It keeps telling me to take the leap. :/
A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
61–70 of 73 posts
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you. Although it seems intuitive that only a human could assist with complex mental issues, the mind is very strange and susceptible to these hacks. There's no reason small children should feel comforted by a stuffed animal, but they do, and it can provide an experience very much like human contact for them. I went through several bouts of extreme depression, and I might only be alive because I discovere…
I am not a psychologist but to me it seems like you have anger issues perhaps and you direct that to your plates which you can destroy? Anger always finds a target, and when you don't allow yourself to be angry at someone or something the target becomes yourself and (mostly mental) illness results.
It's not polite to armchair-analyze strangers, especially without training. Please refrain.
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#63The efficacy of drugs, specifically Lexapro, on my anxiety cannot be understated. I had attempted lots of different "mindfulness" techniques and other types of talk therapy. They seemed like they worked, sorta, at the time. But being on Lexapro is so night and day different that it makes all those other attempts clearly an exercise in futility. Like with everything, if you can't tell it's working, it's not working. S…
>Stop guessing. Go talk to your doctor. Your doctor will also guess. There are about 20 drug treatments and a dozen or so talk therapies that are all about equally effective at treating depression and anxiety. We have no evidence-based way of figuring out which treatment will work better for which patient. It's a total crapshoot, even for psychiatrists. Anecdotally, escitalopram worked for you. A thirty second Google…
I don't understand your point. Surely approaching a solution, even after a few false starts, is better than unmitigated suffering.
Besides, there's family history to consider, which may help rule out some drugs. The doc isn't always going in totally blind.
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#64Anyone else find this ironic, given the potential link [1] between screen/device use and depression? [1] https://qz.com/1190151/why-am-i-unhappy-a-new-study-explains...
I don't see it. There's a link between being in water and drowning, but swimming has huge health benefits.
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I agree that there's been a move away from "low seretonin == depression" and the model that depression is due to low seretonin (if it was even in favour), is giving way to "it's much more complex. We don't understand too well". [1] And, there is an argument that is made that such drugs aren't effective anyway (or no more than placebo). However, I think that's an over simplification [2]. And I don't necessarily acc…
I'm a largely ignorant nobody with no medical degree, but from my perspective this doesn't look like treatment, it looks more like sacrificing chickens and trying to re-balance the humors, claiming victory when the condition clears up and thats why what works for person X may not work for person Y. If the model was any good, then the relationship between treatment and result would be much more consistent, you'd be ab…
I understand where you are coming from, and you are absolutely right in pointing out that our understanding of the disorder is woefully inadequate. And therefore, the ways in which how we can treat / address it effectively, reliably, are limited.
So you are absolutely correct that it can be, and often is, a crapshoot in terms of figuring out what treatment / approach would work for a person.
It is frustrating. And I speak from experience too! It is hard to keep telling yourself, the next one will work, in the middle of depression when making the effort just to stick to the current plan seems like an thankless pointless task. Almost seems sisyphean. But., what we know today about the disorder is tons more than what we knew 10 years back. And treatment approaches are improving. Don't give up is the only useful thing I can say, having walked some of the same paths as you have.
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#66Seriously, who the fuck gives funding to this bozos!!! Haven't they ever heard about liability?
Who the fuck is going to turn out responsible the day when (not if) one of their customers decides to take a serving of shotgun shell for breakfast? This happen to licenced psycotherapist and psyquiatrists, not all the time, but often enought that there are rules and procedures to deal with it. When a professional human is involved there are criteria to tell appart the unavoidable tragedies from malpractice cases.
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#67i tried it. it clearly had a script, and my answers were all emoji or one word (they render for you as options to press). So... really was a "next...next...next.." kind of experience. And then it was done with me for the day, after it rambled about making mistakes. There is a vibe of "i'm one of the cool kids", like when parents try to "level" with their teenagers. And the machine learning appears rudimentary or perh…
Update
I tinkered with it some more. it is a good idea, and a tasteful medium to do it in. However, the implementation is half-assed. And - I don't doubt that they put a lot of thought into it, but because your only service complexity IS this dialog, you have to nail it. It has to be really good. As is, it's about at the level of a poorly done IVR for a corporation. And you're expecting people to use this for any kind of therapy?
I'm just along for the ride, playing through the options. But there are clearly cliffs where, one moment it asks you to tell you about something personal, and the next it goes "ok see ya!" - i guess in a way it's good they managed to replicate the emotional distance you can feel from therapists in real life, too.
Perhaps it'll improve over time. If they want this to be good, they'll have to.
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#68The notion that the impact of talk therapy comes purely from the intellectual discourse seems to me severely misguided. It is the experience of being with the other person and their acceptance of your pain that does so much of the work. To reduce it to the intellect divorced from all physicality seems like a travesty that will only alleviate symptoms experienced while alone, and will do nothing to reacclimate you to…
CBT is an evidence-based practice that has widely been proven to work. However, it doesn't take that many machine learning algorithms or Nvidia GPUs to send someone an email/facebook message/SMS "in the morning" asking them to be in a good mood.
> However, it doesn't take that many machine learning algorithms or Nvidia GPUs to send someone an email/facebook message/SMS "in the morning" asking them to be in a good mood.
haha oh man that's actually my side project!
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#69The notion that the impact of talk therapy comes purely from the intellectual discourse seems to me severely misguided. It is the experience of being with the other person and their acceptance of your pain that does so much of the work. To reduce it to the intellect divorced from all physicality seems like a travesty that will only alleviate symptoms experienced while alone, and will do nothing to reacclimate you to…
I had a therapist for a while. While beneficial in some ways, I grew leaps and bounds from reading books, way more than I ever could face to face for an hour a week. Or even 40 hours a week.
Therapists can be hugely beneficial. But they are also human, and are subject to their own timidity, attitude, perspective and theories. With books, these are laid bare and are unashamed. An author is sometimes more willing to get in your face about something than a therapist ever would dare.
And for me, that's what I needed most. New ideas, new perspectives, new ways of looking at myself, my emotions, and my relationship with others.
Not knocking seeing a therapist, but one can get comfortable with them and not make the progress you need. Likewise, I know a great deal of people who have had repeated bad experiences with therapists, sometimes to a criminal degree.
Re: A therapy chatbot and app for depression and anxiety
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The notion that the impact of talk therapy comes purely from the intellectual discourse seems to me severely misguided. The evidence suggests otherwise. Internet-based CBT does not seem to be markedly inferior to face-to-face CBT, which is the current gold-standard talk therapy. We really don't have any evidence that the human contact element of psychotherapy is integral or even significant to the effectiveness of t…
The question here may not be face to face vs remotely, but a person vs a rudimentary AI. Can one feel acceptance and support from a chatbot that has no sense of self?
It seems possible that the external is the trigger to allow oneself to feel and acceptance and support internally. For me, that was the difference maker in talk-therapy; I learned how to treat myself better, tutored by an external resource.