AI can't replace therapists but can enhance mental health care

What if your therapist could be more prepared and present for you? Or more passionate about his or her work because he or she can leave on time at the end of the day to rest and recover? Or better trained on the latest therapeutic techniques?

When we talk about artificial intelligence and psychotherapy, we’re usually debating whether an AI chatbot can ever truly replace a therapist and what it would mean if it could.

But where the most value lies in AI for psychotherapy is not in replacement — it’s for enhancement.

Right now, the most common application for AI in therapy are models that can compose rough drafts of clinical notes. This is a huge win-win: Clients get to experience a therapist who is fully present (i.e., not jotting down notes during session), and the therapists need less time to complete documentation, allowing them to reclaim hours of time each week.

The bonus for everyone is the notes created are generally higher quality and more comprehensive than a therapist working from brief notes or memory.

But that’s just the beginning.

Another area where AI holds incredible promise is in continuing education. Today’s continuing education standards are outdated and too often, ineffective at ensuring clinical quality.

New AI platforms can deliver personalized, skills-based training while helping clinicians stay abreast of the latest tools, resources and trends that make us better providers.

Consider, for example, that technology can support generative case simulations to help clinicians sharpen diagnostic skills in a safe, risk-free environment, acting like a mirror that enables therapists to reflect on and improve their skills.

Adopting these tools as approved continuing education options (if not a required standard) for licensure renewal would likely have an immediate positive impact after the next renewal cycle.

There is little doubt AI is poised to transform mental health care, and we must allow that progress to unfold. I urge lawmakers in both Springfield and Washington to support forward-thinking policies that encourage safe, thoughtful development of AI solutions in the health care space and to be mindful of regulatory restrictions that could suffocate or delay innovation.

We’ve seen far too many deep cuts to mental health care support and services over the last six months. Let’s champion innovation that benefits both patients and providers. Our mental health system — and everyone it serves — deserve nothing less.

Aaron Weiner, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist and addiction specialist, Lake Forest

Have we learned lessons since atomic bombings of Japan?

Eighty years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic “Little Boy” bomb over Hiroshima. In an instant, incineration ravaged the city, leaving 140,000 dead.

Three days later, Nagasaki was ravaged, with another 74,000 dead. By the year's end, more died from the blasts, fire and radiation poisoning.

These were acts of war that ruptured the moral and existential boundaries of modern civilization.

While Hiroshima is more than 6,500 miles away from Chicago, the atomic fission began on Dec. 2, 1942, beneath University of Chicago’s Stagg Field, where Enrico Fermi achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction with the reactor Chicago Pile-1. Henry Moore’s chilling sculpture, Nuclear Energy, marks the spot where the theory leading to the firestorm was born.

The bomb is glorified for ending World War II. Yet historians Gar Alperovitz and Martin J. Sherwin maintained the atomic bomb did not hasten Japan’s surrender. Instead, they said it was a brutal diplomatic weapon to intimidate the Soviet Union and cement American nuclear supremacy.

Chicago offered a unique early moral voice to oppose this madness. In 1945, physicist Leo Szilard, at the U. of C.'s Metallurgical Laboratory, or Met Lab. petitioned President Harry Truman to consider not using the atom bomb. The Franck Report urged a nonlethal demonstration under United Nations auspices.

The pleas were ignored, but their legacy remains that scientific knowledge comes with moral consequence.

Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear threat has expanded. Today, nine nations possess nuclear weapons: the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K., France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. The latter is the only undeclared nuclear state.

The U.S. and Russia alone possess over 10,000 warheads, which imprisons humankind within nuclear deterrence through annihilation.

The U.S. remains among the eight crucial nations rejecting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1996. The U.S. has also not signed or ratified 2021's Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which bans the development, possession and use of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear age is a specter haunting humankind. Disarmament is not a utopian ideal but a survival imperative. The legacy of splitting uranium nuclei is a warning, not a warrant.

Eighty years on, the question remains will we forever avoid nuclear catastrophe? Founded in Chicago, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock stands at 89 seconds to midnight. It must not reach zero.

Peter N. Kirstein, professor emeritus of history, St. Xavier University, Palos Heights

A vote for term limits for politicians

I am happy to see so many politically active young people. I also feel we've been governed by seniors for too long. (I'm 75, and many current office holders are older than me).

While I don't believe there should be an age cap for holding office, I am in favor of term limits for elected officials, including U.S. Supreme Court judges.

My question to these younger politicians: Do you support term limits? Would you promise to voluntarily not run after a certain number of reelections?

Otherwise, in 20, 30, 40 years, we will have just another bunch of seniors running things again.

Michael Blane, Logan Square