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A Mental Health Chatbot for High School Students

Mar 3, 2025

I know my last post about AI was a bit of a bummer, but it’s not like I think it’s all bad. I was reading TechCrunch and came across a story about a startup called Sonar Mental Health that’s built an AI chatbot named Sonny to help students with mental health support. Considering everything we hear about how teens are handling, well, everything these days, this seems like it could be incredibly helpful.

TL;DR Takeaways

  • Sonny is an AI-driven mental health chatbot developed by Sonar Mental Health, blending AI with human supervision
  • Wellbeing Companions review every AI-suggested response
  • Sonny is available 24/7 offering proactive, confidential mental health check-ins for students
  • Early results are promising with 75% of students showing improved well-being and schools reporting reduced absenteeism
  • Sonar recently raised $2.4 million to expand access

What’s Cool about It

Sonny isn’t just spitting out canned advice. When a student texts in the AI drafts a response, but before anything is sent back, a real, trained mental health companion reviews it (unsure of what qualifies someone to be a “mental health companion”). And it’s available 24/7 by text, so students can reach out anytime about school, relationships, stress, whatever’s on their mind. I’m not exactly sure how it all works, if a human has to review every single message before it’s sent, how fast can it really be? How scalable is that model long-term? But it’s still nice to see that there are actual guardrails in place. Sonny also tries to pick up on early signs of distress (with permission) by analyzing conversations and, if needed, helping connect students to real therapists.

Also, major props to them for taking privacy seriously. They’re COPPA and FERPA compliant, and they don’t sell data or randomly monitor chats.

Why It Matters

The mental health situation in schools is rough right now. Apparently 17% of high schools don’t even have a counselor, and most states have way too many students assigned per counselor. I remember it not being great when I was in school, and that was before cyberbullying and Instagram influencers leading unrealistic lives and almost weekly mass shootings and everything else teens have to deal with now.

Since launching in 2024 Sonny has rolled out to over 4,500 students across nine districts. Schools using Sonny have reported better attendance rates and students are reporting higher well-being scores. And they just raised $2.4 million to expand even faster, backed by names like Nina Capital and Stanford’s Social Impact Fellowship.

Final Thoughts

AI gets a lot of bad press (sometimes deservedly), but things like Sonny show that if you build it carefully and with good intentions, it can actually do a lot of good. It’s not about replacing humans, it’s about filling in the gaps where gaps exist. I think that’s the best use of AI right now.

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