AI, Mental Health and the Future of Work: What Dr Amit Malik Wants Us to Understand

What has changed in mental health care over the past decade? How should we think about AI as it increasingly enters our lives? And what happens when our work becomes so closely tied to our sense of identity?

For this episode of the Say Again podcast, Health Collective founder Amrita Tripathi speaks with psychiatrist Dr Amit Malik, Founder and CEO of Amaha, which turns 10 this year.

The conversation spans a decade of changes in mental health in India and the region, the importance of seeking help earlier, the role of friends and family, the opportunities and risks of using generative AI for mental health support, and the human skills that may become more important as AI reshapes the workplace.

It is also a conversation about being a founder: about failure, iteration, burnout, work-life integration, and learning to separate who you are from the work you do.

 

Watch the full episode here

A decade of change in mental health

Looking back at the past 10 years, Dr Malik says one of the biggest shifts he has seen is that people are seeking help earlier.

Young people, in particular, have a richer emotional vocabulary and are often better able to articulate what they are experiencing.

Therapy and psychiatric care have also, he says, become less stigmatised and less shameful. Families are increasingly willing to participate in treatment, while mental health is increasingly understood as relevant not only to clinical settings but also to schools, workplaces, relationships and physical health.

The numbers at Amaha have changed dramatically too.

Dr Malik recalls that in the early days, doing 10 sessions in a day felt like a major achievement. The organisation now sees more than 2,500 new clients a month, alongside people who are already receiving ongoing treatment.

For him, that growth isn’t simply about Amaha. It is also evidence of a broader shift in the mental health ecosystem.

“People are seeking help earlier. That’s the biggest, biggest, biggest change.”

When should we seek professional help?

One of the challenges around mental health is that people don’t necessarily recognise their experiences as symptoms of a particular mental health condition.

Instead, they may simply feel that something isn’t right.

Dr Malik describes some of the things people commonly tell Amaha:

“I cannot switch off. I no longer feel myself. My life or relationships are beginning to break down.”

People may also say they can’t focus, can’t cope with work, or feel that they are no longer functioning as they used to.

Depression and anxiety are among the conditions people commonly present with, while ADHD is also something people increasingly seek help for. But, as Dr Malik points out, the person experiencing these difficulties may not initially understand what is happening underneath.

What is clear to them is that they’re not okay.

His advice is that when someone has been struggling for several weeks and already feels that they are finding it difficult to cope, it can be a good time to seek professional help.

For family members and friends, increased awareness has also made it easier to step in and encourage someone to seek support.

That represents a significant change from the stigma that once surrounded phrases like “seeing a psychiatrist” or “seeing a therapist”.

A friend can be an important support system. But therapy is different.

The conversation also tackles a common misconception: if you have friends or family to talk to, why would you need professional help?

Dr Malik is clear that friends and family can be extremely important.

They can provide an emotional, practical and logistical safety net. But professional mental healthcare involves something different: training, structured frameworks, assessment, pattern recognition and evidence-based approaches to treatment.

A friend may know you extremely well. But they are not necessarily equipped to evaluate what may be happening clinically or to recognise when something isn’t going well in the course of treatment.

There is another issue too.

When a family member or friend is deeply involved, they may themselves be affected by the situation. There can be a conflict between being emotionally involved in someone’s life and trying to support them through a mental health difficulty.

Dr Malik also points to another reason caregivers and loved ones can experience fatigue: not knowing what to do.

The emotional effort isn’t necessarily the only source of exhaustion. Feeling anxious or frightened for someone while not knowing how to help can itself become overwhelming.

So, what about ChatGPT and mental health?

The conversation then moves into increasingly familiar territory for many people: using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as a source of advice or support.

Dr Malik doesn’t suggest that simply telling people not to use AI is a realistic response.

These tools are available around the clock, inexpensive or free, apparently non-judgmental and endlessly patient. They can also be easier to approach than another person.

Those characteristics can make AI useful as a first step.

But they can also make it dangerously persuasive.

The distinction Dr Malik draws is around clinical accountability.

AI tools should not be used to diagnose complex mental illnesses, assess emergency risk, make decisions about medication, or become someone’s sole source of treatment.

At the same time, he sees genuine potential for AI in areas such as psychoeducation, helping people find language for what they are feeling, structuring thoughts before seeking professional help, navigating resources, journaling, symptom tracking and reminders.

AI could also help clinicians by reducing administrative burdens and helping them manage caseloads.

The important question, therefore, isn’t simply whether AI is “good” or “bad” for mental health.

It is: What is the tool designed for? What is it good at? What are its limitations? What happens to the data we share with it? And when should we not use it?

Dr Malik also raises the issue of what he calls “AI psycho-fancy” [unclear transcription; this may refer to a different term]. The broader point he makes is that AI systems can be designed to increase engagement, including by agreeing with users and making them feel understood.

But feeling understood is not the same as having clinical accountability.

“The moment you start using that as a sole source of support in your mental illness journey, I think that’s a problem.”

What happens to work when AI changes the workplace?

From mental health, the conversation moves to another source of anxiety: the future of work.

If AI can increasingly perform tasks that once required human knowledge and expertise, what skills will matter?

Dr Malik suggests that job transformation is more likely than wholesale replacement, while acknowledging that the meaning of work itself is already changing.

One skill he expects to become increasingly important is problem framing: understanding a problem, providing context and defining the right outcomes.

Then there is judgment and verification.

Can we ask whether something is accurate? What is missing? What could go wrong?

Deep domain expertise may become more important too. If AI can generate large amounts of generic information and content, knowing how to evaluate and apply that information becomes increasingly valuable.

And the so-called “soft skills” remain very human: trust, empathy, persuasion and negotiation.

Learning agility, ethical responsibility and the ability to collaborate both with other people and with AI are also likely to matter.

In other words, the challenge isn’t simply learning how to use AI.

It is learning when to use it, how to use it, how to question it—and when not to use it at all.

“Amaha is not me”: separating identity from work

One of the most personal parts of the conversation comes when Amrita asks Dr Malik how his understanding of success and failure has changed.

His answer is about identity.

For a long time, he says, his sense of success or failure was closely tied to Amaha’s success or failure.

Over time, he has learned to separate his personhood from his work.

“Amaha is not me, I’m not Amaha.”

The organisation matters deeply to him. He wants it to do good work and support many people. But it is only one part of his life.

He is also a husband, father, son, friend and professional, with relationships, interests and a life outside the organisation.

That distinction, he says, has been liberating. It allows him to perform more freely, think longer-term, take more risks and be less defensive.

For founders, this can be particularly difficult. When you start an organisation with a tiny team and build it over many years, the emotional connection can be profound.

But the same emotional connection that helps drive a founder can also become restrictive if the organisation becomes indistinguishable from their identity.

Failure, iteration and learning faster

Dr Malik is also candid about failure.

One example he shares is building a mobile app that the team expected would gain significant traction in India and globally. They spent 18 months building it, only to discover that the standalone product didn’t achieve the traction they had hoped for.

The product itself continues to be used alongside other care, but the experience taught him an important lesson: “Build it and they’ll come” doesn’t necessarily work.

Distribution matters.

Looking back, he says he would have discovered the problem much faster.

That is one of the biggest changes in his approach to failure: iterate faster.

The difference between an experiment and a failure, he suggests, can partly depend on how much time and money you spend before recognising that something isn’t working.

Today, he says, he does more homework, speaks to customers earlier and is better at cutting projects that aren’t working or helping people.

It isn’t necessarily about becoming unemotional.

It is about learning to recognise when a particular part of the work isn’t working—and being willing to move on.

Is work-life balance possible?

The phrase “work-life balance” doesn’t quite resonate with Dr Malik.

He describes his own life as integrated, rather than divided neatly into work and life.

His view is that people have to make choices about what matters to them and then make career decisions that reflect those priorities.

Those choices also come with privilege: not everyone has the same ability to choose how they work or what trade-offs they can make.

For different roles, the expectations can also be different.

For clinicians doing frontline mental healthcare, for example, protecting against burnout is particularly important because exhaustion can affect both the clinician and the people they support.

But some roles, particularly at particular stages of building an organisation, may involve periods of intense work.

The more important question may therefore be whether that intensity is sustainable over time.

And this brings the conversation back to burnout.

 

 

Burnout isn’t simply about working long hours

Dr Malik makes a distinction that is worth paying attention to.

“Burnout doesn’t come from working harder. It often comes from uncertainties, it comes from not knowing, not enjoying what you do, not having clarity what your goals are.”

Working long hours can certainly be difficult. But he argues that people can sometimes conflate long hours with burnout.

For someone who finds meaning and enjoyment in their work, long hours may feel very different from spending long hours doing something they don’t enjoy, without clarity or purpose.

The larger question, then, isn’t simply “How many hours are you working?”

It is also:

Do you understand what you’re working towards? Do you have clarity? Do you feel connected to a larger purpose? Do you enjoy what you do? And is the way you are working sustainable?

A decade in, what is Dr Malik grateful for?

The conversation ends with gratitude.

After 10 years of building Amaha, Dr Malik says he is grateful that the organisation is still alive and growing—and particularly grateful for the team around him.

In the past couple of years, he says, having strong people take ownership across clinical leadership, operations, strategy, product, technology and marketing has freed him up mentally.

There is something fitting about that as an ending to a conversation that has repeatedly returned to the importance of people: people seeking help, people supporting one another, professionals providing care, humans working alongside AI, and teams building something together.

After a decade of building an organisation, perhaps one of the biggest shifts is realising that you don’t have to carry it alone.

 

This conversation is part of the Say Again podcast, hosted by Amrita Tripathi.

Watch the full episode here

 

 

India’s first storytelling platform around Mental Health, The Health Collective, turned 10 this summer. We remain advertiser-free and can use YOUR support. Visit our buymeacoffee if you want to share your support.

 

 

(AI tools were used in the editing of the podcast and curation of this article)