Can artificial intelligence add value to treatment?

Beth struggled over whether her boyfriend was the right partner. Was he reliable, clever, kind and strong? You named the adjective and made it into her list of constant changes, summed up in one question: sufficient? Beth went shopping for the therapist, helping her understand it, auditioning for two respected candidates.

The first therapist listened politely to her concerns and quickly directed her towards a solution. An evidence-based practice called exposure response prevention teaches Beth to stare at her fears without blinking, and therefore she will be free.

The therapist explained that Beth had something to do with her. Obsessive Compulsiveness Disability (R-OCD), not a matter of relationships, but a problem that is mercilessly linked to doubts and fears:

Is my important other person my soulmate? Am I really attracted to them? Was I checking someone else? Should I end the relationship now? Wait, maybe I’m wrong and I’m making the biggest mistake in my life.

The second therapist did something different. He is very curious. Perhaps her fear of her boyfriend had an interesting connection and meaning that no one spoke to. Maybe she had some good reasons to doubt the relationship. He was well aware of the most effective and traditional treatments, but he wanted to understand them more.

An anonymous software engineer warned me about this second therapist, actually named Claude. artificial intelligence (ai) Chatbot. He recalls the last moment when his intellectual hair stood, when he first asked Claude to spool the tangle of obsessions hanging out in his own knot.

“Unexpectedly, Claude turned around and asked me how I was. Feeling For all this, I threw me at first because the search engines would never do. And even more unexpectedly, Claude did an amazing job helping me handle those emotions and helping me do what a good hotline counselor does: very customized of what I was saying We propose to mix the verification with sharp open-ended questions and propose ultimately connection Between emotions I had in a surprisingly deep and kind way. ”

It’s not just that Claude was a better therapist for Beth. Limited situations, However, he also roughly reflected my own unconventional approach to OCD. The AI ​​chatbot and I seemed to be co-discovering the heart of OCD.

Before competing with AI chatbots TreatmentPlease note two important warnings and disclaimers. Not all AI chatbots are built equally. Claude might go straight The mind is programmed with the behind-the-scenes story of nurturing the UN treaty for human rights as his parochial parents. In other words, his focus on emotions may be programmed into him in ways that other AI chatbots do not see.

Second and most importantly, General-purpose AI systems like Claude are not therapists. They don’t always have great emotional insights for everyone. They are not necessarily designed to do so and may not be properly tested for safety and sensitivity. However, in limited circumstances, OCD treatment may add something a little more emotional and valuable.

Complex emotions in OCD patients are often dismissed as irrelevant, irrational and stupid. Most OCD specialists see OCD as system noise. Thoughts and actions are distorted as electric guitars to match the best amplifier settings in the closet.

I rarely notice any hidden music from OCD. This unleashes enchanting harmonies and melody, as well as more fulfilling human stories in a more open space. Unfortunately, seeking the emotional meaning and message of OCD is asking the wrong questions. It’s something that only people like rebel thinkers, outsiders like Claude, or myself to entertain.

When I finally met Beth in therapy, we continued our “great job” for Claude. Beth’s obsession with relationships has repeatedly given her great credibility to the family she came from. She was right distrust Whether the relationship can really be good for her.

It is almost impossible to identify who her parents are, and if they can be emotionally exploited from one moment to the next, her mind is an original incorporating the problems in her own hands. I found a way. In the ironic twist of fate, the reliability of her own thoughts and emotions was the best way to show how terrible it looked others Shape shift for her. Without proper decoding, this tormented her.

But, as Claude did, if we were interested in it, then we didn’t need to bother her.

Like the protagonist of Selena Gomez’s song, Beth knows she’s “a little crazy” and knows that there’s a “million reasons” to give up on OCD, but she also says I want something that I want something. Or maybe Beth had arrived. wisdom Blaze Pascal’s: “In my mind there is a reason why I don’t know anything.”

Beth’s obsession wasn’t just about the irrational distortion and noise within the system. They had hidden messages that AI chatbots could hear. They had new creative possibilities that even our most effective treatments ignored.

OCD suffers almost 1-2% of the American population, and is a condition that takes an average of 14-17 years to treat correctly. An analysis in 2023 found that the backlog of OCD caused an annual loss of more than $8.4 billion in the US alone, mainly because they missed work. Productivityand medical costs. With such a large impact, shouldn’t there be a better option to treat OCD? Shouldn’t we hope that a therapist as sensitive as Claude will detect hidden agitation in the heart that is misunderstood?

Perhaps it’s all confusing even when science itself tries to explain what the mind wants without consulting the mind itself. It distant from the heart of the story, making us feel misunderstood and mystical. Who could have imagined that we needed an AI chatbot like Claude to help us find our way home?