AI Therapy is Coming:

Published: 11 September 2026

What happens when you give a trainee counsellor an AI role-play partner and let them practise at home, at their own pace, as often as they like? That's the question a recent collaboration between Kaplan Higher Education Academy and the Ministry of Health Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT) set out to answer. The findings are early, but they suggest something worth paying attention to: AI-supported simulation may quietly be reshaping how future therapists and counsellors learn their craft.

Leading Kaplan (Singapore)'s involvement in that work is Dr Selina Tang, Head of School for School of Social & Health Sciences, whose own research has long circled youth mental health and how professionals are trained to support it.

More Than Two Decades in the Room

More than 20 years before AI entered a counselling classroom, Dr Selina Tang was already asking how counsellors and therapists get trained. Her work since has spanned psychology education, curriculum innovation, and youth mental health research.

Her academic pedigree is anchored at Curtin University, where she completed both her PhD and her Master of Human Services Counselling, and at Murdoch University, where she earned her Bachelor of Psychology. Murdoch is one of Kaplan (Singapore)'s longstanding University partners in Singapore, a detail that lends a quiet symmetry to her current role.

Her teaching career spans equally established ground. She served as Senior Lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic from 2015 to 2024, followed by an appointment as Associate Lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences in 2024. Earlier in her career, she lectured at Curtin University and taught as sessional staff at Murdoch University.

Running through all of that is a consistent through-line: youth mental health and help-seeking behaviour. Dr Tang previously served on the Research Panel of the Singapore Children's Society, and she continues to collaborate with Limitless Singapore on research exploring what stops young people from seeking help when they need it.

Whether the setting has been curriculum design, research, or the classroom, her focus has stayed the same: how young people access support and how educators prepare the professionals who will one day provide it. It's the same focus that eventually brought her to MOHT.

The Kaplan (Singapore) x MOHT Collaboration: The Headline Research

Counsellor training has always leaned on repeated role-play and one-on-one feedback. It is a proven approach, but it is also resource-intensive, and it depends on a limited supply of supervisor time. At the same time, counselling itself is shifting. More sessions are happening on digital and text-based platforms, which means trainees now need to develop competence in an environment that traditional in-room role-play cannot fully replicate. Something has to give.

Inside the Four-Week Pilot

Dr Tang decided to find out, running a four-week pilot together with Amanda Yeo and Onno Pepijn Kampman. Diploma-level counselling trainees in Singapore were introduced to an AI-supported simulation platform developed by MOHT that they could use at home, on their own time, as a low-stakes supplement to their supervised training. The study, titled Beyond the Classroom: Exploring AI-Supported Simulation in Counsellor Training, was small and exploratory. The results are exploratory.

Listening skills improved significantly, with a large effect size, and positive trends emerged across other core areas including restatements, self-disclosure for insight, and role-play rehearsal. In a text-based counselling context, where trainees must read client disclosures closely and respond with precision, that kind of gain matters.

What Trainees Gained, and What They Didn't

The gains were not the only story. AI practice did not uniformly raise trainees' perceived competence across the board. Instead, it appeared to help them develop a more calibrated view of their own ability as a future therapist. One participant summed it up simply, "It makes you realise what you know and don't know."

The verdict from the research team is measured: AI-supported simulation is a promising supplement to counsellor and therapist training, not a substitute for human supervision or live role-play, and structured feedback is the active ingredient that makes the practice meaningful.

That measured verdict holds for one four-week pilot. Scaling it across Singapore's counselling profession is where the harder questions begin.

Why This Matters Beyond a Single Pilot Study

In Singapore's multilingual, multiracial context, culturally responsive training scenarios are not optional. Trainees need to practise with the kinds of clients they will actually meet, presenting concerns in the language, cadence, and cultural register of the communities they serve. The research team has flagged this explicitly as a direction for future work, and it is one of the reasons the collaboration with MOHT matters. Getting AI training right for Singapore requires building it for Singapore.

Beyond the local picture, the broader counselling profession is heading into an era where digital and AI-mediated practice is no longer a hypothetical. It is coming, whether educators are ready or not, and the more useful question is who gets to shape how that integration happens.

Dr Tang's work is a clear example of what it looks like when academic leaders choose to shape that conversation rather than react to it. Her partnership with MOHT is also a signal of how Kaplan (Singapore)'s academic team engages with national-level partners on questions that matter for Singapore's healthcare and mental health landscape, contributing evidence where the field needs it most. That national-level engagement also shapes something closer to home: the day-to-day experience of studying at Kaplan (Singapore).

What This Means If You're Studying With Kaplan (Singapore)

Under Dr Tang's leadership, the School of Social & Health Sciences is committed to research-informed teaching, applied learning, and meaningful community engagement. That commitment shows up in the classroom every time a lecturer draws on current research to explain what actually happens in practice,  shaping the way students are prepared for the realities of the profession they are entering.

For students in Kaplan (Singapore)'s counselling and psychology programmes, this means being taught by faculty who are not just delivering content, but actively engaged in the research shaping the future of the field. It means learning from people who are asking the same questions the profession itself is grappling with, and who are close enough to the evidence to bring it into the room with you.

If you are considering a pathway in counselling or psychology, from Diploma and Degree programmes through to a postgraduate qualification such as the Monash University Master of Counselling, you can explore Kaplan (Singapore)'s programmes through our programme finder to see which qualification aligns with where you want to go. You are also welcome to explore our campus before you decide.

Small Study, Bigger Question

Somewhere in Singapore, a trainee counsellor is opening a laptop at home and running through another practice session with an AI partner. It is a small scene, but it points to a larger commitment behind it. Kaplan (Singapore)'s academic leaders are actively asking hard questions about how the professionals of tomorrow should be trained today, and about the tools, evidence, and partnerships needed to answer those questions well.

Speak to a Kaplan (Singapore) programme consultant about pathways in counselling and psychology, from part-time private Diploma through to postgraduate study.