The Psychological Impact of AI on Young Professionals

Therapists have begun to notice a new thread running through the concerns young clients bring to treatment. Increasingly, that thread is artificial intelligence. A study reported by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo in October 2026 found that since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, young workers in industries with heavy AI integration, particularly finance, have shown measurable increases in depression. The researchers linked the rise not only to actual job losses but also to a pervasive fear of becoming obsolete.

That distinction matters. A person does not have to lose a job to feel destabilized by AI. Sitting at a desk each day and wondering whether the role will still exist in eighteen months can be enough.

Why AI Job Anxiety Cuts Deeper Than a Paycheck

For many young professionals, the distress tied to AI is only partly about money. It is also about identity. Someone who has spent years building expertise in financial analysis or content strategy may watch an AI tool produce a rough version of that work in seconds. What feels threatened in that moment is a sense of competence and purpose, along with a place within a professional community.

Clinicians would recognize this as an emotion regulation problem as much as a labor market problem. The emotions that surface tend to be intense and persistent. Shame, dread, helplessness, and anger are common, and they are often dismissed by the very people experiencing them. Thoughts like “I should just adapt” are typical, and this kind of self-invalidation tends to deepen distress rather than relieve it.

How DBT Skills Apply to AI-Related Uncertainty

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) organizes its skills into four core modules, and two of them map closely onto this kind of occupational stress.

Emotion regulation skills teach people to identify what they are feeling, understand what the emotion is doing for them, and decide whether to act on it or change it. Consider a 27-year-old in finance who checks LinkedIn each morning and spirals into panic over reports of AI replacing junior analysts. The Check the Facts skill offers a grounding question for that moment. Is the threat real right now, today, or is the emotion running ahead of the evidence?

Distress tolerance skills address the other half of the problem. These techniques were built for moments when a situation cannot be fixed right away and the discomfort has to be survived without making things worse. No individual worker can stop AI from reshaping an industry. Distress tolerance gives a person a way to hold that reality without numbing out, quitting impulsively, or sliding into hopelessness.

What Does a DBT Skills Group Session Look Like?

A typical DBT skills group session runs 60 to 90 minutes. Participants learn a specific coping skill, practice it, and then discuss how to apply it to daily life. The format is structured and psychoeducational. It is not a processing group where members share personal trauma, and it works more like a classroom with emotional intelligence as the curriculum.

That structure suits the chronic, low-grade distress that AI exposure tends to create. The problem is not a single crisis. It is an ongoing and shifting source of uncertainty, which calls for a toolkit rather than a single conversation. Adult DBT skills groups offer this kind of repeated, skills-focused practice alongside peers who understand the pressure firsthand, a combination that individual work alone can have difficulty reproducing.

Is Online DBT as Effective as In-Person?

Online delivery of DBT skills training has been studied, and the existing research generally supports its usefulness, particularly for skills-based groups. For young workers in demanding industries, the practical advantages are clear. After a long day in a high-pressure job, a 45-minute commute to a skills group can be the thing that keeps someone from attending. Online DBT skills groups remove that barrier and make consistent attendance far more realistic. For anyone unsure about starting, TheraHive’s free Navigating DBT mini course offers an introduction to the approach.

What Clinicians and Group Facilitators Can Take From the Findings

For clinicians and group facilitators, the study suggests a practical shift. Asking about AI exposure during intakes and assessments is one straightforward step. A simple question such as “How has AI changed your day-to-day work?” can open up a great deal of clinically useful material.

None of this means pathologizing a chatbot in someone’s workflow. It does mean recognizing that for many young people, generative AI is not a neutral tool. It serves as a daily reminder that the professional identity they have been building may come with an expiration date, and that is a significant psychological stressor. Mental health fields have historically been slow to acknowledge new variables, but this is one they can get ahead of by treating occupational AI exposure as a genuine risk factor rather than background noise. Clinicians looking to strengthen their DBT training can explore TheraHive’s continuing education program.

Final Thoughts

The Korean study is one data point, but it echoes what many clinicians are already seeing in practice. Young workers in AI-saturated industries are struggling, and the DBT skills framework offers concrete tools matched to what they need. For a young professional feeling the weight of AI-related uncertainty, that reaction is not dramatic. It is a normal human response to an abnormal pace of change, and skills exist to help carry it.

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