Exploring ChatGPT's Capabilities, Stability, Potential and Risks in Conducting Psychological Counseling through Simulations in School Counseling

TL;DR

This paper evaluates ChatGPT's ability to simulate psychological counseling in school settings, highlighting its potential as a training tool while addressing stability and safety concerns.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of ChatGPT as a virtual client for counseling training, with guidelines to maximize benefits and mitigate risks.

Findings

ChatGPT can effectively simulate core counseling skills.

It offers a low-cost, accessible training resource.

Risks include potential inaccuracies and over-reliance.

Abstract

This study explores ChatGPT's capabilities, stability, and risks in simulating psychological counseling sessions in a school counseling context. Using scripted role-plays between a human counselor and an AI client, we examine how a large language model performs core counseling skills such as empathy, reflection, summarizing, and asking open-ended questions, as well as its ability to maintain therapeutic communication over time. We focus on how consistently ChatGPT can behave like a "virtual client" for school counselors in training, and how its responses might support or disrupt counselor skill development, supervision, and practice. At the same time, we analyze potential risks, including inaccurate or unsafe suggestions, over-compliance with counselor prompts, and the illusion of a competent therapist where no real professional judgment exists. The findings suggest that ChatGPT can serve as a low-cost, always-available training tool for practicing counseling techniques and interviewing skills in education and mental health settings, but it should not be viewed as a replacement for a human therapist or school counselor. We propose practical guidelines for educators, supervisors, and researchers who wish to use ChatGPT or similar LLM-based conversational agents in counseling training, highlighting how to leverage its potential while managing ethical, pedagogical, and psychological risks.