Read article—An opinion piece by Geisel professors Nicholas Jacobson and Michael Heinz critiques New Hampshire Senate Bill 640, which would require therapists to review every exchange patients have with therapy chatbots but exempts commercial platforms. “This bill imposes a compliance burden so heavy on validated platforms designed specifically for mental health that deploying them in New Hampshire becomes impractical. But a teenager in Manchester could still pour out her struggles to ChatGPT with no safeguards whatsoever,” Jacobson and Heinz wrote.
In the News
Psychiatry Has Finally Found an Objective Way to Spot Mental Illness—New Scientist
Read article—Nicholas Jacobson, an associate professor of biomedical data science and psychiatry, is cited for his studies showing that habits such as low-level physical activity, agitation, and phone activity can be used to identify anxiety disorders and predict symptom severity.
First on CNN: Experimental Brain Therapy Brings New Hope for Treatment-Resistant Depression—CNN
Read article—Paul Holtzheimer, a professor of psychiatry and surgery, is quoted in an article about an experimental new brain therapy for treatment-resistant depression called SAINT, for Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy. The EEG findings “still should be viewed as highly preliminary,” Holtzheimer said. “It could be a mechanism of SAINT or it could be a generic finding when depression improves, regardless of what improves the depression.”
At-Home Services to Get You Safely Through the Winter—AARP
Read article—Courtney Stevens, an assistant professor of psychiatry, is featured in an article about services for older adults to help them safely navigate the winter months. “Not all of these are going to be relevant for everyone, so you have to figure out which are the highest priority,” Stevens said.
Former U.S. Surgeons General Sound the Alarm on Social Media and Youth Mental Health—Insight Into Academia
Read article—Features highlights from A Global Turning Point: Why Youth Well-Being Is in Crisis—and What We Must Do About It, the symposium hosted by Dartmouth and the United Nations Development Programme in October. “We still have significant work ahead,” President Sian Leah Beilock said, “but we also have hope and evidence that we can identify the interventions that truly make a difference.”
AI, Neuroscience, and Data Are Fueling Personalized Mental Health Care—Monitor on Psychology
Read Article—Nicholas Jacobson, an associate professor of biomedical data science and psychiatry, is quoted in a story about the personalization of psychiatric care that features Therabot, AI-powered software developed in his lab that was the first therapy chatbot to undergo a clinical trial. “If you can monitor and predict ebbs and flows in symptoms, then you can deliver digital interventions at the right time,” Jacobson said.
Patients Are Consulting AI. Doctors Should, Too—STAT News
Read article—Angelo Volandes, a professor of medicine, writes an opinion piece about keeping pace with AI technology in health care. “This fall, Geisel launched an AI curriculum that begins the moment students arrive, because we recognized a critical truth: If medical schools don’t guide how students think about and use these tools, technology companies will drive both the curriculum and clinical practice,” Volandes writes.
Research Shows That Finding New Activities in Darker Months Can Help With Seasonal Depression—New Hampshire Public Radio
Read article—Features comments by Robert Brady, an associate professor of psychiatry, about seasonal depression. “Most commonly, although not exclusively, that aligns with kind of the late fall, early winter for the start of the symptoms and then the remission of those symptoms at the end of winter as spring is coming,” Brady said. “Around the equator during the summer, it’s brutally hot. People don’t want to be outside in those conditions then. And so you actually see (seasonal affective disorder) occurring there as well.” (Picked up by The Keene Sentinel.)
‘Three Parent Babies’? Sam Altman’s Parenting Remarks Ignite Debate Over AI’s Role in Childcare—The 420
Read article—Nicholas Jacobson, an associate professor of biomedical data science and psychiatry, is cited in an article about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s claims that parenting without ChatGPT would be impossible. Jacobson notes that users poorly understand ChatGPT’s limitations.
Sam Altman Says Caring for a Baby Is Now Impossible Without ChatGPT—Futurism
Read article—Nicholas Jacobson, an associate professor of biomedical data science and psychiatry, is quoted in an article about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s claims that parenting without ChatGPT would be impossible. “General-purpose models aren’t trained on validated parenting science,” Jacobson said. “Their advice can be generic, wrong, or reflect the biases in their training data—i.e. the open internet.” (Jacobson’s comments first appeared in Parents.)