Building Open-Source AI Models That Emphasize Generating Mental Health Advice

Forbes January 8, 2026
Lance Eliot

In today’s column, I examine the development of open-source large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, especially models that excel at providing mental health guidance.

Here’s the deal. You can use any popular generic LLM such as ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini, CoPilot, and other such models to dispense mental health advice. That’s not what those AIs are versed in, but you can use them for that purpose anyway. A lot of people do. The mental health capabilities are considered relatively shallow and limited.

Efforts are underway to devise LLMs that are in-depth at mental health. This gives those LLMs a leg up on conventional generic AI. Some of these specialized LLMs are considered proprietary, meaning that only the AI maker...

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