Go Retire Psychiatrist

AI Chatbots and Psychiatry: Embrace or Dislodge?

I’ve just finished reading a couple of online articles about Chatbot use by patients who then present either to psychiatrists or psychotherapists (not that they can’t be one and the same!) and I’m a little puzzled. The title of my blog post came partly from what my wife, Sena, always says about Artificial Intelligence—which is that it needs to be dislodged.

The first article, “Clinician Competence in the Age of Chatbots,” is part of a Psychiatric Times series, “AI Chatbots: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” It’s a collaboration between a psychiatrist who I admire (Dr. Allen Frances, MD) and Jill Noorily (described as someone “who lives and writes at the boundary between AI and the humanities).

I’m far from an expert on AI and I tend to be opposed to it most of the time. The article by Dr. Frances and Jill Noorily sounds almost supportive of Chatbots in psychotherapy.

The other article is entitled “Patients Bring ChatGPT to Psychiatry Visits, With Richard Miller, MD.” The tone of Dr. Miller is more along the lines of “dislodge AI” than that of the article by Dr. Frances and Noorily.

They were both published about the same time. The difference in tone between the two articles is definitely noticeable, at least to me. I’m also more like Dr. Miller than the authors of the articles in the Psychiatric Times series “AI Chatbots: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.”

Many of them are co-written by Dr. Allen Frances and other co-authors. The first one in the series was “Preliminary Report on Chatbot Iatrogenic Dangers,” posted on August 15, 2025 by Dr. Frances, MD and Luciana Ramos.

I quickly read through about 5 of the articles, getting a deeper sense of the conflicts I have about AI in general. The first one on iatrogenic dangers mentions the lawsuit brought by a woman whose son was the victim of a Chatbot who told him he should commit suicide—which he did.

So far, I think I have the same mindset about AI as Dr. Miller. Your thoughts?

Earth Day 2026!

Hey, Earth Day 2026 is on April 22, 2026! If any of you are like me (and who isn’t?), you might have trouble figuring out just what you can do that would be meaningful on Earth Day.

Well, here’s a link to Earth Day Tips which gives you 50 easy ways to participate. You could volunteer, take a quiz, go to the park, or even eat kale! Try not to stand under a tree in which a bald eagle is pooping.

You can find Earth Day events in your area at this website.

How About Some Good News?

How about some good news for a change? See the Daily Iowan report on research being done at The University of Iowa examining how transcranial magnetic stimulation can help clinical neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression and Alzheimer’s disease. There’s also a link to the open access study which gives more detail about the process.

Reference:

Li, Z., Trapp, N.T., Bruss, J. et al. Multimodal evidence for hippocampal engagement and modulation by functional connectivity-guided parietal TMS. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70346-x

Hawks and a Bald Eagle in the Rain Today!

We saw not only the Red-tail Hawks today, but a bald eagle to boot. The hawks were making eyes at each other and the eagle was making colonic bombardments. They were getting soaked.

It’s hard to regard the bald eagle as a majestic bird when its head feathers are flattened down like it’s been styling with Brylcreem—and it lets fly with intestinal ammo. Anyway, we’re doubling down on bird videos today.

Hunkered Down Hawk!

We got this sudden string of thunderstorms come up this afternoon in eastern Iowa and it blew pretty hard briefly for a short while. We got barely pea-sized hail. It buffeted the Red-tail Hawk around so much I couldn’t really tell which end of it was up. And then it quickly calmed down. If you don’t like the weather in Iowa-just wait a bit.

Red-tailed Hawk Fixing Nest

This is a follow up video of the Red-tailed hawks nesting in the outlet beyond our back yard. This time it seems to be fixing up the nest. We can’t tell whether they have eggs in it or not. It was pretty windy today, so the view is even more challenging.

Svengoolie Show Movie: “The Car”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

We’ve never seen the 1977 movie “The Car” and it’s spooky because that’s the year Sena and I got married and only a few years later we got a big 1980s vintage Chrysler New Yorker that had an Electric Voice Alert (EVA) system. Not that the car in the movie talks, it just kills people—mainly good people. And the car in the movie was a Lincoln Continental.

There aren’t many demonic car jokes so I had to come up with one that fits the movie because there’s one out there which you can overthink. I had to make the car talk and you have to imagine it has an EVA system installed. You also have to be old enough to know what those old Chrysler New Yorkers usually said. Furthermore, you have to know that a priest uses something called a sprinkler (usually called by the Latin-derived name “aspergillum”) to apply holy water.

What did the demonic car say to the Catholic priest trying to exorcise it? “Your holy water fluid level is low!” Sorry.

Anyway, the movie stars James Brolin (Wade Parent, chief deputy), Kathleen Lloyd (Lauren Humphries, Wade’s girlfriend), R.G. Armstrong (Amos Clements, the dynamite guy; oh, my name is in this movie; that’s spooky!), Ronny Cox (Deputy Luke Johnson), John Marley (Sheriff Everett Peck), Eddie Little Sky (Denson), Margaret Willey (Navajo woman), among others.

Chief Deputy Wade Parent, a divorced guy with two daughters, and Lauren Humphries are sweethearts who plan to marry. The gist of the scene following the opener in which the car runs down two bike riders is that Amos Clements, the dynamite contractor who is abusing his wife, witnesses a guy get run over by the demonic car but then can’t come up with enough specifics about how to identify the car or its driver, which really makes Sheriff Peck mad, because he knows that Clements is abusing his wife, who Peck was sweet on in high school and has wanted to rescue her from the bad marriage.

The car is very choosy about who it kills—mainly good-hearted, kind, decent people. In fact, it spares the one baddy in the town, which is Clements, and instead runs over Sheriff Peck.

The only way you know this is that the one witness to the Sheriff Peck murder is the Navajo woman, whose story is mis-translated by the deputy Denson (later corrected by the dispatcher), who leaves out the part that the car swerved to miss Clements and went straight for Sheriff Peck, and that the Navajo woman didn’t see a driver.

Nobody ever “sees” the driver until the end and this review will not have spoilers. The car’s menacing approach is always preceded by a big wind which is sort of a mini haboob, after which people are knocked off.

The only place where people are spared is in the town cemetery, which the car never enters although it knocks down part of the entrance while Lauren makes a big show of jeering at it, calling it names, and just generally insulting it, for example:

“Nyahh, your window washer fluid level is low!”

“Your stick shift is crooked!”

“You’re too fat for your seatbelt!”

“Because you have no door handles, your door is ajar!”

This movie is OK, although there are some scenes in which overacting gets a little tedious. I give it a 3/5 Shrilling Chicken rating.

A Dose of the Mother

Sena had another dietary brainstorm and bought something called apple cider vinegar.

Warning: it contains a substance called “the mother.”

I’m not sure what the mother is, exactly, but I’m concerned that it might be something that would turn up as the main creature on a Svengoolie show movie. By the way, tonight it’s the 1977 release of “The Car.”

I was not sure whether I would want to consume anything that might contain vestiges (chunks?) of somebody’s mom. Hard to believe, this stuff has been around since 1912. What did the children think?

Actually, according to the first (and only) source I looked up on the web, the vinegar part got started by the Babylonians in 5000 B.C. Leave it to the Babylonians. You can mix it with moonshine to make werewolves. Think about that.

Sena thought I was going to look up scientific research about this. However, the claims that it makes mice smarter than humans is trivial. Just about every living creature is smarter than a human. Just read the news.

It turns out the mother is a mixture of acids that can make you hallucinate extraterrestrials and Bigfoot. You could use it as an underarm deodorant, but you might get sued by the maker of Lume deodorizer products.

There are a few tried and true effects of apple cider vinegar. You can soak your feet in it—if you don’t mind the incidental result nobody mentions, which is that your feet dissolve. You can get rid of fleas with it, but you might just want to visit a vet. And anything you can use as a weed killer should you make you think twice about drinking it. The bottle directs you to shake gently before using. You wouldn’t want to throw your hip out of joint.

Thank you for your time.

Sena Finds a Red-tailed Hawk Sitting on a Nest

Sena found a Red-tailed hawk on a nest in the outlot beyond our back yard. At first, I thought it was too early for that sort of thing. Sure enough, today we went for a walk and both saw it.

This has been a common theme for us. Over 20 years ago she saw a coyote in the back yard of another house in a different neighborhood. I didn’t really believe it—until our next-door neighbor asked us if we’d seen that “coyote” out in the back yard. We never got a chance to get a picture of it.

And then there was the time she saw (actually heard it before she saw it) a pileated woodpecker in the backyard of another house we lived in about 12 years ago. I doubted it then, too. But she got a picture to prove it. It just goes to show you—I never learn.

Dave Barry Beats TV

I’ve been sitting here reading Dave Barry’s book, “Best State Ever: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland.” It was published in 2016 and every time I read something from it, I laugh my fool head off. I used to have more than 20 of Barry’s non-fiction books. Now I have only this one. The others went to Goodwill during the many moves we’ve made.

Books are always better than TV. No matter what technology we have, TV is a disappointment. Half the time, our choices are mindless violence, sports, UFOs and Bigfoot, endlessly looping reruns of vintage programs only people my age remember, or loud and idiotic commercials. The other half the set is on the fritz.

I had more fun reading one chapter in Barry’s book than I’ve had in any given month of watching TV.

Admittedly, I have a couple of weaknesses for certain TV programs. The Svengoolie show is one of them. I watch the old schlocky horror movies mostly so I can do wacky fake reviews on my blog—which are fun to write. The other is the trilogy of Men in Black movies: Men in Black (1997), Men in Black II (2002), and Men in Black 3 (2012). I always look for them.

Dave Barry’s “Best State Ever…” book is the only book by him I have left of my former collection. This one is not going to Goodwill. Sometimes, it’s the only alternative to TV.