Men are opening up about mental health to AI instead of humans
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Funny, I was just reading comments in another thread about people with mental health problems proclaiming how terrific it is. Especially concerning is how they had found value in the recommendations LLMs make and "trying those out." One of the commenters described themselves as "neuro diverse" and was acting upon "advice" from generated LLM responses.
And for something like depression, this is deeply bad advice. I feel somewhat qualified to weigh in on it as somebody who has struggled severely with depression and managed to get through it with the support of a very capable therapist. There's a tremendous amount of depth and context to somebody's mental condition that involves more deliberate probing to understand than stringing together words until it forms sentences that mimic human interactions.
Let's not forget that an LLM will not be able to raise alarm bells, read medical records, write prescriptions or work with other medical professionals. Another thing people often forget is that LLMs have maximum token lengths and cannot, by definition, keep a detailed "memory" of everything that's been discussed.
It's is effectively self-treatment with more steps.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]It’s is effectively self-treatment with more steps.
And for many people it's better than nothing and likely the best they can do. Waiting lists for a basic therapist in my area are months long. Shorter if you pay out of pocket, but that isn't affordable to average people because it's like 300-400 for a one hour session.
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I can kinda understand the appeal. An AI isn't gonna judge you, an AI isn't gonna leave a mean comment or tell you to get over it and man up. It's giving an unnerving amount of personal information to corporations, but I can sympathise with the thoughts these men are having.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]AI might also be giving them better advice than anyone else in their life.
Growing up I certainly had no role models in my entire community. I never found anyone who was remotely helpful until I went to an expensive college that had lots of resources and they were freely accessible to me. Mental, physical, and academic.
A lot of people fail to realize these resources simple do not exist in large swaths of the country/economic bracket. They are mostly concentrated in wealthy and educated areas and given to wealth educated people who live there. If a farmer in Nebraska needs therapy, they will have to drive to multiple hours to Omaha or another urban area to have a decent shot at getting any assistance. Not everyone lives in a major coastal city that have the bulk of these resources.
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AI might also be giving them better advice than anyone else in their life.
Growing up I certainly had no role models in my entire community. I never found anyone who was remotely helpful until I went to an expensive college that had lots of resources and they were freely accessible to me. Mental, physical, and academic.
A lot of people fail to realize these resources simple do not exist in large swaths of the country/economic bracket. They are mostly concentrated in wealthy and educated areas and given to wealth educated people who live there. If a farmer in Nebraska needs therapy, they will have to drive to multiple hours to Omaha or another urban area to have a decent shot at getting any assistance. Not everyone lives in a major coastal city that have the bulk of these resources.
I dunno about advice, but LLMs are very good at re-stating my meandering thoughts in a concise way that's easy to communicate to others.
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The only ‘side’ that has power is the wealthy.
Pivot to wealth inequality because?
But keep banging your gender war drum, it probably gives you meaning and purpose in life to collectively blame 'me’n for all the worlds ills as if anyone who has a penis or wants a penis is entirely the same.
You are the one who made the issue about differences in sex and/or gender.
No wonder you made no progress in therapy. You're completely obtuse.
Also, no one is blaming men for their life's problems. That person, would need therapy. Also, please don't speak for men as a pejorative, your views are not reflective of any kind of monolith within my sex as a class of people and continually self-victimising under the guise of speaking for men's issues is disingenuous and pathetic.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]i pivot to wealth inequality because the wealthy have all the resources and the rest of us don't have enough.
that includes access to medical care and mental care. easiest way to get healthcare and therapy is to be rich so you can pay out of pocket and skip the limits/lines imposed by insurance companies.
a lot of people's mental and health problems would also simple be alleviated by being able to have better food and a better work-life balance, both which are privileges of the wealthy that the less economically fortunate do not have access to.
these are straight facts, but i'm sure you'll go into denial mode about how the poor and mentally unwell should just become their own therapists or something.
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Again. Coping skills are not gender specific they're individual specific.
Nobody is screaming. And yes women are victims of men, have you spoken to any of them about it? Because it's rather helpful to have those conversations.
Your comment is just very one sided and that's the side that has the most power on the planet and as a member of that side I have just as much perspective of you and I'm here to say -- nah to most of what you said.
Men's #1 issue is lack of empathy towards women, they isolate half the planet from supporting them. There's your solution.
Men's inability to open up is a trained behavior, and is reinforced the most by the group doing the most child care: women. Everytime a boy that cries gets told to "man up" that stereotype is repeated to them. This produces an echo that reverbs through most of society, and especially children, who then mock peers that express emotions.
Women are training their own oppressors. There is enough blame around for all genders.
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their problems are legitimate problems sure, but in a lot of cases problems with a lot of those groups can be summed up with a couple of things:
- it’s different to my world view and i don’t like it
- i think i deserve something and am not getting it
those are different kinds of problems to acknowledging your own feelings, or people are using me and trampling over me… both are deserving of help, but incels, terfs, extremists in general are harming others with their problems
you’re free to swing your arms until they come into contact with my body
these classes of people are harmful to others - i don’t think anyone thinks they aren’t deserving of help, but they are dangerous in a completely different way
wrote on last edited by [email protected]so are we going to help them, or are we going to wash our hands of them and let the problem fester and grow?
incels need positive reinforcement to loop them out of their cognitive loop. not shame and harassment that further entrenches it.
the easiest way to get someone who is hateful about some group or thing... is to introduce them to it in a positive manner.
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I can kinda understand the appeal. An AI isn't gonna judge you, an AI isn't gonna leave a mean comment or tell you to get over it and man up. It's giving an unnerving amount of personal information to corporations, but I can sympathise with the thoughts these men are having.
I don't think the open internet is a great place to open up about your mental health either. Trusted family, friends, and medical/mental health professionals are the best resources. Entrusting something as precious as your mental health to AI or the internet is a profoundly bad idea.
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probably not but that's because sexism against men is normalized and you're not allowed to talk about it unless you're a neonazi for some reason.
side note, this is exactly why the "young broccoli haired boy to fascist brownshirt" pipeline exists. they have real and genuine issues and instead of getting any sort of community or support virtually every facet of society is telling them their issues are fake and that they are destined to be monsters. then someone like j peterson comes along and tells them "life isn't so bad, it's okay, just clean your room and be disciplined, it'll all start to look up soon champ.. and uh... also hate the gays, black people, and other minorities - they're the woke mob that left you abandoned like this!" people making shocked pikachu face at young men being hardcore MAGAts are so sorely out of touch with what being a man is like and the kinds of trauma that can stem from the male experience. it's obvious to most of us why this issue exists, i hope. this comment chain is a great example. if you even touch the topic you get barraged with people telling you to essentially shut the fuck up and stop entertaining the idea that men are possibly people too and not some root of all fucking evil in the world.
the amount of literal hate I see towards men in casual discourse is insane. can say the most psychotic shit in most circles nowadays but if you point your malice at the "right kinds" of people most won't even bat an eye. see people frequently talking about doing unhinged shit to others solely because they are a man or [insert other group they don't like generally for some stupid fucking reason] and there is a preconceived slight, danger, or aggression. leftists think they're better people morally but we're really not. i have seen the exact same bullshit bigotry promulgate every community i know of in the past few years. the same brainrot the conservatives have had since the tea partiers has infiltrated our spaces too. everyone genuinely is dumb, angry, and hateful now.
I am not wholly convinced that our culture being the target of multiple astroturfing campaigns hasn't degraded people's capability for nuance, compassion, empathy, and ontology.
wrote on last edited by [email protected].
amen to all this. i really started removing 'leftists' people from my life and it was like... so much better because so much of their entity message is just this weird revenge/hate pron against straight white men, and men in general. when ironically, the people they should be angry at are the wealthy... but honestly most of these 'leftists' I've known were trust fund kids... so that tells you right there why they would never rag on the wealthy...
normal well adjusted people don't hate anyone or blame anyone for their problems. but for some reason it's become mainstream A-OK to say horrible awful shit about men that would you get you banned/shitcanned/ostracized if you said ti about anyone else. esp in liberal/left groupthink.
it's entire the same discourse as neoNazis and all that too... just replace jew/black with white straight men.
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yes, there is an incredibly amount of ignorance, and a lack of oversight about the entire thing.
and so many internet jackasses who think they are experts about it, constantly pushing endless misinformation about every aspect of the process. esp the armchair diagnosing.
'oh you had a bad day at work? you must have autism/adhd/depression/personality disorder'. or the fact anyone who was ever mean to you once in your life is a 'narcissist' or 'gas lighting' you.
the bias confirmation is out of hand. even in this very comment thread... soooo many people just banging on their bias confirmation drum and screaming 'no no no no, men are bad and should just go away and solve their own problems without bothering anyone at all ever!' as if that attitude isn't the biggest reason men, especially young men, feel so trapped about their lives.
From the commenter above talking about negative experiences with talking to women and female therapists, I think the real solution is that men need to be proactive about supporting each other. Ranting and raving about how women are terrible and don't know how to help men with an undercurrent of expectations that women (especially a romantic partner) should fix everything is simply not a tenable mindset.
As a woman who works in the medical field, I am keenly aware of my limitations when it comes to helping men with mental health issues. I think the real, effective solution is for men to start opening up to each other and supporting each other the way that women tend to do among themselves. I don't mean this as "oh, men are terrible and they need to fuck off somewhere else with their problems", I mean it as a sincere belief that the best people to help a man through emotional or psychological problems are probably other men given the shared socialization and perspective.
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I can kinda understand the appeal. An AI isn't gonna judge you, an AI isn't gonna leave a mean comment or tell you to get over it and man up. It's giving an unnerving amount of personal information to corporations, but I can sympathise with the thoughts these men are having.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Well those sound like people who aren't good to open up to.
I do sympathize though, I pretended to be a guy for several decades, and my wife put exactly the same kind of duality on me that men put on women.
I was expected to be sympathetic and nurturing in some contexts and aggressive, jealous, and demanding in others, and I was just supposed to know when to switch.
And there was an amount of vulnerability I was able to display, but beyond that I'd get told to suck it up.
I think somebody needs to come up with an ad campaign that's Therapy For Men. Big sweaty hairy guys with thick beards looking after each other's mental health like BROs. It worked to get men to use soap.
(Seriously, I think counseling is too female-coded for a lot of men to be comfortable with it unless they're fucking the person, or they start to want to fuck the person because they're unused to talking about things).
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Men's inability to open up is a trained behavior, and is reinforced the most by the group doing the most child care: women. Everytime a boy that cries gets told to "man up" that stereotype is repeated to them. This produces an echo that reverbs through most of society, and especially children, who then mock peers that express emotions.
Women are training their own oppressors. There is enough blame around for all genders.
No that's ridiculous and hilarious to say. I'd agree there is enough to blame everyone but you're not, you're blaming women.
I've never been told to man up by a woman, only men. Ridiculous to say that.
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The amount of sexism in this comment section is...unnerving. Does a community exist for male identifying people to talk and share their troubles in a non hostile space? If it doesn't I'll make one.
Edit: No idea what I'm doing but [email protected]
Would you mind giving the community a name where it can easily be found? Such as /c/mental-health-men or sth.
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The amount of sexism in this comment section is…unnerving. Does a community exist for male identifying people to talk and share their troubles in a non hostile space? If it doesn’t I’ll make one.
No. Because if it it did it would be shut down as being hostile and offensive to women and a space for proto-rapists to hang out.
Probably the closest space any guy could get is AA or NA meetings.
Probably the closest space any guy could get is AA or NA meetings.
what do these abbreviations stand for?
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i pivot to wealth inequality because the wealthy have all the resources and the rest of us don't have enough.
that includes access to medical care and mental care. easiest way to get healthcare and therapy is to be rich so you can pay out of pocket and skip the limits/lines imposed by insurance companies.
a lot of people's mental and health problems would also simple be alleviated by being able to have better food and a better work-life balance, both which are privileges of the wealthy that the less economically fortunate do not have access to.
these are straight facts, but i'm sure you'll go into denial mode about how the poor and mentally unwell should just become their own therapists or something.
But that's not what we're talking about
Men statically run the most businesses, hold the management positions and other seats of authority so they're the ones dictating and deciding things in the world. That's the disparity, not wealth
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Would you mind giving the community a name where it can easily be found? Such as /c/mental-health-men or sth.
Ah well, unfortunately the community name is set, there's no changing it after it's created. Maybe I should've made it more searchable but hopefully we can spread it by word of mouth enough where it'll take off. Also I kinda wanted it less intimidating clinical sterile sounding and more just a homey place where people can feel safe to talk openly, just a li'l reprieve from the outside world.
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A profound relational revolution is underway, not orchestrated by tech developers but driven by users themselves. Many of the 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT are seeking more than just assistance with emails or information on food safety; they are looking for emotional support.
“Therapy and companionship” have emerged as two of the most frequent applications for generative AI globally, according to the Harvard Business Review. This trend marks a significant, unplanned pivot in how people interact with technology.
Ironically, i am feeling attacked right now..
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Well those sound like people who aren't good to open up to.
I do sympathize though, I pretended to be a guy for several decades, and my wife put exactly the same kind of duality on me that men put on women.
I was expected to be sympathetic and nurturing in some contexts and aggressive, jealous, and demanding in others, and I was just supposed to know when to switch.
And there was an amount of vulnerability I was able to display, but beyond that I'd get told to suck it up.
I think somebody needs to come up with an ad campaign that's Therapy For Men. Big sweaty hairy guys with thick beards looking after each other's mental health like BROs. It worked to get men to use soap.
(Seriously, I think counseling is too female-coded for a lot of men to be comfortable with it unless they're fucking the person, or they start to want to fuck the person because they're unused to talking about things).
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I dealt with the same thing in all my relationships. Nothing got my gfs hotter than when I acted like a complete asshole towards other people. They got off the duality of me being shit to people and the being this 'sweet man' to them. And they'd get super jealous and bitter if I was kind towards anyone else other than them. It was Toxic AF. It made me hate myself and made me depressed. To know that i had to be a shithead to get my girlfriends to like me.
I'm so much happier single. I'd rather not get laid then have to be a POS asshole like they wanted me to be. Soooo many people get off on anti-social behaviors. I'm also so glad I never got married or had children with these ladies who have such a horrible Zero Sum way of thinking about the world.
They wanted me to be vulnerable, but only in the sense that I was some heroic figure overcoming the odds. If i said I was sad when my dog died or my dad died, then I was a giant pussy to them.
When shitty people only validate your shitty emotions... well that's why so many women only date shitty men. Because they are turned off sexually by men who are more complex or behave outside of their per-determiend 'what a man should be' image. Especially when you reject them for sex... holy shit. Way to see what a lady really thinks of a men when a man turns her down for sex.
In my many years single now, I do a lot of volunteer work. Giving back here and there w/ kids and adults and community building. I've never met or a dated lady who thought it was cool. They all think it's weird to be kind to strangers and/or I'm secretly homosexual if I do so. If it comes up they always get 'suspicious'.
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Probably the closest space any guy could get is AA or NA meetings.
what do these abbreviations stand for?
Alcoholic Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous
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Therapy is just littered with bad therapists, that do more harm than good and give the practice a bad name.
For every 1 good therapist, there are probably 10+ bad ones.
It can be a fucking ordeal to navigate, financially and emotionally, to try and find the one good one.
My worst experience was a therapist which charged me 300 dollars a session to do nothing but talk about how amazing they were, and that I need to just suck it up and be amazing like they are, afterall, it was so easy for them.
I am on my fifth therapist. The first one I was seeing I kinda stopped going and then he retired, then I had a GF cheat on me and that was super brutal so I started going again.
First therapist was the stereotypical "feelings are okay!" kind of therapist, second one she just automatically assumed it was my fault and was basically telling me that cause I'm a man I should have done better, and the third just immediately jumped to medication like halfway through my first session.
Ended up with my current therapist and she's great. I really like her because she regularly tells me that I'm just straight up being stupid or ridiculous and just need to handle my shit. Which works amazing for me.
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A profound relational revolution is underway, not orchestrated by tech developers but driven by users themselves. Many of the 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT are seeking more than just assistance with emails or information on food safety; they are looking for emotional support.
“Therapy and companionship” have emerged as two of the most frequent applications for generative AI globally, according to the Harvard Business Review. This trend marks a significant, unplanned pivot in how people interact with technology.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I'm totally against what companies are calling "AI", but I understand that many men still have a negative feel on therapy inherited from society, their family, their friends, and the people around them. Now add that with the fact that therapy sessions cost a kidney, I don't blame them. Even mental health has to be monetized in capitalism, and the capitalists (more specifically liberals) are still wondering why suicide rate is so high, I wonder
