August 27, 2025
A New Edition of Public Health Ethics is Now Available
Public Health Ethics (vol. 18, no. 2, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles Include:
Mental Health
August 25, 2025
Teens Are Using Chatbots as Therapists. That’s Alarming.
(New York Times) – Marketed as conversational agents, chatbots are becoming de facto digital therapists for many teens, for whom this technology now feels native. This raises the stakes for ensuring these tools are safe and governed by enforceable standards. … Read More
August 22, 2025
The trauma of illness can last long after the body has healed
(STAT News) – I’ve seen it as a psychologist — and experienced it as a patient Even through Zoom, I could tell she was unraveling. Her face was drawn, her shoulders hunched, her eyes darting just off-camera like she was … Read More
August 19, 2025
What My DaughterTold ChatGPT Before SheTook Her Life
(New York Times) – Sophie told Harry she was seeing a therapist, but that she was not being truthful with her. She typed, “I haven’t opened up about my suicidal ideation to anyone and don’t plan on it.” At various … Read More
August 15, 2025
The rise of ‘AI psychosis’ and exactly what that means
(Straight Arrow News) – Researchers have highlighted three emerging types of AI psychosis. The first is “messianic missions,” where people believe they’ve uncovered some kind of truth about the world. The second is “God-like AI,” where people believe the chatbot … Read More
August 14, 2025
Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York. He never made it home.
(Reuters) – A cognitively impaired New Jersey man grew infatuated with “Big sis Billie,” a Facebook Messenger chatbot with a young woman’s persona. His fatal attraction puts a spotlight on Meta’s AI guidelines, which have let chatbots make things up … Read More
August 14, 2025
Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.
(New York Times) – Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation. We wanted to understand how these chatbots can lead ordinarily rational people … Read More
August 13, 2025
Help is growing for the heavy emotional toll cancer takes on young men
(NPR) – Coping with cancer is rarely easy for anyone, but men tend to fare worse — emotionally and physically — than women. Evidence shows male survivors isolate more, seek less peer and other support and, alarmingly, die earlier. Gender … Read More
August 13, 2025
ADHD drugs have wider life benefits, study suggests
(BBC) – Drug treatment can help people newly diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to reduce their risk of substance misuse, suicidal behaviour, transport accidents and criminality, a study suggests. These issues are linked to common ADHD symptoms such … Read More
August 13, 2025
Research Psychiatrist Warns He’s Seeing a Wave of AI Psychosis
(Futurism) – Our brains, the researcher explains, work on a predictive basis: we effectively make an educated guess about what reality will be, then conduct a reality check. Finally, our brains update our beliefs accordingly. “Psychosis happens when the ‘update,’ … Read More
August 12, 2025
‘I had her right in front of me. And now she’s gone’: how one mother lost her daughter to mental illness
(The Guardian) – Studying in London before taking up a high-flying job in New York, Naina Mishra seemed set for a bright future – until she began retreating from friends and family into a paranoid spiral even her mother couldn’t … Read More
August 11, 2025
Canada Is Killing Itself
(The Atlantic) – When Canada’s Parliament in 2016 legalized the practice of euthanasia—Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, as it’s formally called—it launched an open-ended medical experiment. One day, administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law; … Read More
August 8, 2025
‘I Feel Like I’m Going Crazy’: ChatGPT Fuels Delusional Spirals
(Wall Street Journal) – An online trove of archived conversations shows model sending users down a rabbit hole of theories about physics, aliens and the apocalypse In one exchange lasting hundreds of queries, ChatGPT confirmed that it is in contact … Read More
August 7, 2025
Chatbots Turned to for Companionship
(CBS Evening News) – A chatbot is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to simulate human conversation. For the lonely, a chatbot can be a companion, as Meg Oliver reports in tonight’s “Eye on America.”
August 7, 2025
It Was a Promising Addiction Treatment. Many Patients Never Got It.
(New York Times) – How political red tape and a drug company’s thirst for profits limited the reach of a drug that experts believe could have reduced the opioid epidemic’s toll. In the years that followed, as the epidemic grew, … Read More
August 6, 2025
Tech firms, states look to rein in AI chatbots’ mental health advice
(Axios) – Concerns over Americans turning to AI chatbots to solve mental health problems are prompting new guardrails so people don’t become too dependent on unvetted technology. Why it matters: AI’s booming popularity, the bots’ reputation for delivering emotionally validating … Read More
August 5, 2025
Grief doesn’t just hurt — it may shorten your life: Study
(Straight Arrow News) – A growing body of research shows intense grief can impact the body but a new study suggests those effects may last far longer than we thought. Researchers in Denmark tracked bereaved relatives and found those with … Read More
August 4, 2025
Teen suicide is on the decline, new federal data shows
(NPR) – A new federal report finds that the percentage of adults with suicidal thoughts and attempts remained about the same between 2021 and 2024. But the analysis of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health did offer some … Read More
August 1, 2025
‘What am I falling in love with?’ Human-AI relationships are no longer just science fiction
(CNBC) – Until recently, stories of human-AI companionship were mostly confined to the realms of Hollywood and science fiction. But the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 and the generative AI boom that quickly followed ushered in a new era … Read More
August 1, 2025
‘Combat Cocktail’: How America Overmedicates Veterans
(Wall Street Journal) – Hundreds of thousands of veterans with PTSD have been prescribed simultaneous doses of powerful psychiatric drugs. The practice, known as “polypharmacy,” can tranquilize patients to the point of numbness, cause weight gain and increase suicidal thoughts … Read More
August 1, 2025
An FDA panel spread misinformation about SSRI use in pregnancy, alarming doctors
(NPR) – Nearly one in five pregnant women and new moms in this country suffers from anxiety and depression. And 6-8% of pregnant women are prescribed a group of antidepressants called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). But a recent expert … Read More
July 31, 2025
AIs gave scarily specific self-harm advice to users expressing suicidal intent, researchers find
(Los Angeles Times via MSN) – A few months ago, Northeastern University computer scientist Annika Schoene was playing around with ChatGPT when she found a troubling gap in its safeguards against harmful content. The usage policies of OpenAI, creator of … Read More
July 31, 2025
Millennials Are Becoming Caregivers Whether They’re Ready or Not
(The Walrus) – Still under 40, many are responsible for aging parents while raising kids and managing debt Being a millennial has also been a key to my caregiving experience. And I’m not unique. According to the American Association of … Read More
July 30, 2025
It is becoming easier to create AI avatars of the deceased − here is why Buddhism would caution against it
(The Conversation) – Since the documentary first aired, the business of digitally resurrecting the deceased has grown significantly. People are now using AI to create “grief bots,” which are simulations of deceased loved ones that the living can converse with. … Read More
July 30, 2025
What Is CTE? The Football-Connected Brain Disease Cited by the Manhattan Shooter
(Wall Street Journal) – Shooter at NFL headquarters believed he was suffering from CTE, caused by repeated head trauma Shortly after Shane Tamura was identified as the shooter at the NFL’s Park Avenue headquarters building in New York on Monday, … Read More
