remarked that "his" chatgpt understands him better than most of his friends and gives him better advice than his therapist.
The therapist thing might be correct, though. You can send a well-adjusted person to three renowned therapists and get three different reasons for why they need to continue sessions.
No therapist ever says "Congratulations, you're perfectly normal. Now go away and come back when you have a real problem." Statistically it is vanishingly unlikely that every person who ever visited a therapist is in need of a second (more more) visit.
The main problem with therapy is a lack of objectivity[1]. When people talk about what their sessions resulted in, it's always "My problem is that I'm too perfect". I've known actual bullies whose therapist apparently told them that they are too submissive and need to be more assertive.
The secondary problem is that all diagnosis is based on self-reported metrics of the subject. All improvement is equally based on self-reported metrics. This is no different from prayer.
You don't have a medical practice there; you've got an Imam and a sophisticated but still medically-insured way to plead with thunderstorms[2]. I fail to see how an LLM (or even the Rogerian a-x doctor in Emacs) will do worse on average.
After all, if you're at a therapist and you're doing most of the talking, how would an LLM perform worse than the therapist?
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[1] If I'm at a therapist, and they're asking me to do most of the talking, I would damn well feel that I am not getting my moneys worth. I'd be there primarily to learn (and practice a little) whatever tools they can teach me to handle my $PROBLEM. I don't want someone to vent at, I want to learn coping mechanisms and mitigation strategies.
[2] This is not an obscure reference.