CounselReflect: Opportunities and Challenges for Designing Tools to Support Self-Reflection on Mental Health and Well-Being Conversations with AI

arXiv:2603.29429 · cs.CL · Submitted 2026-03-31 · Read on arXiv

cs.CL

Submitted: 2026-03-31

Updated: 2026-09-17

Code: https://github.com/counselreflectteam/CounselReflect

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

The gist: AI is increasingly used for mental health and well-being support, creating an urgent need for safer engagement, while design, evaluation, and governance take time to develop.

Terminology

Abstract

AI is increasingly used for mental health and well-being support, creating an urgent need for safer engagement, while design, evaluation, and governance take time to develop. We explore a complementary approach: helping users critically reflect on their own AI conversations. We introduce CounselReflect, a tool that translates literature-grounded counseling quality metrics into a user-facing reflection framework. Using CounselReflect as a study probe, we interviewed 21 users of AI for mental health and well-being support. Although most participants did not routinely reflect on their conversations, they articulated concrete questions they would want reflection to address. Tool-assisted reflection also revealed challenges: participants selectively sought evidence confirming existing perceptions of AI and prioritized dimensions they already valued. We argue that reflection tools should surface blind spots and scaffold more holistic examination of AI interactions. Finally, overcoming emotional barriers to revisiting tense conversations remains a major design challenge and warrants input from future work.

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