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More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

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Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#61

Post by ttctciyf »

Papazsazsa wrote: post #17

If you have baseline epistemic hygiene there's nothing wrong with using an LLM for advice. If you have baseline epistemic hygeine you'd also recognized this as a B2B sales pitch: Axa sell group health, employee-assistance, and corporate wellbeing products.

Baseline epistemic hygiene would tend to preclude taking llm advice seriously, on any personal matter of consequence, in my view.

However "baseline" epistemic hygiene seems to be a somewhat distant goal for the vast majority now we live in an infosphere essentially comprising a Darwinian nightmare of competing agnotological agendas.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#62

Post by bonoboTP »

nineplay wrote: post #41
dvt wrote: post #2

I'm not a psychologist or a mental health professional, but I think that this might serve a similar purpose as journaling. It's obvious that AI can't "fix your problems," but just writing stuff down can help us process.

I was going though a problem I'm having parents - they are aging, decisions need to be made, that sort of stuff. Writing it out, thinking about it, reflecting further - I probably spent at least and hour just typing in my thoughts as they came to me and honestly I often didn't read the AI responses. All of that got me to realize that the problem wasn't that I wasn't explaining myself well. I kept thinking that if I'd…

That's rubber ducking. Or talking to yourself in the shower. Just feels less silly, because in theory you could have read the response.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#63

Post by bonoboTP »

tonymet wrote: post #39
thewebguyd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With most therapy the goal isn't to cure, but to manage and help cope in a healthy way. There are also plenty of mental illnesses or disorders that have no cure, and a few that are in the DSM because they cause problems with how our society is structured, not necessarily because its a true disorder (its only disorder because it causes issues functioning within societal systems).

They are made up. None of them are empirically or objectively defined

I think it's neither made up, nor actual health care.

It's basically a replacement for having cultural and social guard rails, lots of community, lots of straightforward expectations of roles etc. Today, people are atomized and lost, so they need a friend-and-priest-replacement who has authority but also patience to hear you out and has experience with judgement calls about people's lives.

But all this talk about "healthy" ways of coping etc is basically just there for medicine-envy and insurance reasons.

I think having one's mind/spirit sorted out is quite important, but the specific textbook strategies of today may be indeed mostly hogwash through a strict healthcare lens.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#64

Post by TurdF3rguson »

tonymet wrote: post #6
smokedetector1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree. This cant do as much as genuine therapy (which requires another person, no way around it). But it is helpful in some ways. It helped me talk through something last week and it genuinely enriched my life in that way.

Does therapy actually work? Not by the numbers. tons enrolled, none cured.

It works at least as well as placebo!

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#65

Post by kamaal »

dvt wrote: post #2

I'm not a psychologist or a mental health professional, but I think that this might serve a similar purpose as journaling. It's obvious that AI can't "fix your problems," but just writing stuff down can help us process.

>>It's obvious that AI can't "fix your problems," but just writing stuff down can help us process.

Nobody can fix your problems, but having some one to talk to who listens without judgement and advices accordingly with empathy matters.

Thats what this is about.

Having said this, AI can write out helpful mini booklets on stressful situations in which humans have to work with each other.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#66

Post by kamaal »

jkubicek wrote: post #28
ai_critic wrote: post #23

Is anyone actually surprised? The baseline empathy and emotional intelligence of people, both online and offline, has absolutely tanked--I think Covid was the epoch, but arguably going a lot farther back since then. People are just shitty .

I’m surprised that 6 out of 10 people even use AI, let alone that many people use it as a therapist.

Bought a bed last month, the carpenter delivered it and took photographs of it(with his phone) at our home. Next thing I see is he used Gemini to make the bed sit in various(fictional) rooms and interior design contexts. Like in a WhatsApp status with a number at the footer to call if people wanted a similar bed made.

What impressed me is just how realistic and beautiful it looked.

This is in India, the carpenter is barely literate in English.

You will be surprised just how many people use it these days.

Im guessing a fair bit what could have been described as a designers job is now being done by AI by anyone who has a phone.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#67

Post by blharr »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #35
weakened_malloc wrote: post #27

Is it really any surprise with how expensive psychologists and therapy are?

They’re trained professionals. And we’ve sent demand through the roof by convincing everyone and their dog that they need therapy. Despite it seemingly doing way more harm than good for a lot of people who probably don’t need therapy.

Dp you have any source on that last part?

Not trying to citation needed you, but that claim is quite significant.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#68

Post by celdon25 »

jubilanti wrote: post #52
swores wrote: post #13

> "more than 6 in 10 people declare they already use AI for mental health questions. 42% of them almost always follow the advice it gives them." If these numbers were "of people who regularly use GenAI chat tools" then I'd be surprised it was quite so high already, but not shocked and would find it completely believable. But this seems to be "of all people surveyed", which I'm rather skeptical of - unless their sampl…

This is almost certainly from an online panel survey of people who are paid to take surveys, which is a mini-industry in itself, people try to make a living taking as many as they can for a few cents. The people who fill these out are completely unrepresentative of the general population and quite a few are probably having their openclaw fill it out for them.

Not sure if you saw this, but it says at the footer:

> 1.Methodology: The study was carried out in collaboration with IPSOS among 19,000 adults aged 18 to 75 across 18 countries, between 12 January and 16 February 2026.

Survey methods: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/survey-methods-ipsos-uk

If the Ipsos stock price is any indicator of surveys still being viable in 2026, then I can only wonder what actually motivates comments like this.

That being said, if the actual study cannot be reproduced, it's not science. So I'm looking forward to seeing the method and not the conclusion scrutinized. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance right now, especially in the US, when it comes to perceptions about mental health.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#69

Post by smokedetector1 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #63
tonymet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are made up. None of them are empirically or objectively defined

I think it's neither made up, nor actual health care. It's basically a replacement for having cultural and social guard rails, lots of community, lots of straightforward expectations of roles etc. Today, people are atomized and lost, so they need a friend-and-priest-replacement who has authority but also patience to hear you out and has experience with judgement calls about people's lives. But all this talk about "he…

much therapy is basically what youre saying, but the real deal is not, and is a more genuine healing experience that can only be facilitated by an expert

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#70

Post by blharr »

swores wrote: post #36
Barrin92 wrote: post #21

> "Respondents report spending an average of 5.1 hours a day on screens during the week (excluding working and studying hours and excluding weekends), with screen time rising to 6.4 hours in the Philippines and Thailand. Two out of three people believe that this exposure has several negative, even if moderate, effects on their mental health." 5-6 hours excluding work and study is mental. I know "touching grass" isn't…

It partly depends on whether "time spent on screens" is counting time where a person's attention is primarily on the screen, or time when a screen is actively directed at a person. As a few examples from my life (I'm sure there are plenty of other such scenarios too): - There are quite a few hours in a typical week where my phone screen is showing a video, but just because I can't have it playing in the background (e…

The only case I would consider this being a misleading part of the statistic would be (1), and that type of usage is probably too rare to be significant.

Multitasking "while watching TV" is probably still harmful. Just focus on the task. For me personally, having the screen there has led to increased anxiousness and loss of my sense of time.

Watching TV with a friend is probably less harmful, but its still "just" sitting in front of that screen with little activity going on.

It does kind of depend what you're watching/listening to, but humans need extended time away from that constant stream of media regardless

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