Grow Therapy is taking artificial intelligence into one of the most intimate corners of medicine—mental health care. The company recently launched two AI-assisted tools for its network of over 17,000 behavioral health providers, aiming to streamline documentation and reinforce therapy takeaways for patients.
Using ambient listening technology, the tools generate drafts of clinical notes and after-visit summaries. It’s the latest push in a growing trend across health care, where AI scribes are being used to lighten administrative workloads and improve patient engagement.
But in a field where trust is paramount, Grow Therapy is treading carefully. Both tools are optional and require dual consent—meaning both therapist and patient must agree before they’re activated.
AI and Mental Health: A Delicate Balance
Health care data is sensitive by nature, but behavioral health takes it a step further. Therapy sessions involve deeply personal conversations, making security and trust non-negotiable. Grow Therapy says it built its AI tools with this in mind.
Sessions aren’t recorded. The system only saves transcribed notes, which are encrypted to protect patient privacy. This approach is meant to guard against the growing number of health care data breaches, CEO Jake Cooper told Newsweek.
Pat Grady, a partner at Sequoia Capital who helped lead Grow Therapy’s Series C funding round, echoed the importance of caution. “It’s not like the consumer internet where you can just release something and see how it goes,” he said. “The stakes are much higher.”
So far, about 50% of patients have opted in. Adoption is expected to grow as providers gain confidence in the tool and patients experience its benefits firsthand.
Can AI Help Build Stronger Patient-Provider Relationships?
One of the key insights that led to the tool’s development was the observation that top therapists already documented key takeaways from each session for their patients. Grow Therapy wanted to make it easier for all providers to do the same.
Cooper believes that when therapists are fully present, they form stronger therapeutic relationships. If AI can take over note-taking duties, providers can focus entirely on their patients.
The company is using several indicators to track the tool’s impact:
- Patient satisfaction ratings
- Self-reported improvements in mental health
- The percentage of long-term patient-provider relationships
Beyond improving patient experience, the tool could also help reduce burnout among therapists, who often juggle heavy emotional workloads alongside administrative burdens.
AI and Mental Health: A Perfect Match or a Risky Move?
Behavioral health care presents a unique opportunity for AI integration because the entire process revolves around language. Unlike other medical specialties, which rely on physical exams, scans, or lab tests, therapy is built on conversation—something large language models (LLMs) are designed to process.
“The care itself is text in, text out,” Grady said. “It’s a bull’s-eye for what AI can do.”
But there are limits. Grow Therapy makes it clear that AI is meant to support therapists, not replace them. The human connection remains at the heart of effective therapy.
“We always see the clinician being the quarterback of care,” Cooper said. “We think that therapy is effective because it is human-centered.”
With AI stepping into more areas of health care, the challenge remains the same: How do you harness the benefits of automation without losing the trust and personal touch that patients rely on? For Grow Therapy, the answer seems to be a careful, consent-driven approach—one that keeps humans at the center of the conversation.
