WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The ever-increasing presence of artificial intelligence, with AI in every sphere of daily life, is generating a mental health crisis that threatens adults and children alike, according to Father Charles Sikorsky, president of Divine Mercy University, a private Catholic graduate school of psychology and counseling in Sterling, Virginia.

It’s a particularly timely message as Mental Health Sunday — part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Catholic Mental Health Campaign — approaches on Oct. 11, when the faithful are invited to pause and reflect on mental health in their local parish community. The bishops have encouraged all Americans to respond to what they term “the ongoing mental health crisis across the United States.”

Father Sikorsky, a member of the Legionaries of Christ, shared his insights with an audience gathered Sept. 5 at the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington. It was the second installment in a series of shrine dialogues exploring Pope Leo XIV‘s landmark encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity): On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.”

‘Magnifica Humanitas’ can assist mental health field

The subtitle of Pope Leo’s encyclical, said Father Sikorsky, “kind of identifies what it’s about — but the deeper concern really is anthropological: Who are we? What does it mean to be human? What understanding of the person should guide technological and social development?”

These questions, Father Sikorsky continued, are “of tremendous importance” to the field of mental health and the practice of psychology. 

Using a framework developed by David Rosmarin, director of the Spirituality and Mental Health Laboratory at Harvard Medical School’s McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, Father Sikorsky examined AI’s impact upon identity, connection and meaning.

“There’s a crisis of identity in general in our culture — people don’t have the same roots they used to have,” explained Father Sikorsky. 

Globalization; domestic and international migration; the decline in religious adherence; fractured families; frequent job changes — all of these can profoundly impact an individual’s sense of self, he suggested.

“And AI can really feed this identity crisis,” noted Father Sikorsky, “when people are looking outside of themselves for that stability; for that identity; for who they are.”

God, love and AI

In “Magnifica Humanitas” Pope Leo reminds his readers that “human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities, wealth or position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; instead, it is a gift that precedes and transcends each person, endowed by God as an expression of his unfailing love.”

AI can be highly disruptive to interpersonal connectivity, Father Sikorsky noted — especially in a society already suffering from an epidemic of loneliness.

“Fifteen to 20 years ago, the social media companies were saying, ‘Hey, we have a solution for loneliness: social media.’ And of course, the opposite has happened,” shared Father Sikorsky.

A 2023 advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General stated loneliness can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In 2024, the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Making Caring Common project reported 29% of people between 30-44 years of age said they were “frequently” or “always” lonely. 

St. John Paul II, said Father Sikorsky, clearly stated in his 1979 encyclical “Redemptor Hominis (Redeemer of Man)” that “Man cannot live without love.” Pope Leo dedicates an entire chapter of “Magnifica Humanitas” to “The Culture of Power and the Civilization of Love.”

“One of the dangers of AI is it’s kind of social media on steroids,” Father Sikorsky said. “At least on social media, if you’re on Facebook, you’re talking to other people — maybe sometimes there are robots behind it — but (AI) is a conversation with a robot.”

Church, not AI, has answers to loneliness

Nonetheless, Americans are increasingly turning to AI chatbots — computer programs that imitate human conversations — for company. “Character AI” — a platform with more than 20 million monthly users — offers hyper-realistic digital companions; some parents have blamed chatbot behavior for the suicide deaths of their children.

The dangers of AI and loneliness, said Father Sikorsky, are clear — and among the tools to combat them are education for children in the use of AI, and maintaining strong communal bonds through a parish community.

Meaning, Father Sikorsky emphasized, can’t be determined by technology — a chatbot can’t say why a person’s life matters or why they are here.

“AI can assist in reflection — but it can’t assume moral responsibility. It can’t help us discern our path; live out our vocation, our calling. It can’t love,” he said.

Those answers, Father Sikorsky stressed, are found in the Church.

Tools to address the mental health crisis

Attempts to transcend natural human limitations by using technology to enhance human physical, cognitive and emotional capacities — otherwise known as transhumanism — is, Pope Leo says in “Magnifica Humanitas”, a mistake. 

The pope observes that “humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.” He adds, “To renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, in the name of a presumed transcendence of all limits, could mean many things, but it would no longer be human.”

Father Sikorsky said Pope Leo’s encyclical “gives us a lot of great principles and things to think about when we look at this mental health crisis and how it can help psychology. The crisis is rooted in a crisis of identity, a crisis of loneliness and connection, and a crisis of meaning.”

“Ultimately, the real solution is this gift of faith; this gift of grace that gives us an identity — our highest form of identity — in our baptism, as children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ,” he said. “It also gives us community to help us in that struggle of loneliness and connection. And it obviously gives us meaning. It answers all those existential questions.”

Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia.