HAI-Team: Human–AI Teaming Therapeutic Companion for Torture Survivors with PTSD

Torture survivors with PTSD experience severe distress between weekly therapy sessions, yet no digital intervention supports this vulnerable, culturally diverse population. This programme develops a generative AI therapeutic companion providing continuous stabilisation and grounding support, co-designed with survivors. Working with Freedom from Torture (FfT), the UK's largest specialist treatment centre, we create a multilingual system bridging care gaps whilst maintaining primacy of human therapeutic relationships. The AI operates within a three-way loop: providing grounding support to clients, generating clinical reports, and adapting strategies based on therapist guidance. We deliver five outputs: a validated therapeutic companion with multi-agent architecture; ethical, privacy and security frameworks addressing survivor-specific threats; human-AI teaming methods for mental health; clinically validated datasets combining recordings, roleplay and synthetic dialogues; and multimodal affect recognition with edge deployment for on-device use. Our consortium—FfT, UCL, University of Hamburg, and CISPA—places survivor co-design at its core. Developing frameworks for the most vulnerable population first, we create methods transferable to other trauma contexts including interpersonal violence, forced displacement, and childhood maltreatment. Datasets, models, and toolkits will be openly released to advance trauma-informed AI research globally. Keywords: generative AI, PTSD, torture survivors, therapeutic companion, human-AI teaming, affect recognition, stabilisation, ethics, privacy.