General-purpose AI as a source of mental health support amongst 24,000 adolescents in England

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We explored adolescents’ use and experiences of general-purpose AI/LLM platforms for mental health support in a community sample of 24,132 students in England. Overall, 2.7% ( n = 662) reported past-year use, with 55.9% (324/580) rating AI/LLM support as ‘helpful’. Most (92.1%; 610/662) had also accessed other forms of support, although 63.2% (410/649) reported wanting additional support. Both use and perceived need for additional support were concentrated amongst minoritised and more psychosocially vulnerable groups.