The silicon shrink – the worrying side of AI in mental health

All In The Mind

ABC listen

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Science

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chat bots as therapists. Apps that can track your mood and behaviour, offering earlier detection of psychiatric illness.

There's a lot happening at the nexus of mental health and AI – some of it promising, some of it perilous.

Today, science writer and author of The Silicon Shrink, Daniel Oberhaus, takes us on a journey through this emerging space. We'll look at the potential benefits, the major limitations and the ethics of adding AI into our mental health mix.

And just a heads up, this episode touches on the topic of suicide, please take care while listening.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music, and more.
0:07.9	Hey, just a heads up.
0:09.7	This episode touches on the topic of suicide.
0:12.5	Please take care while listening.
0:15.0	Exactly.
0:15.8	Where in New York are you?
0:17.0	Well, right now I'm in the financial district, but I live in Brooklyn.
0:20.3	Okay, nice.
0:21.2	This is Daniel Oberhaus.
0:23.0	He's a former journalist at the Technology Magazine Wired.
0:26.6	And?
0:27.1	I am the author of The Silicon Shrink, which is a book about the promise and perils of the use of artificial intelligence and psychiatry.
0:38.3	You open the book with the story of your sister,
0:42.0	and I'm wondering if we can start there as well, if you don't mind talking about that.
0:46.0	Could you tell me a little bit about your sister?
0:48.7	So my sister in kindergarten, when she was about five years old,
0:52.8	she had a series of traumatic events
0:55.2	based around bullying. You know, truly broke her. It was, you know, shocking to see as a child
1:01.1	myself going through this. Daniel says this experience of intense bullying at such a young age
1:07.6	was the beginning of his sister Paige's lifelong struggles.
1:11.9	She received a variety of diagnoses throughout her life.
1:14.6	You know, she struggled with various eating disorders, problems with drug abuse.
	...

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