AI had taken over health care

Peter Simons writes in his article "Doctors: Patients Don't Want You To Use AI" on 08/18/25 on the Mad In America website:

There’s a deep divide between how patients and doctors view the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Doctors are overwhelmingly in favor of using AI: two-thirds of doctors have already incorporated it into their practice. But patients are concerned about AI’s tendency to make up false information and fear AI use may further reduce an already dismissive and unsympathetic medical interaction to something completely robotic.

This divide exists in other fields too, where corporate executives believe that AI has improved customer service, but actual customers disagree, with 88% preferring human interaction, and almost half say “their biggest frustration has been not being able to reach a human.”

The back room jargon in the health care field is the importance of treating the record and not the patient. Modern health care has turned into disease management and less on patient care.

How to manage this poor patient care? Limit your interactions with health care professionals which are increasingly being recorded and be careful about the information you share. Find other resources for understanding and support.

Book Review - The Book Of Ruth by Jane Hamilton

While it's not a self-help book, reading Jane Hamilton's The Book of Ruth can offer several psychotherapeutic benefits, primarily by fostering empathy and providing a powerful narrative for exploring themes of trauma, resilience, and personal growth. The novel is not a manual for therapy, but it can serve as a catalyst for self-reflection and understanding.

Here are some of the potential psychotherapeutic benefits of reading The Book of Ruth:

• Empathy and Understanding of Trauma: The novel provides a deeply personal and raw account of a character, Ruth, who endures a life of hardship and emotional abuse. By immersing yourself in her perspective, you can develop a deeper sense of empathy for individuals who have experienced trauma, particularly those from marginalized or difficult backgrounds. Ruth's story challenges the reader to look beyond surface judgments and understand the complex reasons behind her choices and struggles.

• Exploring Family Dynamics and Cycles of Abuse: The book's central conflict revolves around the toxic and abusive relationship between Ruth and her mother, May. By witnessing this dynamic, readers can gain insight into the destructive nature of family dysfunction and the ways in which trauma can be passed down through generations. This can be particularly therapeutic for readers who have their own difficult family histories, as it may provide a framework for understanding and processing their experiences.

• The Power of Resilience: Despite the immense suffering she endures, Ruth demonstrates a quiet yet profound resilience. She finds solace and strength in unexpected places, such as her correspondence with her aunt and her love for literature. Her journey from passivity to a form of self-rescue highlights the human capacity to survive and even grow in the face of overwhelming adversity. This can be a source of hope and inspiration for readers facing their own challenges.

• The Quest for Identity and Self-Worth: A major theme of the novel is Ruth's struggle to define herself outside of the expectations and labels placed upon her by her family and community. She is constantly told she is a "loser" and is overshadowed by her "brilliant" brother. Her journey of self-discovery, from a timid and passive young woman to someone who can piece together her own story, is a powerful narrative about finding one's voice and recognizing one's own value.

• The Role of Narrative in Healing: The novel is revealed to be a story that Ruth herself has written. This framing device suggests that the act of telling one's own story can be a form of therapy and a path to forgiveness. By creating her own narrative, Ruth is able to process her trauma and take ownership of her life. This can be a powerful lesson for readers about the importance of giving voice to their own experiences.

In summary, The Book of Ruth offers a harrowing but ultimately hopeful look at the human spirit. While it's a work of fiction, its exploration of themes like trauma, family relationships, and resilience can serve as a valuable tool for introspection and empathy, providing a unique form of psychotherapeutic benefit.

Violent attack on CDC goes largely unnoticed

“It’s been a struggle to process what happened at the CDC just a few days ago. The facts are coming in: one officer died, 500 rounds fired, 200 bullets made contact with 6 CDC buildings, hundreds of staff sheltered in place for hours. The intention is undeniable: this was an attempted massacre.”

This was the opening of an August 13 Substack column and video discussing the deafening silence after the deadly attack last week on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, a joint effort by resident physician Kristein Panthagan, emergency physician Megan Ranny (also Dean of Yale School of Public Health) and epidemiologist Kateyn Jetelina of Your Local Epidemiologist.

“The state of the world feels unrecognizable,” they wrote. “We are living headline to headline, tragedy to tragedy…Our world is swallowed whole by the endless churn of violence and crisis we’ve come to accept as ordinary. We are drowning in the abnormal…”

In a LinkedIn post, Jeletina wrote: “As horrific as it was to have 500 bullets fired toward the CDC, what’s been equally painful is what followed (or rather, what didn’t). The silence. The indifference. It's been deafening. Especially after all that public health has given over the past six years.”

For more click here.

The CDC has done great work in making the public health of Americans better than it would otherwise be without their good work. However the attacks by MAGA, DOGE, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have cultivated animosity, and vilification by the scientifically illiterate who resent limits being put on their life threatening behaviors.

Our society will enjoy a higher quality of life for all if we support our public health programs.

Female veterinarians have a suicide rate 3.5 times the national average.

Parenting - Predictability nurtures secure children.

 

One of the key components of mentally healthy functioning is security. Security comes from predictability from the perspective of the child. Can the child trust their caretakers to meet their needs and treat them fairly?

Does the parent mean what they say and say what they mean? Is the parent reliable and dependable? If so, the child grows up feeling secure and competent in meeting life's expectations and requirements.

In structural family therapy the therapist focuses on the family hierarchy, good boundaries, regulated management of emotional expression, and the provision of predicted routines. This means that the therapist often parents the parents so they can better enact their parenting roles with their children to achieve more satisfying and fulfilling family relationships.

Parents should not say things to children they don't mean and aren't likely to follow through with. Honesty is a significant virtue to cultivate in ourselves and in our relationships.

Do chat bots cripple social skill development in children and teens?

 

For more from this Scientific American article click here.

There are similar concerns about the crimpling of human social skills when people resort to on-line social media to meet their needs for social connection.

Parenting - telling the children about the plan to divorce

 

Linda McCullough Moore's book of short stories, An Episode Of Grace, begins with the story entitled, "You choose," which begins with this paragraph:

"I’m driving on Route 91, going ten miles over the limit, on the way to my divorce, or, at least, to its announcement. My husband Jake and I decided we would tell the kids tonight. We’ve waited way too long. Our marriage died of natural causes years ago. We are planning that our children will be shocked beyond surprise, but we both know better. Any hesitation that we have about telling them isn’t fear of their surprise; it’s knowing that once we say the words, out loud, to them, it will be official, carved in stone, irreversible. But, of course, that’s what we want."

The children's' names are Jonah who is 11 and Adam who is 6.

Of all the questions I get asked as a couple counselor and a family therapist by people going through a divorce are when and how to tell the kids?

My stock answer is "Don't tell them anything until you know specifically what the plan is unless they ask."

Kids being narcissistic in a healthy way first ask when told their parents are separating is "What's going to happen to me?" Parents need to have the answer to provide the child with whatever sense of security and predictability they are able.

The narrator in this story has her plan in place and has coordinated the telling the children with her husband and as she travels to the meeting with the children she gets stuck in a snow storm and as the various events unfold her ambivalence about divorcing her husband grows in poignant ways.

The ambivalence partners usually feel about a break-up with the concomitant anger, sadness, fear, hope, sense of failure and regret, are things the therapist witnesses and, hopefully, clarifies with the client(s) into some sort of coherent story that makes sense to themselves primarily and then to others affected.

The key question, often overlooked, in the emotional turmoil is, "What is the purpose of this relationship?" The genuine answers to this question usually lie at an unconscious level that the individual is not aware of and doesn't understand. 

The understandings of one's motivations, choices, and responsibilities are key to growth towards greater maturity so that the individual does not jump from the proverbial frying pan into the fire and engage in what Dr. Freud called the "repetition compulsion" to merely re-enact the same scenario over again.

The narrator of the story recognizes that telling the children about the impending divorce is a milestone in the process which she determines as a point of no return. It is an action which will make the rupture permanent and complete. The finality and the closure seems to heighten her apprehension about the decision to divorce rather than mollify it and liberate her.

What will she do when she gets her car unstuck from the snow and reschedules the meeting with her their husband and maybe soon to be ex- husband?