Men are opening up about mental health to AI instead of humans
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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.
CDC data from 2022 indicated that more than one in five U.S. adults under the age of 45 experienced symptoms of mental distress.
Must be the lack of personnel. Couldn't have anything to do with the global insecurity of rising inflation and low wage jobs coupled with the skyrocketing housing costs. Not to mention the whole "the earth is steadily getting hotter and extreme weather events are happening more and more frequently."
Yeah, let's invest in more AI that will fuck over the planet even more with colossal energy requirements and not even bother with making people more financially and socially secure.
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My mental image the solution of your last paragraph is a guy and their counsoler just chatting outside chopping firewood or other simple/quiet lawn work.
"I need a therapist, and a lumberjack"
You know, working together on something outside might be absolutely the ticket. Genius.
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So somewhere they feel safe to do so. Says something pretty fucked up about our culture that men don't feel safe to open up anywhere. And no, it's not their own fault.
Everyday it seems to become clearer that American culture as whole is a problem. But that's not something people are allowed to talk about.
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So somewhere they feel safe to do so. Says something pretty fucked up about our culture that men don't feel safe to open up anywhere. And no, it's not their own fault.
I wouldn't use AI but I certainly don't have anyone to open up to really. Either they'd use what I tell them against me or just aren't in a position to offer any real support. With my luck I'd end up institutionalized for saying some unhinged shit anyway.
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They are human beings who are more frequently able to relate to people who are similar to them based on shared experiences including social pressures. I don't think either gender is unable to relate to the other gender, but social pressure is pretty strong and leads to common outcomes that involve pressures based race, gender, and economic status among others. Someone from a wealthy family is more likely to have a certain outlook compared to someone who had food insecurity as a child.
assumptions assumptions!
your presumption is that you'd be a better therapist, not a worse one, if you have more shared experiences with the client. that's not something current evidence supports.
empathy means we strive to understand one another, not presume we understand them based on our own experiences. THAT is how bad therapy happens. and self-disclosure is a crutch for poor rapport building skills.
without the shared experiences, there can be more drive for empath and mutual understanding. the feeling of being understood by someone outside your group can be transformative.
In truth, positive outcomes have little correlation with therapist-client demographics. the demographic differential does alter what the course of therapy might look like, but not the outcomes.
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Or “men would rather talk to superpowered autocorrect rather than sharing their feelings with family and friends”
Have you considered the fact that most of the time, even when people "want to hear mens issues", they reject them and tell them to man up? Maybe "superpowered autocorrect" could be a vector to nourish this severe lack of openness?
Personally I use AI for this purpose, mostly because it accepts me for who I am and provides genuine advice that has actually helped me improve my life, rather than the people around me saying that I should "put more effort into things", or "it's just in your head".
It's not "lone wolfing" to stop telling the people who've rejected your concerns about your feelings and issues, it's just the act of not wasting time on those who don't care.
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assumptions assumptions!
your presumption is that you'd be a better therapist, not a worse one, if you have more shared experiences with the client. that's not something current evidence supports.
empathy means we strive to understand one another, not presume we understand them based on our own experiences. THAT is how bad therapy happens. and self-disclosure is a crutch for poor rapport building skills.
without the shared experiences, there can be more drive for empath and mutual understanding. the feeling of being understood by someone outside your group can be transformative.
In truth, positive outcomes have little correlation with therapist-client demographics. the demographic differential does alter what the course of therapy might look like, but not the outcomes.
your presumption is that you’d be a better therapist, not a worse one, if you have more shared experiences with the client. that’s not something current evidence supports.
That isn't something I said or what I meant. Have fun arguing with your strawman.
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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.
You just lack the self-awareness and victimise yourself under the guise of "men's issues" so that other guys can emapthise with you and give credence to the idea that men are simultaneously completely forgotten about and that mental healthcare is a soft-science, or doesn't work for us. When clearly you can see how in this male dominated space, your feelings are not forgotten about. But, because you've never actually been to therapy and don't understand the core concepts. Everything falls back to "society treats women like this and treats men like this" and "this is the reason therapy is bad." When the reality is that self-reflection and analyses is hard and a skill and very taxing. That's why people do drugs instead of going to therapy. It's why men coalesce around the idea that we're treated "worse" by "society" forgetting that men and women basically make up all of society. Ironically, making your own safe space where you can appeal to shallow emotional arguments around injustice and inequity, while also complaining that the tools, knowledge and science we have at our disposal don't work.
It's this really apparent cognitive dissonance that you display here. i.e. You take the premise, stating that talking about your feelings, analysing your behaviour and coming to conclusions about yourself (therapy) is a waste of time. But also, nobody cares about men's issues and your psychological state isn't something you have any agency over, but it is a rational response to the state of the world around you. You should read Viktor Frankl. He was an Austrian Neurologist and psychiatrist who was put into forced labour at a concentration camp during World War 2. It nearly killed him, but he survived and died 50 years later. He published a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. Which is a detailed account of how happiness can be achieved in the most unthinkably monstrous circumstances. How Love, Beauty and Humour can exist if you look for and cultivate them and how those glimmers, no matter how small. Lend to his assertion that meaning can be found in the most miserable of conditions.
Which immediately discounts the doomerism you display in your other comments. I'd also say listen to some Alan Watts if you really are stuck in this mindset. He was much more a philosophical entertainer than an actual great thinker. But, one of his better opinions is that, you are your mindset and your mental health. Like, if you perceive, or tell yourself you perceive all of these horrible things about the economy, housing, the state of human loneliness. Then that is what you feel, it will be true to you and you will be unable to do anything. Alternatively, if you move away from constantly thinking about existential threats. To just actually, what is in front of you perceptively. You can find these glimmers of positivity that give your life dignity and meaning. It's the same as before, when I confronted you on the sexism of saying, "women are therapists, women can't understand men. Therefore, mental healthcare doesn't work for men."
I confronted you about that and then you made it existential by tasking me with finding how many therapists across the entire field (and there are thousands of niche categories within this discipline, just fyi) are unbiased.
how many well trained therapists are there out there who are totally objective, compared to poorly trained ones who will often perpetual their harmful biases?
does anyone know? how do we even measure that? do we just assume people who have a certain degree from a certain program are inherently ‘objective’?
Which are things no one can possibly know, which are not necessary to know in order for what your saying to be proven false, or for therapy to be effective. You purposefully make it existential by doing that. Because, now you've made an impossible task an essential requirement for you to change your perspective on things. You require it to change your perspective on therapy and actually go. This way, you dismiss what I am saying and then you don't have to do the thing you don't want to. You can just, sound like advocate for men's issues and then you can get all the emotional validation you require from other men, who also feel disenfranchised, in the form of supportive comments and updoots. All without having to go through the painful, (coded: humiliating) and personally challenging prospect of psychotherapy. Honestly dude, you read very much, like someone who really wants therapy.
Who wants to understand why they are this way, wants to be understood and wants to improve their life. But, it's expensive, what if I don't like them? What if it doesn't work? So, instead you get emotional validation anyway you can. By appealing to the male disenfranchisement sentiment, which is literally everywhere online from Andrew Tate to Sam Seeder. It perpetuates wallowing in victimhood which is tantamount to drugs in terms of emotional coping. The ultimate goal of therapy is to overcome these issues. So, that while the factually true things about the negative existential events we cannot control continue to occur. It does not become a crutch to support your failures in interpersonal communications, bad behaviours, lack of motivation, or lack of emotional fulfillment. Seriously, I recognise from what you're saying that you've never been to psychotherapy. Genuinely, it would help you stop equating your personal feelings with the inequity of men's issues, which would make those problems feel less like existential threats and help you improve your life. I'm not even trying to be condescending, I recognise this as a neuroticism I have dealt with as a younger man and I can speak from experience. Confronting it honestly and with curiosity and self-reflection has massively improved my outlook on life and helped me become much more secure in my masculinity.
Give it a try, because the other option is you just self-flagellate in this cyclical mindset of victimisation that doesn't actually go anywhere and is only validated by others caught in this myopic and isolating worldview. Give it a shot.
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It's possible to reduce the privacy issues by using APIs with a local frontend. Given that APIs usually cater to companies instead of end consumers they actually have simple opt-outs for information logging.
Requires a bit of know-how, and you'll be paying for your llm per use (not that bad actually, I've personally averaged <10$/yr in api costs) but at least you get to have all your personal issues on your local device instead.
For a chatGPT-like experience you probably want the ooga booga web generation ui but there's others too.
Personally I also ran some distilled versions of DeepSeek locally, though I'd imagine that isn't really possible for most people.
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You know, working together on something outside might be absolutely the ticket. Genius.
That was the whole premise of a King Of The Hill episode. Bobby and his friends working out their differences repairing Hank’s truck.
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Even therapists are suffering these days. It’s just more challenging than it’s ever been to gaslight clients into believing their concerns about the world aren’t objectively true and instead the symptom of an internal struggle.
Wow, I can’t say I’ve ever had therapists who gaslit me. Then again, I’ve purposefully sought out therapists who couldn’t prescribe meds.
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your presumption is that you’d be a better therapist, not a worse one, if you have more shared experiences with the client. that’s not something current evidence supports.
That isn't something I said or what I meant. Have fun arguing with your strawman.
okay then... I guess you're making this an adversarial thing. I'm not sure what you intended to mean by bringing up shared experiences if you weren't speaking to efficacy. but i guess i get why you made it adversarial: it's frustrating being misunderstood. happens to me too. i just got a comment like that in my inbox just like it. I tried to share insights on how empathy and diversity contributes to positive outcomes in therapy, and i got this bizarre tone deaf debate bro response instead. cant always be understood, i guess. it's fine. if you can't find common ground, you can at least tell people off who are trying to have a pleasant conversation with you, that'll at least ensure fewer and fewer people interact with you
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they're checking their own understanding by giving you an opportunity to correct them. by rephrasing it identically, it doesnt build any new understanding.
Yes, I understand the purpose of doing that... but they will rephrase it with different words, different meanings, leave out qualifiers, or add in qualifiers, etc.
Many times, the rephrasing doesn't change the meaning, and I agree, no problem.
But sometimes, specific wording or phrasing matters greatly.
I've found this is a concept many neurotypicals generally struggle with, that you can't always just reform a sentence into something easier to parse... because that can lose complexity and precision, and I am trying to convey something complex and precise.
And more often, when I object to my words being reformed... it is women who view my objection as aggressive, agitated, rude, hostile, combatative, etc.
does it not matter to you to be understood by others?
Broadly, I am well understood by most of the people I interact with.
Other than people clumsily trying to psychoanalyze me, and manipulative sociopath/narcissist types.
So no, I do not generally worry about my communication skills, as I have no problem communicating with the vast majority of people.
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For instance... I am aware that I am often rather verbose, and tend to ramble... thats actually a sign that I feel comfortable, and trust whoever I am talking to.
I am also aware that this can be verbally, conversationally overwhelming with people who think it is rude to interrupt.
So I just tell people, hey, i have a tendency to ramble, I will not be offended at all if you interject and politely tell me to shut it, refocus, try to summarize, etc, when I am obviously rambling to tangential topics, or just telling a long story or something.
And this works very well with people who can gather the... courage? to do this, as I genuinely do not find it offensive.
But with people who are for whatever reason so timid that even after I've given them explicit permission to interrupt me... they still don't actually do it... well, they tend to be frustrated with me, overwhelmed.
Normally, thats fine, I don't need to be everyone's friend.
But when its someone who I basically have little or no choice but to communicate with that particulsr person... yes, this can lead to problems.
maybe that's why you're bashing therapy on the internet, asking for CBT worksheets instead of building rapport, and indirectly praising relationships with LLMs?
So for starters, I quite explicitly said that I think using LLMs for therapy is a 'fucking horrible idea', I just didn't expand on that as much... as to me this is fairly self evident and obvious.
So we now see that you are... doing the thing.
You are putting words in my mouth, because what I specifically said was evidently too complex for you to fully parse, and now you've reformulated it into a bastardized form that is actually contradictory to what I said.
Your poor reading comprehension skills are not my problem.
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Secondly... I am not bashing therapy broadly, I think it is a great concept when well executed and easily accessible.
CBT in particular is more than just a set of paperwork... it is often very helpful to have a therapist use CBT methods, guidr someone through it in person.
I have been to a good number of therapists who've used CBT methods and they have been quite helpful... I am trying to say that I just needed a refresher, a paper copy, and after that, its been like getting back on a bicycle, I remember my training, lol.
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Also as far as building rapport: I don't really care to, as I am currently in a relatively temporary living situation, month to month rent, and I fully plan on moving to somewhere with more robust social safety nets and a better mental health support system, public transit system, etc, as soon as I am able, as soon as my PT has been effective enough that I am cleared by my PT team.
As I already mentioned... there are literally no therapists in the state I am currently in, via the health insurancd I can even barely afford... that are qualified and specialized to help an adult with autism.
Not sure where you are, but in the US broadly, there are hardly any psychologists or therapists that are properly qualified to treat high functioning adults with autism.
They are rare, expensive, and have huge waitlists.
I'm in a quite poor red state at the moment, with no highly reputable schools or psychology departments.
Here, autism = you're retarded, and its only ever evaluated as a 'disability' affecting children.
... So my plan is to try to get to where some actual civilization and professionals exist, and to the greatest extent possible, avoid useless or harmful advice from overconfident and untrained specialists who have to pull out the DSM V to understand a reference I am making.
Seems rational to me?
thank you for the clarifications, sorry if I disturbed you. getting services in rural areas really sucks too. Hopefully you can find a good online practicioner. therapy needs more national certificates so we can stop leaving red state people in suffering
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okay then... I guess you're making this an adversarial thing. I'm not sure what you intended to mean by bringing up shared experiences if you weren't speaking to efficacy. but i guess i get why you made it adversarial: it's frustrating being misunderstood. happens to me too. i just got a comment like that in my inbox just like it. I tried to share insights on how empathy and diversity contributes to positive outcomes in therapy, and i got this bizarre tone deaf debate bro response instead. cant always be understood, i guess. it's fine. if you can't find common ground, you can at least tell people off who are trying to have a pleasant conversation with you, that'll at least ensure fewer and fewer people interact with you
Your responses have been extremely unpleasant and argumentative.
Are you confusing my responses with sp3ctr4l?
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thank you for the clarifications, sorry if I disturbed you. getting services in rural areas really sucks too. Hopefully you can find a good online practicioner. therapy needs more national certificates so we can stop leaving red state people in suffering
I mean, I explained why I don't really need a basic therapist beyond just going over the basics of CBT, which I've already done now... but sure, ok, thanks?
For what its worth, I'm not the single downvote your comment here has.
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I mean, I explained why I don't really need a basic therapist beyond just going over the basics of CBT, which I've already done now... but sure, ok, thanks?
For what its worth, I'm not the single downvote your comment here has.
I didn't even check.
um, I'm not sure why you're off-put by my comment either, i guess instead I'm supposed to i wish you didnt have access to services?
(or i guess i wish your life is so dull and uneventful such that you never need therapy again /j)either way the only reason I responded was to say sorry i disturbed you. not really sure i mean that any more, that was kind of a dick reply but whatever
i just want to point out the irony of someone going on and on about anti therapy stuff, and then says there's no mental health care around me. if you think it's just a pill mill, maybe you didnt understand where you were going. the vast majority of therapists cant even prescribe rx.
and the complaint you have about how, in your words, "no one ever quotes me directly, they always ruin my words by interpreting me instead of parroting me" get over yourself. you see why they call you argumentative? because you bitch and moan about an interpretation not being perfect. guess what, communication isn't perfect, that's why you compromise and clarify.
Honestly your response to me has been so fucking rude i dont know why I'm wasting five minutes on you. you dont seem to give a shit about what anyone else thinks
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Your responses have been extremely unpleasant and argumentative.
Are you confusing my responses with sp3ctr4l?
nope, not confusing you with anyone.
and the point I'm trying to make is that you're perceiving it as argumentative when it's not. you finding me unpleasant is entirely your business, not mine.
just please be aware of what I'm trying to tell you about the value of demographic differences.
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I didn't even check.
um, I'm not sure why you're off-put by my comment either, i guess instead I'm supposed to i wish you didnt have access to services?
(or i guess i wish your life is so dull and uneventful such that you never need therapy again /j)either way the only reason I responded was to say sorry i disturbed you. not really sure i mean that any more, that was kind of a dick reply but whatever
i just want to point out the irony of someone going on and on about anti therapy stuff, and then says there's no mental health care around me. if you think it's just a pill mill, maybe you didnt understand where you were going. the vast majority of therapists cant even prescribe rx.
and the complaint you have about how, in your words, "no one ever quotes me directly, they always ruin my words by interpreting me instead of parroting me" get over yourself. you see why they call you argumentative? because you bitch and moan about an interpretation not being perfect. guess what, communication isn't perfect, that's why you compromise and clarify.
Honestly your response to me has been so fucking rude i dont know why I'm wasting five minutes on you. you dont seem to give a shit about what anyone else thinks
(or i guess i wish your life is so dull and uneventful such that you never need therapy again /j)
I would entirely seriously prefer this.
You're talking to a high functioning autist who got two bachelors degrees simultaneously and then went off to work for various Fortune 500 companies...
... who came from a dysfunctional white trash family of abusive narcissists who all gaslight each other by default, all have various drug/alcohol addiction problems... as well as criminal records, fairly extreme religious views, fairly 90s white nationalist militia types.
Last time I talked with my dad, he was explaining to me how Tom Hank's son killed raped and ate babies for their adrenochrome (Q Anon insane shit), and then proceeded to take me to his garage where he showed me how he assembles untraceable ghost guns by ordering parts without serial numbers separately snd then doing some light machine tooling to construct them.
... I am very much enjoying my having ghosted all of these fucking nutters, but quite seriously, when I tell therapists things like this, they often suspect I am delusional, exaggerating, lying, etc, to the point of trying to diagnose me with some kind of disorder involving persistent hallucinations.
either way the only reason I responded was to say sorry i disturbed you. not really sure i mean that any more, that was kind of a dick reply but whatever
you're in 'therapist' mode, thats why you sense hostility from me.
you presume you have a better ... at least potential, understanding of myself, of any topic you feel you are well versed in, than I do or potentially may, and you speak and ask rhetorical questions with arrogance and authority, presuming you will be able to prove yourself as correct.
then on a dime you will flip to acting offended or outraged, as if you have not been being rude the entire time, by not actually reading or understanding what I say, and by throwing in your own assumptions first, then coming to conclusions, then getting emotional over those conclusions... when you could have just asked for clarification in good faith.
I have already expressed to you mutliple times that I require a therapist who understands how to communicate with and to a high functioning autist... and you continue to exemplify why this is the case; you have no idea how to connect with an autist, as evidenced by the fact that you do not understand why I do not appreciate the things you have been saying to me, the way in which you have been saying them.
In less words: you could stand to be more humble, less conceited.
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nope, not confusing you with anyone.
and the point I'm trying to make is that you're perceiving it as argumentative when it's not. you finding me unpleasant is entirely your business, not mine.
just please be aware of what I'm trying to tell you about the value of demographic differences.
I'm aware of what you are saying and disagree. You apparently take disagreement personally as most of your comments in that post to various other users are hostile too.
Please be aware of how you are approaching discourse.
