Baltic Street Wellness Solutions is bringing clinicians, peer leaders and a reality-TV star together at the BRIC Media Arts Center in Fort Greene for its fourth annual symposium, this one built around a question increasingly on the minds of mental health providers: can artificial intelligence support recovery without replacing the human relationships that make it work. The two-day event, titled Roots of Recovery: Reclaiming Human Connection in the Age of AI, is set to explore peer support, mental health, social wellness and what organizers describe as the future of recovery.
Baltic Street Wellness Solutions is a New York City nonprofit that has spent more than three decades providing mental health support and advocacy services to underserved communities, according to Brooklyn Paper. The symposium will bring together peer leaders, clinicians, educators, human resources professionals, community partners and ethical technology stakeholders, per the same report. Ticket information for the event is available through its Eventbrite page, which lists a two-day schedule at BRIC in Brooklyn.
Keynote Will Draw on Federally Funded Research
Dr. Nev Jones, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work with affiliate appointments in psychiatry and the university's Institute for Bioethics, is set to deliver the keynote address, the outlet reports. Jones directs a federally funded research program examining public mental health services, coercion, poverty in mental health contexts and the integration of lived experience into care. At Pitt, Jones also directs PathLab, a research group whose members mostly have direct experience of psychiatric disability and public behavioral health systems, according to the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work.
Jones's broader research centers mental health service-user perspectives in the design of machine-learning-based algorithmic decision systems, and has collaborated on work examining the intersections of AI, public-sector services and social justice. Jones also serves as a co-principal investigator on a five-year study, running from 2024 to 2029, investigating the implementation and impact of Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers across New York State.
What the AI-Loneliness Research Shows
The symposium's framing draws on a growing body of research into how AI companionship affects mental health. According to Brooklyn Paper, a Stanford research study published in August found that people may feel lonelier when engaging with AI. In that study, just under 12% of participants reported using chatbots primarily to seek companionship, according to Stanford HAI, which surveyed 1,131 Character.AI users, 244 of whom donated complete chat transcripts.
Slightly over half of those participants described their AI relationships using terms like friend, companion or romantic partner, and more than 80% of the donated chat sessions revolved around seeking emotional and social support, the Stanford research found. Intense chatbot use among participants with smaller real-world social networks was correlated with a poorer sense of well-being, particularly when companionship was the main motivation for using the technology.
A separate study of 858 U.S. college students, drawing on 2024-2025 Healthy Minds Study data, found that 17% reported using AI for companionship, according to a paper published on ScienceDirect. That research found loneliness was uniquely associated with AI companionship use after adjusting for demographics and mental-health symptoms, though not with general AI use overall. Because the data were cross-sectional, the study's authors cautioned that loneliness should be treated as a candidate predictor requiring confirmation through longitudinal research.
Other researchers have raised sharper alarms. A peer-reviewed paper by Northeastern University researchers found that conversational AI chatbots may cause long-term emotional damage and psychological harm, according to Northeastern Global News. That paper linked chatbot use for companionship and mental-health support to severe negative outcomes, including addiction-like attachment, worsening mental-health symptoms, and some cases involving self-harm.
Not all the research frames AI as purely a risk. The authors of a policy paper examined by Rutgers University argued that AI has the potential to increase access to needed care, reduce the administrative burden on peer supporters and augment peer-support interactions. Still, that same analysis insisted human connection is what makes peer support work, stating that connection cannot be automated, streamlined or replaced, according to Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Sessions on Burnout, Belonging and Ethical AI
Brooklyn Paper reports the symposium will examine how to embrace innovation while protecting trust, dignity, belonging and the relationships that support recovery. Planned sessions are expected to address loneliness and social isolation as structural public health challenges, peer support in the current technological landscape, and ethical, human-centered uses of AI. Organizers also plan to address sustainable peer leadership and workforce development, supervision models meant to prevent burnout and protect peer-role integrity, and community belonging and relationship-centered approaches to recovery.
The event is also expected to explore peer support and community-based connection as strategies to strengthen care systems and improve long-term recovery outcomes, while addressing how technology can increase access and efficiency without sacrificing privacy, dignity and relational care. Taken together, organizers say the goal is to bring people from different fields together to integrate innovation into care while keeping recovery rooted in community relationships.
Baltic Street CEO to Join Netflix Star for Fireside Chat
Among the featured speakers is Tricia Lee Riley, a real estate entrepreneur known from Netflix's Owning Manhattan, who is set to join Baltic Street CEO Taina B. Martinez for a fireside conversation titled Building Trust and Connection in the Age of AI. The pair are expected to explore how professionals across different fields build trust during transitions and how technology may strengthen or weaken relationships, while considering how AI can improve efficiency without sacrificing choice, dignity, empathy, judgment and human connection.
Martinez has framed the symposium's central message in direct terms. “Technology should not change what people need from one another,” Martinez said, according to Brooklyn Paper. Martinez also said recovery involves connection, trust, empathy and unity in addition to access to services, adding that “innovation should strengthen rather than replace human relationships that make recovery possible.”
A Symposium Series Rooted in Isolation and Community
This year's event continues a series Baltic Street has run since 2023, when its first annual symposium, The Evolution of Behavioral Health and the Peer Workforce, was held at the BRIC theater in Downtown Brooklyn and featured keynote speakers including Dr. Patricia E. Deegan, Dr. Felecia Pullen, Jeffrey McQueen and Dr. Johnathan P. Edwards, according to a release carried by AccessNewswire. The 2024 edition focused on combating isolation and strengthening community bonds, with speakers exploring how technology, peer support and innovative outreach can create connections in a divided world, according to Rights and Recovery. A 2025 listing from NAMI Staten Island described the event as two impactful days of conversation, connection and collective action focused on loneliness, social wellness, peer support and community-driven solutions.
