#AI and Mental Health

[the-forest-library]

kill the imposter syndrome in your head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they’re also using chat gpt to do it

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Remarkable Effects of Chatbots in Mental Health

The first clinical trial published in a peer-reviewed journal provides valuable insights into how chatbots can support mental health progress. Sometimes, we don’t need advice. We do not need a diagnosis or a prescription. We just want someone—or something-to be present. To stay with us in quiet understanding or respond with a few words that help the weight feel a little lighter. As a cognitive…

[techsikhm]

[ai-for-psychologists]

Artificial Intelligence for Psychologists – Practical Use.

Discover how Artificial Intelligence in psychology is transforming with accurate diagnoses, administrative automation, and innovative therapies. Learn more about practical applications and ethical considerations. learn more

[johnsmith23sblog]

[wordsmith30]

You know what makes me the most upset about the use of AI in our culture? It's not just removing artists from art or devaluing human creativity -- it's treating people like they're disposable.

Oh, you're not that special. We have computers to do that now. If you died tomorrow, we have your image. We have your voice. We have your biometric data. We can just duplicate you, it's no problem. Who needs flesh and blood? Who needs agency and free thought? Who needs the human soul? You're just a tool. And when we're done with you, we'll just toss you aside and find someone else.

Creatives, listen to me, and listen to me good: you have a voice and it matters. There is no one in the history of the world who is exactly like you, in this time or this place. There is no one who thinks like you, acts like you, speaks like you, moves like you. There is nobody else built like you. Nobody else with your unique experiences and outlook of the world. You are a product of history, of culture, of art, of love, of pain, of possibility. Don't let them take that from you.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Researchers have found that ChatGPT "power users," or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot. In a new joint study, researchers with OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab found that this small subset of ChatGPT users engaged in more "problematic use," defined in the paper as "indicators of addiction... including preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, loss of control, and mood modification." To get there, the MIT and OpenAI team surveyed thousands of ChatGPT users to glean not only how they felt about the chatbot, but also to study what kinds of "affective cues," which was defined in a joint summary of the research as "aspects of interactions that indicate empathy, affection, or support," they used when chatting with it. Though the vast majority of people surveyed didn't engage emotionally with ChatGPT, those who used the chatbot for longer periods of time seemed to start considering it to be a "friend." The survey participants who chatted with ChatGPT the longest tended to be lonelier and get more stressed out over subtle changes in the model's behavior, too. Add it all up, and it's not good. In this study as in other cases we've seen, people tend to become dependent upon AI chatbots when their personal lives are lacking. In other words, the neediest people are developing the deepest parasocial relationship with AI — and where that leads could end up being sad, scary, or somewhere entirely unpredictable.

24 March 2025

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Generative AI Is Bad For Your Creative Brain

In the wake of early announcing that their blog will no longer be posting fanfiction, I wanted to offer a different perspective than the ones I’ve been seeing in the argument against the use of AI in fandom spaces. Often, I’m seeing the arguments that the use of generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) make creative expression more accessible. Certainly, putting a prompt into a chat box and refining the output as desired is faster than writing a 5000 word fanfiction or learning to draw digitally or traditionally. But I would argue that the use of chat bots and generative AI actually limits - and ultimately reduces - one’s ability to enjoy creativity.

Creativity, defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, is the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas. By definition, the use of generative AI discourages the brain from engaging with thoughts creatively. ChatGPT, character bots, and other generative AI products have to be trained on already existing text. In order to produce something “usable,” LLMs analyzes patterns within text to organize information into what the computer has been trained to identify as “desirable” outputs. These outputs are not always accurate due to the fact that computers don’t “think” the way that human brains do. They don’t create. They take the most common and refined data points and combine them according to predetermined templates to assemble a product. In the case of chat bots that are fed writing samples from authors, the product is not original - it’s a mishmash of the writings that were fed into the system.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a therapy modality developed by Marsha M. Linehan based on the understanding that growth comes when we accept that we are doing our best and we can work to better ourselves further. Within this modality, a few core concepts are explored, but for this argument I want to focus on Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation. Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness of the information our senses are telling us about the present moment. Emotion regulation is our ability to identify, understand, validate, and control our reaction to the emotions that result from changes in our environment. One of the skills taught within emotion regulation is Building Mastery - putting forth effort into an activity or skill in order to experience the pleasure that comes with seeing the fruits of your labor. These are by no means the only mechanisms of growth or skill development, however, I believe that mindfulness, emotion regulation, and building mastery are a large part of the core of creativity. When someone uses generative AI to imitate fanfiction, roleplay, fanart, etc., the core experience of creative expression is undermined.

Creating engages the body. As a writer who uses pen and paper as well as word processors while drafting, I had to learn how my body best engages with my process. The ideal pen and paper, the fact that I need glasses to work on my computer, the height of the table all factor into how I create. I don’t use audio recordings or transcriptions because that’s not a skill I’ve cultivated, but other authors use those tools as a way to assist their creative process. I can’t speak with any authority to the experience of visual artists, but my understanding is that the feedback and feel of their physical tools, the programs they use, and many other factors are not just part of how they learned their craft, they are essential to their art.

Generative AI invites users to bypass mindfully engaging with the physical act of creating. Part of becoming a person who creates from the vision in one’s head is the physical act of practicing. How did I learn to write? By sitting down and making myself write, over and over, word after word. I had to learn the rhythms of my body, and to listen when pain tells me to stop. I do not consider myself a visual artist - I have not put in the hours to learn to consistently combine line and color and form to show the world the idea in my head.

But I could.

Learning a new skill is possible. But one must be able to regulate one’s unpleasant emotions to be able to get there. The emotion that gets in the way of most people starting their creative journey is anxiety. Instead of a focus on “fear,” I like to define this emotion as “unpleasant anticipation.” In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown identifies anxiety as both a trait (a long term characteristic) and a state (a temporary condition). That is, we can be naturally predisposed to be impacted by anxiety, and experience unpleasant anticipation in response to an event. And the action drive associated with anxiety is to avoid the unpleasant stimulus.

Starting a new project, developing a new skill, and leaning into a creative endevor can inspire and cause people to react to anxiety. There is an unpleasant anticipation of things not turning out exactly correctly, of being judged negatively, of being unnoticed or even ignored. There is a lot less anxiety to be had in submitting a prompt to a machine than to look at a blank page and possibly make what could be a mistake. Unfortunately, the more something is avoided, the more anxiety is generated when it comes up again. Using generative AI doesn’t encourage starting a new project and learning a new skill - in fact, it makes the prospect more distressing to the mind, and encourages further avoidance of developing a personal creative process.

One of the best ways to reduce anxiety about a task, according to DBT, is for a person to do that task. Opposite action is a method of reducing the intensity of an emotion by going against its action urge. The action urge of anxiety is to avoid, and so opposite action encourages someone to approach the thing they are anxious about. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has anxiety about creating should make themselves write a 50k word fanfiction as their first project. But in order to reduce anxiety about dealing with a blank page, one must face and engage with a blank page. Even a single sentence fragment, two lines intersecting, an unintentional drop of ink means the page is no longer blank. If those are still difficult to approach a prompt, tutorial, or guided exercise can be used to reinforce the understanding that a blank page can be changed, slowly but surely by your own hand.

(As an aside, I would discourage the use of AI prompt generators - these often use prompts that were already created by a real person without credit. Prompt blogs and posts exist right here on tumblr, as well as imagines and headcannons that people often label “free to a good home.” These prompts can also often be specific to fandom, style, mood, etc., if you’re looking for something specific.)

In the current social media and content consumption culture, it’s easy to feel like the first attempt should be a perfect final product. But creating isn’t just about the final product. It’s about the process. Bo Burnam’s Inside is phenomenal, but I think the outtakes are just as important. We didn’t get That Funny Feeling and How the World Works and All Eyes on Me because Bo Burnham woke up and decided to write songs in the same day. We got them because he’s been been developing and honing his craft, as well as learning about himself as a person and artist, since he was a teenager. Building mastery in any skill takes time, and it’s often slow.

Slow is an important word, when it comes to creating. The fact that skill takes time to develop and a final piece of art takes time regardless of skill is it’s own source of anxiety. Compared to @sentientcave, who writes about 2k words per day, I’m very slow. And for all the time it takes me, my writing isn’t perfect - I find typos after posting and sometimes my phrasing is awkward. But my writing is better than it was, and my confidence is much higher. I can sit and write for longer and longer periods, my projects are more diverse, I’m sharing them with people, even before the final edits are done. And I only learned how to do this because I took the time to push through the discomfort of not being as fast or as skilled as I want to be in order to learn what works for me and what doesn’t.

Building mastery - getting better at a skill over time so that you can see your own progress - isn’t just about getting better. It’s about feeling better about your abilities. Confidence, excitement, and pride are important emotions to associate with our own actions. It teaches us that we are capable of making ourselves feel better by engaging with our creativity, a confidence that can be generalized to other activities.

Generative AI doesn’t encourage its users to try new things, to make mistakes, and to see what works. It doesn’t reward new accomplishments to encourage the building of new skills by connecting to old ones. The reward centers of the brain have nothing to respond to to associate with the action of the user. There is a short term input-reward pathway, but it’s only associated with using the AI prompter. It’s designed to encourage the user to come back over and over again, not develop the skill to think and create for themselves.

I don’t know that anyone will change their minds after reading this. It’s imperfect, and I’ve summarized concepts that can take months or years to learn. But I can say that I learned something from the process of writing it. I see some of the flaws, and I can see how my essay writing has changed over the years. This might have been faster to plug into AI as a prompt, but I can see how much more confidence I have in my own voice and opinions. And that’s not something chatGPT can ever replicate.

[wolveria]

I hate how I see an interesting picture or video (and now, video games) and I have to stop and go “Is this AI?” before I can enjoy it

Not only do I feel constantly crazy by having to question everything I see and figure out if it’s REAL or not, it’s just fucking exhausting

[alashqarmohammed]

Hello! I'm reaching out to share about a fundraiser that's very important to me. Muhammad, a hardworking UX UI designer from Gaza, is seeking help to escape the harsh conditions he and his family are currently living in. The funds raised will help Muhammad and his family move to Egypt, where they can live a safe and dignified life. The travel costs are high, and every bit of help counts. Muhammad's story is one of resilience and ambition. By supporting this fundraiser, we can help him continue his journey to safety. Please consider donating and sharing this message. Thank you!

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Blaze

857 notes

[wordx]

[ganondoodle]

the company i work for decided that its switching from the german formal "You"(Sie) to the informal "you" (Du) in all of our websites so now we have to scour the entire database to change it and i quite frankly hate that, not just bc the unecessary extra work but especially bc its such a weird and unecessary change

i bet its bc everything here is getting englishfied (both literally and culturally it feels like, when my new boss talks its half in english bc every second german word is just replaced by an english one despite there being perfectly fine words for it in german too, its so annoying) and bc they want to sound more personal in hopes of getting more clients bc 'company is your fwiend uwu!!', i know this here is the amercian tm site so you wouldnt understand really but i do not want to be greeted with 'du' by companies, no, thats too personal, you dont know me and im not giving you my data, stay away!!

i guess thats how i would describe it .. the formal you is like a polite distance, like someone you dont know staying outside your personal space, but when its the informal 'you' it feels invasive unless i told you you can call me that, and that goes double for companies

maybe its a small thing that doesnt seem important but i cant stand it, im just a little part time worker doing data work so i got no say in it but the companies founder also announced hes giving his post to his kids some time ago so ...... since then theres been alot of changes and new projects that solely aim to imitate whats popular and whats done by other companies, despite ours being one that is, or used to be, intentionally different, like, that was the POINT, but i guess chasing trends is just too appealing for CEOs

[pleasedontcareaboutme]

[enden-k]

‎

was really depressed and sad lately abt losing a bunch of friends/ppl i believed to be friends this year, esp someone i considered my closest friend of over 10 years who lived w me in my house for a long time too, that i started to regret cutting ties even tho it was a rather toxic/uncomfortable thing we had going on (he was very clingy and attached and jealous of me and started stealing my identity while spreading lies abt me till it really became a problem) but hearing now that he uses AI "art" bc he apparently still tries to become me, even tho he went to the same fucking art college after i graduated from it and learned stuff etc (you dont need to go to art college to get good at art btw, imo its a waste of time and money tbh), immediately made me lose all the regrets and sadness over our broken friendship LMAO bc FUCK YOU IF YOU USE AI FOR ART GRAHHHH i dont want ppl doing that anywhere near me shoooo

[b-on-paper]

I decided to try embroidery on my denim jacket!

It was something I decided to try because of my lack of motivation for art lately (anxiety, yaay) and it's been great so far.

Sorry for the bad quality of the photos and let me know what you think!!

[cent-scratchnsniff]

it was just going to be a few warmup doodles but then she infected the rest of the page like the ever eternal and spreading spores. hod!!! hod. hod :)