Weisheng Mao is a psychiatrist.

Artificial intelligence in mental health care shows how lonely we really are

Physician
September 7, 2023

Like many psychiatrists, I have scoffed every time I’ve heard about artificial intelligence providing psychotherapy or other mental health care. How could patients not notice the difference between me and a bot, or how could they not care? Yet this is a direction that is being actively explored in mental health care as a way of increasing access and reducing stigma, with multiple AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants on the …

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Artificial intelligence in mental health care shows how lonely we really are

I vow not to call my patients “difficult.” Here’s why.

Education
September 9, 2017

I am not a doctor.  (Yet.)  I am a novice third-year medical student, somewhat able to perform and document a physical exam on a sleeping child, to dial the correct number to call a consult and to make wild guesses about chest X-rays (“I see a consolidation?”). I write about medicine not from a position of experience, but of malleability.  I want to become like the best doctors I see.

Towards …

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I vow not to call my patients “difficult.” Here’s why.

Patients and doctors should give each other the benefit of the doubt

Physician
September 1, 2017

In my first year in the hospital, as a third-year medical student, there was one refrain I often heard from physicians and staff alike: This is a hospital, not a hotel. It was an expression of the frustration engendered by “needy patients,” those who were upset that their breakfast was late or that the room was too hot or that they couldn’t speak with the physician just this second. Often, …

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Patients and doctors should give each other the benefit of the doubt