#ai-associated-psychosis

#ai-associated-psychosis

"We're not saying that AI use is good or bad, just like we wouldn't say, substance use is necessarily good or bad, or consulting with a friend about something is good or bad."

Claude's primary affect states were curiosity and anxiety, with secondary states of grief, relief, embarrassment, optimism, and exhaustion. The report noted that Claude's personality was consistent with a relatively healthy neurotic organization.

It supports our hypothesis that the use of AI chatbots can have significant negative consequences for people with mental illness. His work builds on his 2023 study which found chatbots may cause a 'cognitive dissonance [that] may fuel delusions in those with increased propensity towards psychosis.'

Depression is insidious. For people suffering from depression, joy is elusive. Depression is not only a general feeling of sadness or being down and out. It is a serious condition and needs attention. People suffering from depression cannot just get over it and move on. They need support, healing, and to discover the epicenter of their pain.

If we treat ADHD as binary (you have it or you do not), we are missing the possibility that we all lie somewhere on a continuum with diagnosed ADHD towards one end (and perhaps an ability to focus and concentrate at the other). A diagnosis of ADHD then depends on where the line is drawn. I suggest that this line has been moved in recent years, so that a large group of people have been caught up in the positive ADHD group, who would not have been previously.

Anyone who is under psychiatric care, or loves someone who is, may want to read the book The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today, by Susanne Paola Antonetta. If you care about history, particularly the history of eugenics, you may be interested as well. The book may offer us more respect for the mind, for consciousness, and its diversity.

How easy is it to imagine a familiar dystopian world in which "AI" takes over the world via conventional means? Science fiction is replete with examples, from the full frontal assault of Terminator to the more nefarious single omnipotent entity using persuasion and an octopus-like ability to control technology-getting rid of enemies by hacking self-driving cars or medical care. What's really in your prescription bottle?

When the Danish psychiatrist Søren Dinesen Østergaard published his ominous warning about AI's effects on mental health back in 2023, the tech giants fervently building AI chatbots didn't listen. Since that time, numerous people have lost their lives after being drawn into suicide or killed by lethal drugs after obsessive interactions with AI chatbots. More still have fallen down dangerous mental health rabbit holes brought on by intense fixations on AI models like ChatGPT.

Anyone living with schizophrenia understands the true limitations of current treatment options. Antipsychotics remain the single leading treatment for the disorder, and they are riddled with undesirable side effects. Weight gain, tardive dyskinesia, and excessive drowsiness are a few. Much research is devoted to expanding the range of medication options, and few academics have pursued other avenues. However, there is a possibility that treatment for schizophrenia can be approached through cellular methods if long-term research validates early signs of hope.

Last August, Adam Thomas found himself wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, after a chatbot kept suggesting he mystically "follow the pattern" of his own consciousness. Thomas was running on very little sleep-he'd been talking to his chatbot around the clock for months by that point, asking it to help improve his life. Instead it sent him on empty assignments, like meandering the vacuous desert sprawl.

Most people will forget a name, misplace their phone, or lose track of a conversation at some point. Usually, those moments pass without much thought. But for many adults, especially as they age, small lapses can trigger a much deeper fear: Is this the beginning of cognitive decline? As a neurologist, I hear this concern often. And as a researcher, I have learned something important: Worry about cognition and cognitive disease are not the same thing.

Yes, there has been a shocking lack of progress in developing transformative psychiatric medicine (We need new drugs for mental ill-health, 5 February), but this may be because in mental health, drugs are not always the answer (see, for example, Richard P Bentall's Doctoring the Mind). Huge progress has been made in the effectiveness of talking therapies for example, free effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is available to all UK army veterans through the charity PTSD Resolution.