Practice psychotherapy skills with realistic client simulations

Students of psychotherapy or online chat counselling trainees need numerous practice sessions to develop their skills. Traditionally these sessions require the involvement of a colleague, qualified psychotherapist, or even trained actor to act as the therapy client. These sessions need to be subsequently evaluated by a practitioner to judge the student’s competence and their fidelity to techniques/approaches.

Advances in natural language processing (NLP) and the modern prominence of chatbots and large language models raise the possibility of employing such automated tools to perform the functions of client simulation and trainee session evaluation aforementioned. Prior to working with real humans, psychotherapy students could initially practice and refine their techniques with chatbots that simulate mental health clients. Furthermore, NLP could assist with evaluating the text generated from such exchanges for fidelity and general quality.

• Schmidt, S., Cabrera Lozoya, D., Kiropoulos, L., Conway, M., & D'Alfonso, S. (2025). Psychology student and mental health practitioner experiences of and perspectives on Client101, a virtual client chatbot training tool. BMC Medical Education, 25. doi:10.1186/s12909-025-07668-9
• Cabrera Lozoya, D., Conway, M., Sebastiano De Duro, E., & D'Alfonso, S. (2025). Leveraging Large Language Models for Simulated Psychotherapy Client Interactions: Development and Usability Study of Client101. JMIR Medical Education.