There seems to be a new push for technological problems to social illnesses, and it consistently boggles my mind how so many smart "experts" really think people engaging more with computers/phones/AI instead of, you know, engaging more with actual people will solve any kind of social ill.
Hacker news used to be a site with optimistic people, entrepreneurs, people that did stuff, people that built stuff... now it's all whining about people that are actually doing things. It makes me think of the roosevelt speech... It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually…
A therapy chatbot for depression
51–60 of 77 posts
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#52Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like the real danger is the appeal of sacrificing nuanced treatment for convenient treatment. Your comment pointed out that for many people the choice might boil down to a supportive app or nothing. And as you noted, personal change can take years of dedicated person effort. To me, it seems like the biggest risk in the long term isn't in whether or not people get treated. The article demonstrates that the te…
The overwhelming majority of people who need psychotherapy cannot get access to adequate treatment. Access totally dwarfs every other issue in psychotherapy. Here in the UK, most people with moderately severe depression or anxiety have to wait several months to get access to CBT. That will usually comprise of six one-hour sessions, often with a mental health care practitioner rather than a clinical psychologist. Pati…
Now then, you're right about access to care. If you felt like I was being dismissive of the idea that someone might lack the available funds to get proper treatment for a mental disorder then I apologize. My statement about the long term wasn't to suggest that the access problem is solved now or that it will be solved within the next few decades which in my mind represent the near term as far as timescales go. I simply meant to imply that, assuming the app continues to show promise and is eventually completed as a functional product, and that similar derivative programs aimed at helping treat different mental illnesses can be developed, the concern after those accomplishments becomes ensuring that they don't dissuade patients from pursuing other more appropriate treatment paths once/if their situations improve to that point. I did not mean this as being the only concern or the primary concern afterwards. It was simply the concern I voiced because it was interesting to me when I thought about it and so I shared it.
I'm making assumptions so I may of course be wrong, but my guess is that the latter part of what I just talked about was what upset you. I didn't mean to imply that patients could simply change their situation and go after a different treatment paths. I simply meant that, in a world where the only consideration is treatment appropriateness, I thought it was worth considering the secondary effects app based treatment could have on patient treatment seeking. I didn't mean this to discredit app based treatments as a viable tool and I see no reason they couldn't work in isolation, synergistically with other treatments, or any other variation of "I'm sure they can work" that might be appropriate to this discussion. That seems to be the other interpretation you made from my post, that I was being dismissive of the app compared to other treatments, and this was not something I realized I was communicating. However, since, as far as I can tell, this was the reason you accused me of being churlish I thought it worth clarifying.
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#54There seems to be a new push for technological problems to social illnesses, and it consistently boggles my mind how so many smart "experts" really think people engaging more with computers/phones/AI instead of, you know, engaging more with actual people will solve any kind of social ill.
Hacker news used to be a site with optimistic people, entrepreneurs, people that did stuff, people that built stuff... now it's all whining about people that are actually doing things. It makes me think of the roosevelt speech... It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually…
Depressed from your 2 part time jobs and driving Uber? There's an app for that! Oh, don't use it now - 4chan managed to learn the AI and now it's giving junk advice.
What about working for a better society that accomendates people instead of building crutches to maintain the problematic status quo while trying to make some money for yourself and your friends?
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The status quo is poor people talk to nobody and rich people talk to humans. This is an improvement, no?
No. The status quo is poor people talk to social contacts (eg, friends, family, church community, etc) while rich people talk to professionals (eg, therapists). This is a change in that poor people are being moved to a professionally manufactured tool, which isn't necessarily an improvement -- it's just replacing an established, ad hoc system with an unknown technical one. There's every possibility that it would make…
Everyone talks to social contacts. CBT therapy is something entirely different.
Parts of CBT and DBT are skill training in emotional and cognitive behavioural regulation, that people have not mastered sufficiently on their own. You can teach these skills, and I'd argue they should be mandatory classes on them through middle school. IMHO, they are the most valuable skills that you can learn, bar none.
>There's every possibility that it would make the situation worse and it's hubris on the part of the medical community that a tool built by them is better than informal therapists.
There's hubris in your assumption of how therapy works, or in the tools it incorporates today. This application was released, along with a study demonstrating it's efficacy. It's not the first of it's type - it's just the chatbot format of a self help book. There will be much better versions, I'm sure, over time.
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The overwhelming majority of people who need psychotherapy cannot get access to adequate treatment. Access totally dwarfs every other issue in psychotherapy. Here in the UK, most people with moderately severe depression or anxiety have to wait several months to get access to CBT. That will usually comprise of six one-hour sessions, often with a mental health care practitioner rather than a clinical psychologist. Pati…
I think you either misunderstood my statement or I did a poor job communicating my points. Either way, it seems clear from your response that the position I was trying to present was not the one that was interpreted. I take some amount of resignation in your assumptions about my upbringing based on a single comment but in general I'm more annoyed that instead of simply focusing on rebutting the points you thought I w…
Psychiatric hospitals across the developed world are discharging actively suicidal patients on a daily basis, because they're marginally less suicidal than the dozens of people who are waiting for a bed. Beyond suicide, there are vast increases in drug and alcohol related deaths in impoverished communities. We're in the midst of a mental health emergency and need all the help we can get.
You're speculating about whether an app might hypothetically dissuade people from seeking better treatment at some point in the distant future. I think my response is downright charitable.
Consider another hypothetical scenario. A great famine has struck. Someone is dying every 40 seconds. The UN start helicoptering in bulk quantities of freeze-dried rations. I remark that there is a great danger in providing food aid, because it might dissuade people from eating a balanced diet of fresh fruit and vegetables. What response would I expect?
Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you either misunderstood my statement or I did a poor job communicating my points. Either way, it seems clear from your response that the position I was trying to present was not the one that was interpreted. I take some amount of resignation in your assumptions about my upbringing based on a single comment but in general I'm more annoyed that instead of simply focusing on rebutting the points you thought I w…
If remarking on your privilege constitutes an attack, then so be it. It felt necessary because of the desperate need that exists in the community, which your comment seemed not to recognise in the slightest. Globally, there is a suicide death every 40 seconds; the vast majority of those people were mentally ill but had received no treatment whatsoever. Suicide rates have spiked dramatically in many demographics since…
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
The status quo is poor people talk to nobody and rich people talk to humans. This is an improvement, no?
No. The status quo is poor people talk to social contacts (eg, friends, family, church community, etc) while rich people talk to professionals (eg, therapists). This is a change in that poor people are being moved to a professionally manufactured tool, which isn't necessarily an improvement -- it's just replacing an established, ad hoc system with an unknown technical one. There's every possibility that it would make…
Or, you might talk with friends about what's bugging you, but they're not going to necessarily explore how your feelings relate to external factors, or ask questions to help you understand yourself. A therapist's job is very different from the role of a friend.
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#59https://www.disruptingjapan.com/can-this-startup-solve-japan...
It's a great idea. I hope we see more of it.
Re: A therapy chatbot for depression
#60Feeding this data to Facebook, a company already known to perform unethical psychological experiments on users without consent, is beyond stupid. If the people behind this are aware of Facebook's history and practices, I'd consider it malicious to choose to expose depressed people to their platform.
It's gross-negligence at the very least. Facebook routinely experiments on people in a way that's dangerous to people with mental health issues (and likely even healthy adults). Opening up their treatment to Facebook is incredibly negligent.
is this responsible guys?