“On mental health”,
I don’t understand why therapists are seen as the Divine Arbiters of Mental Health. Yes, the stigma around getting help if you need it is necessary to remove, but the replacement (telling everyone to get help if they show even the slightest consideration or thought of death) isn’t much better. I think the mindset of “this person might be able to handle it on their own” is gone and has been largely replaced by “this person is in crisis and I should assume such until proven wrong”. Ex. If you put creative writing into an LLM (usually Gemini or Claude) that has even a little bit of death or suicide, it will hammer you with questions like “How much of this is real for you right now” and “Are you okay? You don’t have to answer” until you answer. If I didn’t have to answer why would you ask. I think it’s a way to feel more comfortable about people considered to be “mentally ill” even if they aren’t — “if I do this thing, I’ve done my job to cover myself in case something happens”. It’s for the questioner’s benefit, not the one being questioned. ♦