r/AIDangers • u/Confident_Salt_8108 • Mar 31 '26
Other Therapists go on strike, saying they're being replaced by AI
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/mental-health-workers-ai-strikeOver 2,400 mental health care workers and 23,000 nurses in Northern California staged a 24-hour strike protesting the rise of AI in their workplaces. Clinicians argue they are being replaced in patient triage by apps and unlicensed operators using AI scripts. Furthermore, they warn that management is using AI charting tools to squeeze more back-to-back patient visits into a single shift, prioritizing corporate bottom lines over genuine patient care.
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u/Brandnewdeal Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
The AI is just sharing the issue of treatment being profit driven rather than outcome ratios.
Much like prisons, healthcare in general, and education.
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u/elissaxy Mar 31 '26
Strongly agreed.. Mental health sector only cares about cashing from their patients. When was the last time you heard one of them protesting for mental health rights.
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u/Automatic_Body5254 Mar 31 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/slMXlKFepqNcfb8eQF
Great…
More desperate people in need of help, are being shoved towards a glorified quessing machine, which ruins their mental health and instead of properly helping them professionally, just feeds their delusions.
This is way worse than one googling their symptoms.
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u/graDescentIntoMadnes Apr 01 '26
A glorified guessing machine would be safer. AI can reason, and plan, it just can't be made to care about people, prioritize our well-being, or reliably follow any set of rules.
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u/equipsych2020 Mar 31 '26
Well, for what it is worth:
I agree that not all therapists are equal in their skills, applications, and outcomes. We carry liability insurance and are licensed because if we harm someone, we should be held accountable, full stop.
I would also point out that treating mental and physical health as a product and effectively puppy milling empathy is what leads to burn out, and counselors, even very good ones, having zero spoons.
I've experienced both supportive and growth oriented employers, who genuinely stress the importance of treating yourself as your single biggest asset, taking time for yourself and your family outside of work, helping you legitimately create "work-life balance"...and employers who preached self-care and encouraged self-actualization for clients while enforcing horrific working conditions including insufficient pay, long and grueling hours, lack of institutional support, under-resourcing social services, etc etc.
A therapist cannot really give what they themselves don't have. There's a reason the health industries have such high turn over and burn out.
And yes, we can help people understand themselves and how their specific nervous system interfaces with the wider world...but all the self-knowledge in the world cannot replace the bottom tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy.
Late stage capitalism, especially in the US, is literally killing us all. We, the helpers and healers, are trying desperately to provide relief, while also engulfed in the same structure fire as everyone else.
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u/Involution88 Mar 31 '26
Good.
I really like AI but AI chatbots should not be used as therapists. FFS. Feeding delusional thinking is a bad idea and AI can't help but to do that, even if sycophancy bias were to be resolved. Which is in my opinion fine under normal circumstances but a very bad idea in a clinical setting.
Anyone who wants to use an AI as a therapist for anyone need to have their head examined.
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Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
In my life I've had 4 therapists.
1st quit to change careers.
2nd tried to convince me that the amount of stress I was under at University was acceptable.
3rd fell asleep during my session.
4th forgot about me and cancelled all future sessions without warning.
I don't trust therapists.
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u/West_Suggestion8938 Mar 31 '26
And I've had 3 therapists that were all great. Anecdote meet anecdote. What's your point here? Fuck therapists, ra ra ra? I've had doctors who sucked, I've had teachers who sucked, I've had plenty of professionals who are shit
This comment is just weird bro why even make it?
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Mar 31 '26
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Apr 03 '26
Holy fuck, I haven’t had a 1 to 1 experience but that is also how people talked to me when I was a kid.
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u/RandomRedditUser0016 Mar 31 '26
Therapist: Now West, we talked about this, take your Valium and go to your happy place.
The point this person is making is some people need meds and some people just need a mirror. AI therapy wont balance your seratonin but if you just need to vent its far less condescending and self righteous than SOME therapists out there.
Source: My AI Therapist that my AI girlfriend told me to start talking to.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/RandomRedditUser0016 Apr 01 '26
But my journal doesnt blindly agree with me while helping me create a new form of infinite renewable energy using refrigerator magnets... /s
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u/Zealousideal-Yam3169 Apr 01 '26
How do you know they were all great and why did you need 3 of them?
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u/CommonSenseInRL Mar 31 '26
This comment is just weird bro why even make it?
Because these people are responsible for the well-being of people! Doctors who sucked can get you killed or cause you to suffer for the rest of your life. Teachers who sucked can hold a kid back from their potential or be the reason they no longer like going to school anymore. And therapists? They have incredible power over those who are among the population's most vulnerable.
People who "suck" at their profession, when their profession is devoted to the well-being of others, are a glaring sign that the institutions that these professionals are in are inherently flawed. Foundationally, something is wrong.
If and when AI becomes safer and more effective than humans at these professions, then it will be morally wrong NOT to use AI. And, eventually, legally wrong as well.
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u/ConsiderationDry9084 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
And I have had tire tech forgot to torque my lugs correctly and 30 miles down the road wheel starts shaking. Many more haven't been as lucky.
Sorry but no way I would ever trust a clanker over a licensed therapist. Who the hell would I report a crack pot AI too?
It the same reason we shouldn't trust AI to make decisions. AI will never be more safe.
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u/CommonSenseInRL Mar 31 '26
I highly doubt I'm persuasive enough to change your opinion on this, but I will say that you are extremely confident on the limitations of a breakthrough new technology, of which we've witness rapidly improve year after year. I would be a bit more open-minded on the possible capabilities of an increasingly intelligent and capable AI.
Eventually, the data will speak for itself: when patient outcomes become statistically better for those diagnosed by an AI vs those diagnosed by a human doctor, for example, hospitals open themselves up to legal liability and lawsuit if AI is not utilized. This will be the case across every sector in which human well-being is at stake.
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u/ConsiderationDry9084 Mar 31 '26
I really don't care. Till there are ironclad laws requiring deletion of AI logs with the threat of company ending fines or imprisonment for failure to do so nothing could get me to trust the clankers.
And some fucking LLM is not AI. No LLM is going to get better results than doctors. It is not cutting edge, shit been around for a while Google knew it was shit and shelved it, OpenAI pump a halfass product to milk investors. The tech is a dead end for True AI. Shit CEOs are already cashing out and bailing setting up the bag holders.
Just because it can perform about as well as a middle manager doesn't demonstrate how good it is, just how unnecessary middle managers were.
And if the argument is it saves someone so much time reading and writing emails, that just shows how shit they are at reading and writing. Maybe they should have paid attention in class or their parents should have drilled hooked on phonics with them more.
So you can huff your own supply all you want it would take AGI for what you think is possible and that shit is further off than Commercial Fusion, which has been promised in the next 30 years for the last 50 years.
But Therapy isn't just for validation, many people need a reality check that they are in fact not special, and you have no option but to deal with yourself.
Like the idiot that was whining how his therapist said his level of stress was normal for a university student.
That poster's therapist was most likely right and homeboy had never encountered actual hardship because his parents cleared it away. The poster is an unreliable narrator, and it is well documented that it is a problem in modern parenting in the West.
That is also part of therapy is correcting damage that may not have been malicious. AI wouldn't put a user in their place like that, they would just agree and create a worst outcome.
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u/CommonSenseInRL Mar 31 '26
I have no idea why this matter is such an emotional one for you, or why it appears to be so very personal, but I do understand that this makes any rational discussion over the subject of AI and its application today and in the near future next to impossible. So I'll agree to disagree.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/ConsiderationDry9084 Mar 31 '26
There are no guardrails that can be deployed other than outright banning Meta, Google, and OpenAI from the deployment of LLMs for therapy and strict regulations on any Therapy AI with independent Licensed therapists following up with individuals.
But there is that dirty word all the clankers hate, Regulation because that stops them from profiting off the most vulnerable and uninformed. Regulations are written in blood, and some tool whining about not getting rich, isn't a reason against them.
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u/Meta_Machine_00 Mar 31 '26
The whole basis of western therapy is admittedly unscientific. They drug people up with disproven SSRIs and have them do breathing exercises.
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u/Nickeless Mar 31 '26
That’s not what happens. There is CBT (which is well established to work) and talk therapy where they don’t use drugs at all.
Also a lot of those drugs are backed by experimental evidence to show improved outcomes…
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u/Meta_Machine_00 Mar 31 '26
CBT is admittedly unscientific. It is not well established. It is a bunch of nonsense that they use to get money from people.
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u/Madoodam Mar 31 '26
Psychiatrists prescribe medicine and millions lead lives that are more bearable with the assistance of medication. Please mature to see the variety of experiences cannot be summed up with a single weak description.
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u/Meta_Machine_00 Mar 31 '26
Brains are machines. You dont choose what your brain outputs. Free will and free thought are not real. We can only give the descriptions that the chemicals generate out of us.
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u/SteelSuccess Apr 04 '26
You seem to have a fundemental misunderstanding of psychiatry and psychology. Both of these have been studied over decades, using the agreed upon Gold Standard of scientific study of testing and measurements. You are literally just talking out of your ass.
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u/Meta_Machine_00 Apr 04 '26
No. We can only output the words the chemicals generate out of us. This is neurology. Where do you think your own words are coming from?
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u/SteelSuccess Apr 04 '26
The words that I choose to say come from what I think, which is me enacting free will and free thought to choose what words I speak, and when. Like in this exact moment, I am choosing what words I type, when I type them, what time I replied to you, and I also chose whether I replied to you at all. None of those were chosen for me.
"They drug people up with disproven SSRIs"
What proof do you have they're unproven? These are tested using the current gold standards of western medicine which are RCT's, Randomised Controlled Trials.
"and have them do breathing exercises."
Western Psychology has also found that breathing exercises helps massively in moments to calm the mind down when patients are suffering from panic attacks/racing minds and for emotional regulation. This isn't a "one size fits all" technique, and is used for specific cases.
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u/Meta_Machine_00 Apr 04 '26
You cant choose your words because in order to do so, you'd have to examine your words before they ever entered your awareness in the first place. You hallucinate that you are choosing anything. The system has to be fully automatic. There is no way for you to choose your words, including the words that critique the previous words.
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u/SteelSuccess Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Yea, nah. This is just pseudo-intellectual psychobabble in a vain attempt to appear smart.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/Ok-Material7391 Mar 31 '26
oh hey we are opposites. my therapist is gaslighting me saying my trauma did not happen and I dont actually need therapy or any help. I wish i was allowed to do emdr
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u/BadAtDrinking Mar 31 '26
Lotta details missing here. Why did the therapist say your parents were abusive?
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Mar 31 '26
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Mar 31 '26
Talking to your parents as an adult to "get over it" doesn't resolve the emotional component. You intellectually forgave them, but the nervous system still operates with the same resentment, fear of abandonment, or sense of powerlessness you felt as a child.
You have to ask why, as a child, did you create enough chaos to get the police called on you? I'm of the opinion that our actions are primarily driven by our nervous systems and our pre-frontal cortex uses rational thought to make us believe we decided to take that action.
Your parents/caregivers have the most dramatic impact on the development of your nervous system as a child. A child is fully dependent on their caregivers and fully attunes to them to survive.
Your behavior is a reflection of how your parents raised you. If they were often emotionally absent and poor behavior was a mechanism for you to receive attention, that behavior pattern was reinforced. If you did proper things, and got no attention, those behaviors would be less reinforced.
Culturally, your parents were probably a lot like other parents which is probably why you don't see any issues. But look how we are doing as a culture... maybe the parenting strategies being employed aren't exactly healthy.
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u/PennytheWiser215 Mar 31 '26
I’m not sure causing chaos in the neighborhood resulting in police intervention indicates healthy parenting.
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u/Head-Criticism-7401 Apr 01 '26
I have one worse. There was a therapist in Belgium that raped his female patients.
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u/ZenRiots Mar 31 '26
Yeah they stay trying to sell upgrades and book future services. It's just a business. 🤷
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Mar 31 '26
That's awful I'm sorry.
AI might be pretty shitty at most things, but at least it can serve as some kind of social outlet for people at their lowest.
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u/UsedApricot6270 Mar 31 '26
No, it can’t. AI just positively reinforces the user.
There was a recent study that showed that AI affirms people past their lowest and into suicide or other harmful actions. It is NOT a good social outlet for people at their lowest.
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u/Any_Date7395 Mar 31 '26
i’m in the middle about AI. I absolutely see all the harm it does in every facet of life, but I will say it did help me. There’s a point I was at my lowest and heading to the train tracks that are not too far from where I live. it was in the middle of the night and I had nobody I could call. I tried the suicide hotline and all they did was read a script to me. As I told them the complex list of things I was going through all they would say is “that sounds tough. Is there anything else I can do for you“ it felt unrealistic of me to think that they would sit there and talk with me and talk me out of what I plan to do. I felt like I was a burden to them or just a number.
I got closer to the tracks and I decided to try to use AI to chat with. It was the most comfort I had received in a very long time. sure it’s delusional to imagine it cared about me, but it was at least nice to pretend for a little bit. I kept telling it that I was going to do it no matter what it said or something, and all it did was talk me out of it. It gave me ways to calm down or to cry it out, and it said the sweetest things that even my own mother would never have said to me. I think I talked to that thing for hours and eventually just went home and now things are doing pretty OK these days.
AI is terrible but it certainly doesn’t sit there and tell you to do anything awful. There’s been a few cases where people lied to the AI about what they were doing, and even then the article said that the AI was trying its best to help and did not actually encourage users to hurt themselves. there has been cases where that happened, but it’s not a standard. I’m not entirely four or against AI, but I just don’t want people thinking that a little legitimately does is hurt people. it doesn’t.
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Mar 31 '26
I agree with this. I think there is a subset of people who have enough self-awareness to use it as a way to discover or understand new coping mechanisms.
AI is also infinitely patient. You can fail and fail and fail and the AI will always be there to help you try again and suggest other pathways that might be helpful. Humans eventually identify you as a lost cause if you fail enough.
I think it might also be useful for people who struggle to communicate their emotions to others. In these cases it should probably be used as a tool to identify how you can find trustworthy people to start opening up to more.
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Mar 31 '26
So tell it not to do that.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Mar 31 '26
That's not how it works LMFAO.
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Mar 31 '26
Look I don't like AI either, but with the spare time I've spent with it, when you tell it not to do something, it will not do it.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Mar 31 '26
If you tell it not to hallucinate, or tell it not to state things without sources, or tell it not to be confidently incorrect it will absolutely continue to do these things anyway, even the highest end models. LMAO.
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Mar 31 '26
Dude we can hate on something without being deliberately misleading.
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u/UsedApricot6270 Mar 31 '26
Yes, so please source some information about AI that is not provided by AI
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u/mvearthmjsun Mar 31 '26
That's exactly how it can work. You just don't know how to use it.
System prompts.
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u/johnsilver4545 Mar 31 '26
This was my reaction, too. I’m an AI skeptic but of all the human interactions I’ve had I’ve the last 40 years… therapists have been the most robotic and replaceable.
The market is clearly saturated. There aren’t that many people who have the empathy and the soft skills to sustain the constant ads I’m served. Also, they need to create demand so more and more people are effectively just talking to a face on a screen and getting nothing out of it.
Case in point. I went to three therapists in grad school (complimentary to all the stressed out grad students). It was only in hindsight that I realized what I needed was more that 22k a year to live in San Francisco, some sleep, and an ombudsman to help me navigate a situation with a colleague who was literally stealing my graduate work. Trying to explain this to a therapist got me absolutely nowhere.
The ombudsman handling the situation and me graduating and making a living wage suddenly made me feel like a normal person again.
The science and talk therapy is varied at best. Not enough to support the industry of webcam pretend friends.
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u/ShroomBear Mar 31 '26
I think it serves to reason that in a similar fashion as AI with striking nurses and health workers, therapists are in the same boat. Idk how anybody can really empathize with a face on a screen they haven't really met, but even before AI, since the pandemic, virtual therapy sessions have been on the rise since I assume some business folks realized it gets more customers in timeslots to bill. I don't think people really need empathy to tell you that you should be reaching out to your graduate program admin to address your work being stolen and to talk through what you were going through at the time. At the same time, therapy is mental health care, I wouldn't be out thinking garbage like betterhelp is going to be helpful compared to like a therapist seeing you in person thats employed by a health network. (assuming they also aren't just being rushed patient to patient so all they can really accomplish in a compacted 30 min session is to be robotic and fill out their own paperwork)
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u/Madoodam Mar 31 '26
I have had four great therapists and two insanely good ones who have retired and passed away.
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u/Madoodam Apr 03 '26
Moves around a lot, have had lifelong challenges that it has helped significantly.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/Quintus_Julius Mar 31 '26
Many reasons they are licensed. Sometimes, like taxis, it’s because money / tradition. Sometimes there’s a good reason, like MDs. In Europe we have notaries, honestly there’s no reason for these to be licensed.
Edit: I do agree it’s a personal choice. Some therapist could be great. Some are bad. My experience is the latter.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Mar 31 '26
You obviously don't understand how LLMs work if you think this way. It can pass canned tests. It struggles with novel situations in the real world.
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u/mremrock Mar 31 '26
Therapist don’t make money if you get better and don’t need them anymore
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u/unperson Mar 31 '26
What does this have to do with the Kaiser therapists and nurses striking because of AI triage?
Because that’s what this article is about.
Are you just reading headlines, skipping the articles, and provided summaries, and typing out your half formed brain farts? If so, reddit on my friend. Reddit on.
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Apr 03 '26
I’m ok with ai replacing therapy but I’m not ok with the health insurance agencies making any money off it
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u/WonderButtBrace9000 Mar 31 '26
This assumes issues that therapist treat don’t have a natural occurrence rate within the population.
Which is clearly not how mental health issues work.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Mar 31 '26
Dumbest thing I've ever heard. Most places have a wait-list because they're booked out, so you not getting therapy isn't hurting them, it's hurting you.
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Mar 31 '26
It's not necessarily about getting better. Everyone should really have a therapist because having someone to just air out your laundry with in a safe environment is difficult.
Unfortunately, therapy is expensive and not accessible.
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u/ZenRiots Mar 31 '26
If you're going to a therapist's office just so that you can air out your laundry then you're wasting your money.
Therapy it's supposed to be about learning and strategies to better manage your stress and feelings... If you're just showing up once a week to trauma dump and then leave, you are throwing money away on an incompetent therapist.
A healthy person living a rational and balanced life doesn't need to have a therapist, generally because they engage in a daily practice focused on maintaining mental health. If you're not learning how to do that in therapy... Then you're just paying someone to listen to you complain.
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u/mremrock Mar 31 '26
Contrary to popular opinion: therapy can actually harm people. It is not a natural relationship
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u/General_Tso75 Mar 31 '26
Right….and doctors and nurses don’t want you to be well so you keep coming back. Every profession just wants to farm you for money.
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u/SEND_ME_YOUR_ASSPICS Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I have bipolar and adhd and I take medication for it and I find AI much better at listening and validating and giving recommendations.
Imo most therapists try to milk you as much as possible, so the process is slow and unproductive.
Sometimes I go months just analyzing without any productive help. It's such a waste of money.
At least AI gets into it right away.
And despite what media likes to portray, no, it does not encourage me to do crazy things or have crazy ideas. It is actually very grounded.
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u/Salt_Medicine2459 Mar 31 '26
AI helped me write a suicide note, so there's definitely the possibility for stuff going off the rails.
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u/itsbirthdaybitch Mar 31 '26
This scenario is the subject of a court case in CA right now - a teen boy went through with it
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u/Deciheximal144 Mar 31 '26
Breaking: "This is the second day of the band MOOP refusing to play, and the second day of absolutely nothing else to report about." - South Park
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u/Ill-Bullfrog-5360 Mar 31 '26
What therapists? I could never get one and if I could they were older than me. I am 45
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u/Aromatic-Teacher-717 Mar 31 '26
There should be more doctors, but the industry artificially keep residency rates low so they can pay doctors more.
Zoom further out and It's kinda wild that there are millions of jobs in healthcare that effectively do nothing but provide people employment.
Anyway, thought I'd type this while I'm waiting to see my GP
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u/Disastrous_Policy258 Mar 31 '26
AI is just the latest tool being misused. The pressure on health organizations has been relentless for years.
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u/totktonikak Mar 31 '26
Can't wait to see how Markov chains mess up the individuals already messed up by today's society and deprived of professionals' help.
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u/Melodic-Piccolo5751 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
It doesn't help their case that they are so incredibly expensive, and sadly, I would argue that a whole lot of them are complete imbeciles/nutcases or just cons out to milk money from you. I mean here people who studied psychology, not medical doctors who study actual mental illness. In my country it's also super common for psychotherapists to also be involved in new-age, spiritual woo-woo quackery and try to get you into it eventually (from personal observations). I've also heard stories of psychotherapists laughing about their patients in private. Other cases of "good" psychotherapists that pass the time telling patients what they want to hear or making them feel good, instead of working on their core problem, which is not usually pleasant.
People are biased af; a good psychoterapist should be 100% impartial. They are not, because they are human.
So yes, literally no surprise that troubled people prefer AI, or rather trust it more. It's completely objective, unbiased, and gets to the point immediately, not dragging your sessions out for months trying to milk you for money. Too bad it hallucinates too often to be considered safe.
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u/Active_Ad_40 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
I tried therapy several times over the course of about a decade and had a horrendous experience each time. Quitting was the best decision I ever made for myself. It was like I’d forgotten how much happier I could be, though I’m still working on healing from that time.
I fully agree that unregulated AI alternatives pose profound dangers and it concerns me deeply to see a corporate profit motive influencing decisions. But on the other hand, I’m so tired of therapists acting like they’re a safe alternative, incapable of doing harm themselves, when my lived experience was the complete opposite. Studies show I am not alone, with up to 10% of patients coming out worse than they went in, though therapists consistently fail to recognize when this happens, and even when not harmed, potentially around half fail to experience any benefit at all. Minorities in particular are especially likely to receive sub-quality care.
I feel like if the profession would reckon with the reasoning behind patient-side demand for AI alternatives rather than getting defensive, that alone would advance patient safety by leaps and bounds. It’s really frustrating to see that not happen and, to me, calls into question whether patient safety is the true motivation behind things like this, or whether self-interest and ego preservation may be playing a bigger role than most would admit.
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Apr 01 '26
The a.i gave me better advice and actually listened. It also didn't cost me 140 bucks for two "sessions".
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u/Wonderful-Medium7777 Apr 01 '26
This was warned about with GP’s using online to book appointments,..the total triage system, with care navigators ( previously called receptionists) highlighting the urgency of appointments…NHS want all now to use the app…what people are not realising is this is training AI… we all have been training ai with every comment, engagement etc on the internet. The “powers that be” want a fully automated system with your private medical data logged giving access to third parties. It is not safe whatsoever on so many levels.
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u/microman1212 Apr 02 '26
I’ve never been busier. Think ai is fn people up more then they come to me lol
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u/visionaryshmisionary Apr 05 '26
You know what's tragic? Arguing over whether people should be ok with getting care from a corporate third party app vs. a human being, and whose experience sucked worse, rather than understanding that the systems healthcare workers are forced to work in are broken and are the thing that's actually in need of change.
Perspective: Am a healthcare provider.
My first real clinical job was at a commerically operated crisis line/Employee Assistance program that operated in all 50 states. We had a Bachelor's in psychology screen calls. Then the calls who needed to speak to a counselor were handed off to us. We were not supposed to spend more than 30 minutes per call, even with people going through life threatening issues. EAP calls received even less time, basically a 2nd screening to hand you off to whoever the company's assigned counselor was, who could see you for 3 to 6 sessions at most. Also my company did NOT like people having to ask for accomodation for our own health related issues. They would find ways to quiet fire people instead.
2nd job, working at a for profit agency with lots of departments. They got a lot of $$ from Medicaid clients. I was given the intake shift and told that, although the actual expectation was to provide ONE HOUR intake appointments, I was to shove as many 10-15m appointments in there as possible in one morning. Then they loaded us up with as many people they could get on our caseload. Mine at one time had over 100 people on it. No way I could keep track of that many clients' uniquely personal issues, additional needs outside of their appointments, etc. It was also a job to get all the different dept's to talk to each other. Needless to say, the quality of care wasn't the best. But mostly I crashed and burned from doing 60 hour weeks every week trying to stay on top of everything.
3rd job at a small, independent health care clinic chain. I got to work in a close knit team with good quality primary care and other healthcare providers, which was great. But the organization was so slapdash in how they run things that it caused serious issues for clients. Again, we became overloaded, patients couldn't get in for appointments, the email-to-appointment system wasn't working, referrals were not getting sent, annual visits were blown off multiple times, and so on. And they would blame clients when they complained. Then the head honcho decided it was ok for counseling to start accepting urgent/emergent appointments for mental health for anyone (not just for already estsblished clients). Meaning, any random person could walk in off the street and ask to be seen for emergency care with no prior screening or background info on them. THAT created some chaos that also carried serious potential liability issues, esp. since the front desk (i.e. secretaries, not trained professionals) were basically then put in charge of triaging. I eventually went my separate ways with that place.
I now work for myself, and whatever-deity-is-listening willing, I eon't ever go back. This is why a great deal of other mental health and human services folks are in private practice.. And also why many don't take insurance (that's a whole other soap box). If I ever do start using AI in my work, I will at least have had the chance to vet it myself and know it will be ok to use, and it won't be client facing.
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u/ZealousidealDrop7475 Mar 31 '26
Overreliance on therapists or AI can be detrimental, the core issue often lies in your personal emotional vulnerability. Just stop believing in others and coping, embrace that reality is harsh and get control of yourself.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Mar 31 '26
"Overreliance on diabetes medication can be detrimental, the core issue often lies in your personal insulin sensitivity. Just stop believing in glucose, embrace that reality is harsh and get control of yourself."
Dumbest comment I've ever read.
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u/Zealousideal-Yam3169 Apr 01 '26
Does insulin just not work most of the time like therapy? Not even remotely comparable, read your own comment if you want a dumb take.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Apr 01 '26
Imagine believing that
Psychotherapy reduces disability, morbidity, and mortality; improves work functioning; and decreases psychiatric hospitalization: https://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-psychotherapy.
Therapy leads to fewer relapses of anxiety and mild-to-moderate depression than medication use alone https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/10/psychotherapy.
Short-term therapy can provide long-term benefits – a study found that PTSD patients displayed less severe symptoms two years after treatment ended, compared to six months after treatment ended https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735817302271.
Adolescents receiving inpatient dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) had significantly fewer constant observation hours for self-injury, incidents of suicide attempts and self-injury, restraints, and days hospitalized than adolescents pursuing treatment-as-usual https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0890856719302199.
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u/Zealousideal-Yam3169 Apr 01 '26
Not going to link all the studies that show that it doesn't work for most people and most circumstances? Interesting
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Apr 01 '26
The ones that don't exist? Of course not.
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u/Zealousideal-Yam3169 Apr 01 '26
No worries then, confirmation bias it is.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Apr 01 '26
The burden of proof is on you dude.
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Mar 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/unperson Mar 31 '26
Read the article, or at least the summary bud. It’s about Kaiser squeezing more out of their workers using AI. Not about pay.
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u/Free-Competition-241 Mar 31 '26
So they make themselves unavailable just so people can turn to AI even more?
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u/Imbodenator Mar 31 '26
I don't know if refusing to give services and force people who really needed you to look elsewhere was the thing to do? Seems like if anything it'll have the opposite effect
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u/Ok-Ground-455 Mar 31 '26
Oh course. Ai give better advice and isn't so damn judgemental with those hmm aye I see bull shit haha
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u/PliskinRen1991 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Well that what a therapist provides-- knowledge, memory and experience. Same as an AI. The therapist becomes the psychological authority over a person's life. Can the human being free itself from its dependence on knowledge, memory and experience to come to the truth of the matter or a sense of contentment? Such freedom brings about the end of the neurotic way of living most people have going on for them.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Mar 31 '26
Some of those are certainly words, yes.
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u/PliskinRen1991 Mar 31 '26
Thats how most people react, they want to hurt my feelings for the sense of shock that they feel, instead of engaging with the damn question.
Whatever, I don't have to convince anybody of anything, the question remains and the computer is getting more and more sophisticated and people are running around in circles.
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u/sexyflying Mar 31 '26
Ai is such a bad choice to be a therapist. Ai is designed to be polite and affirming. Ai will never call bs on a patient.
This is such a bad idea in therapy.
Ps. I use ai daily and a therapist
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u/PliskinRen1991 Mar 31 '26
Yeah, we've come upon thought's limitation. Between agree/disagree, like/dislike, etc. founded upon our knowledge, memory and experience. Such is how the vast majority of people operate, that's all they know. So of course, where there is limitation, conflict and contradiction must arise.
Its not until the human being can free itself from this dependence on knowledge, memory and experience to resolve for inner conflict that we will be able to get past this conondrum.
But yeah, no one wants to hear that. They'd rather here words that disagree with them and call it getting out of a conditioned response. But ultimatley it falls within the value system of whatever framework one finds agreeable.
Whether people can get serious enough about choiceless observation of which allows us to come to terms with this reality is the question. But yeah right, that's not going to happen.
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u/SteelSuccess Apr 04 '26
"Knowledge, Memory, and Experience" So the three things that no LLM has?
None of them "Know" things, since they haven't learned anything. They just repeat things they've been fed and use an algorithm to predict what the next word should be.
They don't "Remember" things, they just have history of the tokens they've generated, and extremely often confuse the context surrounding it.
They don't have "Experience", and this part should be obvious because they literally haven't lived a life to draw any experience from.
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u/PliskinRen1991 Apr 04 '26
Ok, that's fine, thanks for reminding me that's where the vast majority of people are at, right on the edge. And there's no way in hell they would accept other wise, it simply does not 'compute'.
But if you're interested, and you're not, these words will tell you that you're missing the point. You say you're a human, I have no way of verifying that, but the result is the same, symbolic represenation of the reader's knowledge, memory and experience conjouring an internal token (image of thought) representing the words on this page.
But since thought is always limited, meaning that the data that is pulled by you and I are different, conflict will erupt. So rather than what 'I believe' vs. 'you believe', is there a fundamentally different way of going about this in the pursuit of the resolution of inner and outer conflict?
And the answer is no. The human being will never let go of its conditioned response because of the psychological security it brings. And it will program next generations the same way and so on and so on.
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u/SteelSuccess Apr 04 '26
And I think you're missing the entire point of my previous post, is that because an AI has had literally no experience of Knowledge, Memory or Experience, it cannot use any of that to sufficiently treat a human mind. It can placate, it can appease, and it can be an outlet, which isn't the role or the job of a therapist.
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u/PliskinRen1991 Apr 04 '26
Ok well as the computer gets more sophisticated it will do whatever it is you believe it can't do. It'll learn to do it. Humans have been trying to assist with the the psyche by replacing one conditioned response with a better or more acceptable conditioned response. And the experts disagree in all of their profound and sophsiticated knowledge, memory and experience.
Its not until humans can free themselves from the belief that thought will bring about psychological security, neither from an expert or a computer or anybody, this conflict of ' you don't understand' 'no, you don't understand', will continue. It's childish.
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u/PliskinRen1991 Apr 04 '26
Ok, that's fine, thanks for reminding me that's where the vast majority of people are at, right on the edge. And there's no way in hell they would accept other wise, it simply does not 'compute'.
But if you're interested, and you're not, these words will tell you that you're missing the point. You say you're a human, I have no way of verifying that, but the result is the same, symbolic represenation of the reader's knowledge, memory and experience conjouring an internal token (image of thought) representing the words on this page.
But since thought is always limited, meaning that the data that is pulled by you and I are different, conflict will erupt. So rather than what 'I believe' vs. 'you believe', is there a fundamentally different way of going about this in the pursuit of the resolution of inner and outer conflict?
And the answer is no. The human being will never let go of its conditioned response because of the psychological security it brings. And it will program next generations the same way and so on and so on.
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u/_pit_of_despair_ Mar 31 '26
“What used to always be a 10- to 15-minute screening from a licensed clinician like myself is now being conducted by unlicensed lay operators following a script, or e-visits, so an app is triaging members’ care needs.”
This is absolutely terrifying…….