I do think there’s some nuance to that research though - just the act of typing out thoughts alone to a neutral party seems like it would be helpful, regardless of what’s said in response.

However, speaking personally - if I were suicidal, called an emergency line, and got connected to a computer instead of a person: that would feel like a brushoff and make things much, much worse.

My belief is that chatbots can be great for general mental health maintenance but are likely a massive liability for an acutely distressed population in the general case. I have zero faith in the US govt.’s implementation to respect that subtlety.