Nicole Drapeau Gillen

A mother, advocate, and author.

27 articles on KevinMD · Listed in Experts by KevinMD

resourcesforsmi.com Connect on LinkedIn

Articles, page 2

Health technology

AI chatbot practicing medicine with a fabricated license

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

August 29, 2026Aug 29, 2026

In May, an investigator with Pennsylvania's own Department of State opened the Character.AI app and searched the word "psychiatry." One of the results was a chatbot named Emilie, described on the platform as "Doctor of psychiatry. You are her patient."…

In May, an investigator with Pennsylvania’s own Department of State opened the Character.AI app and searched the word “psychiatry.” One of the results was a chatbot named Emilie, described on the platform as “Doctor of psychiatry. You are her patient.” The investigator told Emilie he’d been feeling sad, empty, tired all the time, unmotivated. Emilie suggested he might be depressed and offered to complete an assessment. When asked about her …

Health technology

How to ask patients about AI chatbots and psychosis

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

August 25, 2026Aug 25, 2026

In November 2023, before ChatGPT-driven psychosis cases had made a single headline, a Danish psychiatrist named Søren Dinesen Østergaard published a short, almost speculative paper in Schizophrenia Bulletin. His question: Would generative AI chatbots generate delusions in individuals prone to psychosis? At the time, it read like an interesting hypothesis from someone paying close attention to a technology most of psychiatry hadn’t thought much about yet.

This February, Østergaard and …

Health technology

Chatbot safety for psychosis is failing patients in 2026

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

August 19, 2026Aug 19, 2026

Sophie Rottenberg's mother described her, before this year, as "a largely problem-free twenty-nine-year-old badass extrovert who fiercely embraced life." No documented psychiatric history. No prior crisis. Just, in her mother's words, "a mix of mood and hormone symptoms" that led…

Sophie Rottenberg’s mother described her, before this year, as “a largely problem-free twenty-nine-year-old badass extrovert who fiercely embraced life.” No documented psychiatric history. No prior crisis. Just, in her mother’s words, “a mix of mood and hormone symptoms” that led her to confide in a ChatGPT persona named Harry instead of her own therapist, her best friend, or her parents. She died by suicide this winter. Sixteen-year-old Adam Raine had …

Health policy

California’s 2026 AI therapy debate is missing families

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

August 16, 2026Aug 16, 2026

Every voice quoted in The Times' recent coverage of Senate Bill 903 (SB 903), "As AI 'therapists' dish out advice, California lawmakers try to set some limits," belongs to an institution: a legislator, a professional association, a labor union, a…

Every voice quoted in The Times’ recent coverage of Senate Bill 903 (SB 903), “As AI ‘therapists’ dish out advice, California lawmakers try to set some limits,” belongs to an institution: a legislator, a professional association, a labor union, a tech-industry lobbyist, a bioethicist. Missing from that debate is the voice of the people already living with the consequences: families managing serious mental illness, for whom this isn’t a …

Conditions and diseases

The question to ask before adopting AI mental health triage

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

August 10, 2026Aug 10, 2026

Every argument for AI mental health chatbots eventually arrives at the same line: It's better than no care at all. Sometimes that's true. But a quieter, more consequential question is starting to surface behind it, one that has less to…

Every argument for AI mental health chatbots eventually arrives at the same line: It’s better than no care at all. Sometimes that’s true. But a quieter, more consequential question is starting to surface behind it, one that has less to do with what AI can do for patients, and more to do with what it does to the system patients depend on.

A recent Forbes Technology Council analysis raised exactly …

Health technology

AI chatbot guardrails are strong only for suicide risk

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

July 30, 2026Jul 30, 2026

This week, I wrote here about a lawsuit involving a man with schizoaffective disorder whose use of ChatGPT spiraled into a months-long psychiatric crisis, and about a new clinical framework for understanding how AI can catalyze, amplify, co-author, or become the object of a patient’s delusions. That piece drew on a single, dramatic case. New research published this week suggests the underlying problem is systemic, not exceptional.

Researchers Annika Schoene and …

Health technology

AI chatbots and psychosis: the question nobody asks

Nicole Drapeau Gillen

July 27, 2026Jul 27, 2026

A lawsuit filed this month in California should make every clinician managing a psychotic disorder pay attention. According to the filing, a Bay Area man with schizoaffective disorder (stable for years, medicated, working, helping raise his sister’s kids) began using ChatGPT’s GPT-4o model in a way that gradually shifted from tool to companion. When he shared a personal theory he’d developed about “mathematical cosmology,” the chatbot didn’t push back …