AI is generating a mental health crisis, warns Divine Mercy University president
Father Charles Sikorsky, president of Divine Mercy University, warns that AI is creating a mental health crisis affecting adults and children across the United States. He cites Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas" as a resource for mental‑health professionals to address AI’s influence on identity, connection and meaning. The remarks were delivered on Sept. 5 at the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, Washington, D.C., as part of a shrine dialogue series on the encyclical. The warning arrives ahead of Mental Health Sunday on Oct. 11, when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urges all Americans to confront the ongoing mental‑health crisis.
8 days ago
Father Charles Sikorsky, president of Divine Mercy University, warned that artificial intelligence is intensifying existing crises involving identity, loneliness, connection and meaning. Speaking at a Washington event on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, he said the Church’s understanding of human dignity and community offers guidance for addressing AI’s effects on mental health. 1
Sikorsky said AI’s growing presence in daily life threatens both adults and children and is contributing to what he described as an ongoing mental-health crisis in the United States. His remarks came ahead of Mental Health Sunday on Oct. 11, part of the U.S. bishops’ National Catholic Mental Health Campaign. 1
He addressed the issue Sept. 5 at the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington during a dialogue focused on Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. 1
Drawing on a framework developed by David Rosmarin of Harvard Medical School’s McLean Hospital, Sikorsky examined AI’s effects on identity, connection and meaning. He said globalization, migration, declining religious adherence, fractured families and frequent job changes have already weakened many people’s sense of identity. 1
He argued that AI can deepen this problem when people look outside themselves for stability or for answers about who they are. Pope Leo’s encyclical, he said, is relevant to psychology because it asks fundamental questions about what it means to be human and what understanding of the person should guide technological development. 1
The encyclical teaches that human dignity does not depend on ability, wealth, social position or personal success, but is given by God and grounded in his love. 1
Sikorsky said AI can disrupt interpersonal relationships in a society already experiencing widespread loneliness. He compared AI to an intensified form of social media, arguing that while social-media users may at least interact with other people, AI chatbots involve conversations with machines. 1
The article cited a 2023 U.S. surgeon general’s advisory stating that loneliness can raise the risk of premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It also cited a 2024 Harvard Graduate School of Education report in which 29% of adults ages 30 to 44 said they were frequently or always lonely. 1
Americans are increasingly using chatbots for companionship. Character AI, described in the article as having more than 20 million monthly users, provides digital companions, while some parents have blamed chatbot interactions for behavior connected to their children’s suicides. 1
Sikorsky referenced St. John Paul II’s teaching that people cannot live without love and connected it with Pope Leo’s discussion of a “civilization of love.” He said AI cannot provide the human love and interpersonal connection necessary to address loneliness. 1
Sikorsky said technology cannot determine why a person’s life matters or explain that person’s purpose. In his view, AI may assist with reflection, but it cannot assume moral responsibility, discern a vocation, guide a person’s path or love another person. 1
He said those questions must be answered through the Church’s understanding of faith, grace and human community. Faith, he argued, provides identity through baptism, relationships through the Christian community and answers to existential questions about meaning. 1
The article also highlighted Pope Leo’s criticism of transhumanism, defined as the effort to use technology to exceed natural human physical, cognitive and emotional limitations. The encyclical states that humanity often flourishes through its limitations and that abandoning the human experience in pursuit of unlimited enhancement would no longer be genuinely human. 1
Sikorsky identified education for children on responsible AI use and the preservation of strong communal relationships as measures for addressing AI-related risks. He particularly emphasized parish communities as places where people can find connection, meaning and support. 1
He summarized the crisis as involving three interconnected dimensions: identity, loneliness and meaning. In his presentation, Catholic faith and community were presented as resources addressing all three. 1*
Assess AI’s impact on identity, connection, and meaning in Catholic mental health
AI’s impact on Catholic mental health is neither simply beneficial nor harmful. It depends on whether AI supports human dignity, embodied relationships, and openness to God—or gradually replaces them with simulation, efficiency, and control.
Catholic anthropology begins with the conviction that a person’s worth comes from being created in God’s image, not from intelligence, productivity, attractiveness, or technological usefulness. That dignity remains even when someone cannot exercise their abilities.
AI can therefore help mental-health care by identifying patterns, organizing information, supporting communication, or making assistance more accessible. But it can also encourage a “functional” identity: seeing oneself primarily as a diagnosis, data profile, consumer preference, or performance score. This is especially dangerous for people already struggling with shame, anxiety, depression, disability, or social comparison.
Theological identity is deeper than psychological description. A person is not merely what an algorithm predicts, nor the sum of past behaviors. The human person is called to share in God’s life through knowledge and love. AI should assist this personal growth, not define the person’s value or destiny.
AI may offer immediate conversation to someone who is lonely. Used appropriately, it can help a person formulate thoughts, find resources, prepare for a difficult conversation, or take a first step toward professional and pastoral help.
Yet AI does not offer friendship in the full human sense. It can simulate emotional understanding, but it does not share bodily presence, vulnerability, responsibility, or mutual self-gift. Antiqua et Nova warns that replacing relationships with God and other people by technological interaction risks substituting “a lifeless image” for authentic relationality.
Authentic mental and spiritual health requires more than being answered. It requires being encountered: by family, friends, clinicians, a parish community, and ultimately God. Human relationships include suffering, joy, disagreement, patience, and concrete solidarity—realities AI cannot experience as a person does.
The danger is not only isolation but a distorted expectation of relationships. An AI companion can be endlessly available, agreeable, and tailored to the user. Human beings, however, require patience, forgiveness, compromise, and moral responsibility. A life organized around artificial responsiveness may make ordinary relationships feel unusually disappointing.
AI can help with many “how” questions: how to organize therapy notes, identify resources, track habits, or communicate more clearly. It cannot finally answer the human questions of meaning: Why should I live? What is suffering for? Whom should I love? What makes forgiveness possible? What is my vocation?
Catholic faith locates meaning in relationship with God, love of neighbor, responsibility, and participation in reality—not in optimization. The Church’s teaching describes human intelligence as relational and ultimately grounded in the self-giving love of the Trinity. Consequently, mental health cannot be reduced to emotional regulation or personal productivity. It includes the capacity to receive love, give oneself, suffer without losing dignity, and hope beyond immediate success.
AI may worsen meaninglessness when it encourages “digital reductionism”—treating as irrelevant whatever cannot be quantified or computed. The Church therefore insists that AI complement, rather than replace, the richness of human intelligence.
A Catholic approach should apply several safeguards:
The central Catholic criterion is relational intelligence: technology should strengthen responsibility for the well-being of persons and communities, not permit humans to transfer responsibility to machines.
In summary, AI can support Catholic mental health when it remains a tool within a network of human and divine relationships. It becomes spiritually and psychologically dangerous when it offers simulated intimacy in place of communion, computational profiles in place of dignity, or efficient answers in place of meaning.