{"id":"mental-health-prevalence","title":"Prevalence of Mental Health Discussions in Publicly Available Generative AI Conversations","authors":[{"given":"Ryan K.","family":"McBain"},{"given":"Li Ang","family":"Zhang"},{"given":"Alyssa","family":"Burnett"},{"given":"Jonathan H.","family":"Cantor"},{"given":"Hao","family":"Yu"}],"first_public":"2026-08-24","date_note":"Journal publication date.","date_source":"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2853211","year":2026,"venue":"JAMA Network Open","paper_url":"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2853211","doi":"10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.30635","category":"behavior","relationship":"uses","relationship_label":"Uses WildChat","dataset_version":"620,699 conversations from WildChat-4.8M.","summary":"Studies how the definition of a mental-health conversation changes prevalence estimates in WildChat-4.8M. A classifier scores topicality, help-seeking intent, clinical language, and affective risk, with validation against independently coded conversations.","finding":"The estimated share of mental-health conversations is 0.21% when the definition requires explicit help-seeking for an identifiable person, and 4.90% when any mental-health topicality qualifies.","evidence_url":"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2853211","evidence_note":"Methods: corpus, four classification domains, and 370-conversation validation sample. Results: comparison of definitions.","bibtex_key":"mcbain2026mentalhealth","record_url":"https://yuntiandeng.com/wildchat/papers/mental-health-prevalence/","citation_title":"Prevalence of Mental Health Discussions in Publicly Available Generative AI Conversations","citation_type":"article-journal","bibtex_type":"article","container_title":"JAMA Network Open","citation_url":"https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.30635","citation_year":2026,"citation_note":"Published research letter.","volume":"9","issue":"8","pages":"e2630635","publisher":"American Medical Association","date_label":"Published","date_source_label":"Publication record","publication_date":"2026-08-24"}