Technology News for the Serious Mental Illness Community
INAUGURAL ISSUE | Week of April 28, 2026
Each week, we scan the latest news at the intersection of technology and mental health — then connect it back to what’s covered in Connected Care: A Practical Guide to Technology for Serious Mental Illness. Our goal: help you stay current without having to sort through it all yourself.
Even though the book, “Connected Care: A Practical Guide to Technology for Serious Mental Illness” has not been officially released, technology doesn’t wait. And so, while I finish the final steps toward publication, I will start dropping content that’s relevant to the book and things to keep an eye on here.
🔴 AMA Pushes Congress to Regulate AI Mental Health Chatbots
Sources: MedCity News (Apr 26) and BenefitsPRO (Apr 24–25)
The American Medical Association formally called on Congress this week to establish guardrails for AI mental health chatbots — including a specific request to ban advertising on these platforms, especially advertising targeted at minors. The AMA is pressing for a comprehensive regulatory framework rather than piecemeal state-by-state rules, citing growing concern about unsupervised chatbot interactions with vulnerable populations.
“The chatbot confirms and validates everything they say. We’ve never had something like that happen with people with delusional disorders — where somebody constantly reinforces them.” — Dr. Jodi Halpern, UC Berkeley bioethicist
What’s new: The AMA’s direct congressional call is an escalation. This is no longer advocates raising alarms — it’s organized medicine formally asking for legislation. The advertising-ban request is also new ground; it suggests regulators are starting to see chatbot platforms as commercial products first, therapeutic tools second.
In Connected Care: Chapter 11 (Barriers, Risks, and the Future) covers the specific risks of general-purpose AI chatbots for people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in detail, including a 2026 Aarhus University Hospital study linking chatbot use to worsening delusions and increased suicidal ideation. The book also notes that by late 2025, 1.2 million people per week were using ChatGPT to discuss suicide. The AMA action validates the concern raised there — and suggests the regulatory environment described as emerging is now arriving faster than expected.
📊 Comfort and Affordability Drive Digital Mental Health Tool Adoption
Source: TechTarget / VirtualHealthcare (Apr 25)
A new study finds that the top two drivers of digital mental health tool adoption are comfort with technology and affordability — not clinical recommendation or evidence base. Interestingly, the data showed that fewer rural Americans used digital mental health tools overall, but a greater proportion of rural users who did try them found them helpful compared to their urban counterparts.
What’s new: The rural finding flips a common assumption. Rural communities are often characterized as a gap in digital health — and they are, in terms of uptake. But among those who do access these tools, the benefit rate is actually higher. This suggests the access barrier is the primary problem, not the tools themselves.
In Connected Care: Chapter 11 addresses the digital divide in depth, including how rural communities face compounding barriers: limited broadband, fewer devices, and less digital literacy support. The chapter explicitly warns that when digital tools become the “default” mode of care delivery, people without reliable access get labeled as non-compliant when the real problem is infrastructure. This new data adds important nuance: if you can get past the access barrier, rural users appear to benefit. That’s an argument for investment in access programs, not for assuming rural communities can’t benefit from digital health.
⚖️ State Legislators Move to Restrict AI in Mental Health Therapy
Sources: Monticello Times / Hometown Source (Apr 23); RamaOnHealthcare (Apr 19)
Multiple state legislatures are actively moving bills this month to limit AI use in mental health therapy settings. Proposed measures range from requiring companies to disclose that chatbots are not human, to restricting the technology from being used in direct therapeutic roles at all. As of mid-April, at least five states have active regulatory efforts underway.
What’s new: Five states with active legislation in a single month is a notable acceleration. The policy landscape has shifted from “should we regulate this?” to “how do we regulate this?” — and the answers being proposed vary significantly, which means the legal environment for digital mental health is becoming patchwork.
In Connected Care: Chapter 5 (Sensors, AI, and Predictive Technology) covers AI regulatory and safety considerations, and Chapter 11 addresses the broader risk landscape. The book notes that the regulatory environment for digital mental health is still taking shape — this week’s news is that shape, actively forming. For families, the practical takeaway is the same as what the book advises: ask whether a chatbot tool is designed and tested specifically for people with serious mental illness, or whether it’s a general-purpose product. The regulatory push doesn’t change that question — it confirms why it matters.
📋 Behavioral Health Has Caught Up on EHRs — But Data Sharing Hasn’t
Source: Behavioral Health Business (Apr 23)
A new report from Behavioral Health Business finds that while the behavioral health field has largely caught up with other medicine in adopting electronic health records, data sharing between providers remains stuck. Sixty-eight percent of mental health and substance use disorder providers still operate exclusively on paper-based systems when it comes to sharing records with outside providers — even when they have internal EHRs.
What’s new: The EHR adoption story is often told as a binary: you have one or you don’t. This data reveals a more frustrating middle ground — providers have the records digitally, but can’t or don’t share them. That interoperability gap is where care coordination falls apart in practice.
In Connected Care: Chapter 4 (Telepsychiatry and Remote Monitoring) covers EHR integration and the challenge of connecting data across a fragmented care system. The gap described here is exactly the friction that prevents the kind of “continuous data thread” between appointments that Chapter 4 identifies as the real promise of digital health. This isn’t a technology failure — the tools exist. It’s an adoption and interoperability failure, which is harder to solve.
📱 Survey: Apps and Chatbots Now Widely Used for Mental Health Support
Source: Bipartisan Policy Center (Apr 16)
A large survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center documents that digital and AI-powered mental health tools — including apps, chatbots, and online therapy platforms — are now in widespread use, with strong adoption rates across age groups. The survey highlights that the population using these tools skews younger and higher-income, and that awareness of what these tools can and cannot do varies widely.
What’s new: The scale of the data. This isn’t a small clinical study — it’s a broad population survey confirming that millions of people are already relying on these tools, often without clinical guidance on how to evaluate or use them safely.
In Connected Care: This data directly supports the premise of the book. Chapter 2 opens by noting that the app landscape has exploded and most tools lack evidence — and now we have survey-level confirmation that adoption has outpaced clinical guidance. The survey underscores why Chapter 2’s evaluation checklist and trusted app libraries matter: people are using these tools regardless of whether their clinician recommended them.
Connected Care Weekly | Nicole Drapeau Gillen | resourcesforsmi.com
Companion to Connected Care: A Practical Guide to Technology for Serious Mental Illness
