By Vasoontara Yiengprugsawan, Sylvia Wong, Aastha Arora
Artificial intelligence tools, including chatbots and digital mental health applications, are emerging as a way to extend support for young people in Asia and the Pacific, where needs are rising and services remain limited.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how young people learn, connect, and experience the world. As devices become constant companions, young people are reporting increased loneliness, digital fatigue, and pressures amplified by always-on social media.
Studies indicate that increased screen time is linked to a higher risk of developing mental health problems, sleep disruptions, and up to double the risk of anxiety and depression among young people.
Moreover, adolescent girls and young women are especially vulnerable to online risks, with AI algorithms amplifying harmful content about unrealistic beauty standards or curated images, as well as unsafe or extreme content without their awareness or consent.
The confluence of AI advances, anonymity, and weak accountability systems has fueled an epidemic of technology-facilitated violence disproportionately impacting women and girls, making both online and offline spaces unsafe and traumatizing.
This highlights a broader concern that technology is advancing faster than society’s ability to protect young people's well-being. While there has been an increased appetite for tech solutions designed to enhance access to information and services, the majority of technology products, policies and platforms still overlook the rights, risks, and needs specific to youth, especially girls and young women.
Most are largely unregulated from a “do no harm” perspective. AI’s growing integration into daily life further requires ethical and safety considerations to ensure AI tools can still maximize benefits and minimize risks for young people.
In Asia and the Pacific, where smartphone penetration among youth exceeds 80% in several countries but mental health systems and youth-responsive health care lag significantly, the gap is even more pronounced.
Mental health systems in Asia and the Pacific are under significant strain. Mental health conditions affect an estimated 475 million people, or about one in seven individuals in the region.
Treatment gaps remain high, with some countries reporting that the majority of those in need of mental health services do not receive appropriate care. Young people bear a substantial share of this burden, with half of all mental health conditions that appear in adulthood beginning by age 14.
For girls and young women, sexual and reproductive health concerns such as unintended pregnancy, early motherhood or violence are further linked to mental health conditions like depression, stigma, and trauma.
On the other hand, with the right guardrails and professional protocols in place, locally-adapted AI chatbots and mental health applications have the potential to provide clinically-validated, confidential, and stigma-free support, complementary to professional, in-person care that may not be easily accessible.
Early evidence shows that guided self-help tools, including mindfulness can help reduce stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, and they can also serve as a first point of contact for early detection and simple triage. Clinically-based, chatbot-delivered interventions can positively affect psychological distress among young people and can supplement existing services provided by mental health professionals. These benefits are particularly important in rural, remote, and low-resource settings where mental health professionals are scarce.
Several countries in the region are exploring these possibilities. Singapore is using digital mental health tools and AI-assisted platforms to support youth well-being and improve triage processes.
Indonesia is expanding access to mobile mental health applications in urban and peri-urban areas. Thailand has increased the use of digital mental health tools, including AI-supported chat platforms that provide screening for stress and anxiety and connect users to trained counselors when needed.
Potential solutions should place young people's rights, dignity, and well-being at the center of the service.
Mental health services require empathy, trust, and cultural understanding, qualities that technology cannot fully replicate. While AI can be an essential tool to address gaps in health system capacity, it can also lead to unintended consequences such as spreading misinformation or contributing to harm. With the right governance, safeguards, and human oversight that upholds principles of ethics, safety and privacy, AI can extend the reach of mental health services, ease pressure on overstretched systems, and help Asia and the Pacific address emerging mental health challenges. To effectively tackle potential risks and abuses, especially for young women and girls, AI-powered platforms must be designed and deployed with safety, security, and privacy at its core from the onset.
Key areas for addressing these issues include:
Safety: Unregulated apps and general-purpose chatbots may provide insensitive or misleading responses, especially in crisis situations, leading to harm. AI tools must improve detection of self-harm risk and refer to trained professionals. Such referrals must be seamless for youth to report concerns, seek help, and disengage from harmful interactions.
Understanding: AI models trained on data from other regions may misinterpret culturally specific expressions of distress or reinforce stereotypes or norms. Mental health services should build locally-adapted, clinical tools for more appropriate care.
Privacy: Conversations about mental health often involve sensitive information. Trust and confidentiality are critical for health service provision, especially when working with young populations. It is critical to remember that once sensitive data is collected, there is no absolute safe solution for that data. Strong safeguards are necessary to prevent misuse of user data.
Digital exclusion: Not all young people have access to devices, safe internet spaces, or private environments for using digital tools. Without equitable access, marginalized groups, vulnerable populations, rural youth, or girls may be left behind. In-person professional services should remain the backbone of mental health care.
Responsible design: AI for mental health must be designed, trained, and deployed with clear ethical guidelines. This includes transparent documentation of model capabilities and limitations, rigorous testing for bias and unintended consequences, human oversight in high-risk situations, and accountability frameworks outlining responsibility when harm occurs.
Survivor-centered: Promoting participatory design in AI practices is non-negotiable and involves prioritizing the voices, safety, privacy and security of women, girls, and survivors of online abuse.
AI offers a powerful opportunity to make mental health and psycho-social support more accessible, especially for youth. The goal should be to use AI to build on professional care, not replace it. Strengthen systems, not bypass them.
Potential solutions should place young people's rights, dignity, and well-being at the center of the service. If Asia and the Pacific can leverage this potential, it can demonstrate that AI is not just a technological breakthrough but a tool that can help build healthier, more resilient, and more inclusive societies.
To lead responsibly, countries in the region must prioritize ethics, safety, privacy, consent, transparency, cultural relevance, and data protection while ensuring AI tools are integrated into participatory, human-centered, school- and community-based youth and mental health systems. Policy makers, parents, caregivers, educators, technologists, health professionals, ethicists and youth all have a role to ensure AI is a force for good.
This blog was originally published in the ADB's Asian Development Blog and is drawn from insights from 11th ADB international Education and Skills Forum on mental health in youth and adolescents with contributions from Dinesh Arora.
