Dr Aisha Tariq
Clinical Psychologist & Clinical Director
Illuminated Thinking
About
Dr Aisha Tariq is a Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Director of Illuminated Thinking, a private practice in Glasgow, and founder of Cogent Clinic. Her clinical work focuses on complex trauma, emotional regulation, and integrative approaches including EMDR, Internal Family Systems and schema therapy.
Aisha has spent the last few years building and implementing AI systems within her practice, not as an experiment, but as working infrastructure that handles clinical documentation, referrals, bookings and the operational load that sits behind good clinical care. What continues to surprise her is how many clinicians still feel hesitant about AI, often held back by myths about risk or complexity, when in practice the barriers are far lower than assumed. Most people she speaks to are using it as little more than a chat function, and she thinks that is a significant missed opportunity.
Her interest is less in AI as a concept and idea-generating tool and more in what it actually makes possible: reducing the administrative burden on clinicians, improving consistency across a service, and making good care more sustainable and accessible, without displacing the clinical judgement and human relationships that make therapy work.
Sessions
Introduction
Aisha Tariq and Esther Cole open the summit. Why a day on AI in psychology, why now, and what they hope the profession does with it. More than one in three UK adults say they have used an AI chatbot to support their mental health or wellbeing. Our clients are already having those conversations between sessions, often without telling us, and the questions that raises about safeguarding, ethics, bias and therapeutic work itself will not wait. A short orientation to the day follows: how the programme runs, and where the threads picked up during the morning come back together in the closing panel.