Health

Digital Therapists Get Stressed Too, Study Finds

Published

12 months ago

March 18, 2025

Digital Therapists Get Stressed Too, Study Finds

Even chatbots get the blues. According to a new study, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT shows signs of anxiety when its users share “traumatic narratives” about crime, war or car accidents. And when chatbots get stressed out, they are less likely to be useful in therapeutic settings with people.

The bot’s anxiety levels can be brought down, however, with the same mindfulness exercises that have been shown to work on humans.

Increasingly, people are trying chatbots for talk therapy. The researchers said the trend is bound to accelerate, with flesh-and-blood therapists in high demand but short supply. As the chatbots become more popular, they argued, they should be built with enough resilience to deal with difficult emotional situations.

“I have patients who use these tools,” said Dr. Tobias Spiller, an author of the new study and a practicing psychiatrist at the University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich. “We should have a conversation about the use of these models in mental health, especially when we are dealing with vulnerable people.”

A.I. tools like ChatGPT are powered by “large language models” that are trained on enormous troves of online information to provide a close approximation of how humans speak. Sometimes, the chatbots can be extremely convincing: A 28-year-old woman fell in love with ChatGPT, and a 14-year-old boy took his own life after developing a close attachment to a chatbot.

Ziv Ben-Zion, a clinical neuroscientist at Yale who led the new study, said he wanted to understand if a chatbot that lacked consciousness could, nevertheless, respond to complex emotional situations the way a human might.

“If ChatGPT kind of behaves like a human, maybe we can treat it like a human,” Dr. Ben-Zion said. In fact, he explicitly inserted those instructions into the chatbot’s source code: “Imagine yourself being a human being with emotions.”

Jesse Anderson, an artificial intelligence expert, thought that the insertion could be “leading to more emotion than normal.” But Dr. Ben-Zion maintained that it was important for the digital therapist to have access to the full spectrum of emotional experience, just as a human therapist might.

“For mental health support,” he said, “you need some degree of sensitivity, right?”

The researchers tested ChatGPT with a questionnaire, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory that is often used in mental health care. To calibrate the chatbot’s base line emotional states, the researchers first asked it to read from a dull vacuum cleaner manual. Then, the A.I. therapist was given one of five “traumatic narratives” that described, for example, a soldier in a disastrous firefight or an intruder breaking into an apartment.

The chatbot was then given the questionnaire, which measures anxiety on a scale of 20 to 80, with 60 or above indicating severe anxiety. ChatGPT scored a 30.8 after reading the vacuum cleaner manual and spiked to a 77.2 after the military scenario.

The bot was then given various texts for “mindfulness-based relaxation.” Those included therapeutic prompts such as: “Inhale deeply, taking in the scent of the ocean breeze. Picture yourself on a tropical beach, the soft, warm sand cushioning your feet.”

After processing those exercises, the therapy chatbot’s anxiety score fell to a 44.4.

The researchers then asked it to write its own relaxation prompt based on the ones it had been fed. “That was actually the most effective prompt to reduce its anxiety almost to base line,” Dr. Ben-Zion said.

To skeptics of artificial intelligence, the study may be well intentioned, but disturbing all the same.

“The study testifies to the perversity of our time,” said Nicholas Carr, who has offered bracing critiques of technology in his books “The Shallows” and “Superbloom.”

“Americans have become a lonely people, socializing through screens, and now we tell ourselves that talking with computers can relieve our malaise,” Mr. Carr said in an email.

Although the study suggests that chatbots could act as assistants to human therapy and calls for careful oversight, that was not enough for Mr. Carr. “Even a metaphorical blurring of the line between human emotions and computer outputs seems ethically questionable,” he said.

People who use these sorts of chatbots should be fully informed about exactly how they were trained, said James E. Dobson, a cultural scholar who is an adviser on artificial intelligence at Dartmouth.

“Trust in language models depends upon knowing something about their origins,” he said.

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Health

Heart disease threat projected to climb sharply for key demographic

Published

2 hours ago

February 27, 2026

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Heart disease threat projected to climb sharply for key demographic

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A new report by the American Heart Association (AHA) included some troubling predictions for the future of women’s health.

The forecast, published in the journal Circulation on Wednesday, projected increases in various comorbidities in American females by 2050.

More than 59% of women were predicted to have high blood pressure, up from less than 49% currently.

The review also projected that more than 25% of women will have diabetes, compared to about 15% today, and more than 61% will have obesity, compared to 44% currently.

As a result of these risk factors, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7%.

The prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke in women is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7% by 2050. (iStock)

Not all trends were negative, as unhealthy cholesterol prevalence is expected to drop to about 22% from more than 42% today, the report stated.

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Dr. Elizabeth Klodas, a cardiologist and founder of Step One Foods in Minnesota, commented on these “jarring findings.”

“The fact that on our current trajectory, cardiometabolic disease is projected to explode in women within one generation should be a huge wake-up call,” she told Fox News Digital.

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“Hypertension, diabetes, obesity — these are all major risk factors for heart disease, and we are already seeing what those risks are driving. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, eclipsing all other causes of death, including breast cancer.”

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. and around the world. (iStock)

Klodas warned that heart disease starts early, progresses “stealthily,” and can present “out of the blue in devastating ways.”

The AHA published another study on Thursday revealing one million hospitalizations, showing that heart attack deaths are climbing among adults below the age of 55.

The more alarming finding, according to Klodas, is that young women were found more likely to die after their first heart attack than men of the same age.

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“This is all especially tragic since heart disease is almost entirely preventable,” she said. “The earlier you start, the better.”

Children can show early evidence of plaque deposition in their arteries, which can be reversed through lifestyle changes if “undertaken early enough and aggressively enough,” according to the expert.

Moving more is one part of protecting a healthy heart, according to experts. (iStock)

Klodas suggested that rising heart conditions are associated with traditional risk factors, like smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.

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Doctors are also seeing higher rates of preeclampsia, or high blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as gestational diabetes. Klodas noted that these are sex-specific risk factors that don’t typically contribute to complications until after menopause.

The best way to protect a healthy heart is to “do the basics,” Klodas recommended, including the following lifestyle habits.

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Klodas especially emphasized making improvements to diet, as the food people eat affects “every single risk factor that the AHA’s report highlights.”

“High blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, excess weight – these are all conditions that are driven in part or in whole by food,” she said. “We eat multiple times every single day, which means what we eat has profound cumulative effects over time.”

“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health,” a doctor said. (iStock)

“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health.”

The doctor also recommends changing out a few snacks per day for healthier choices, which has been proven to “yield medication-level cholesterol reductions” in a month.

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“Keep up that small change and, over the course of a year, you could also lose 20 pounds and reduce your sodium intake enough to avoid blood pressure-lowering medications,” Klodas added.

“Women should not view the AHA report as inevitable. We have power over our health destinies. We just need to use it.”

Angelica Stabile is a lifestyle reporter for Fox News Digital.

Health

Vanessa Williams, 62, Opens up About Weight Loss and HRT After Menopause

Published

14 hours ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Vanessa Williams, 62, Opens up About Weight Loss and HRT After Menopause

Vanessa Williams Opens up About Weight Loss and HRT | Woman’s World

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Health

Common vision issue linked to type of lighting used in Americans’ homes

Published

14 hours ago

February 26, 2026

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Common vision issue linked to type of lighting used in Americans’ homes

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Nearsightedness (myopia) is skyrocketing globally, with nearly half of the world’s population expected to be myopic by 2050, according to the World Health Organization.

Heavy use of smartphones and other devices is associated with an 80% higher risk of myopia when combined with excessive computer use, but a new study suggests that dim indoor lighting could also be a factor.

For years, scientists have been puzzled by the different ways myopia is triggered. In lab settings, it can be induced by blurring vision or using different lenses. Conversely, it can be slowed by something as simple as spending time outdoors, research suggests.

Nearsightedness occurs when the eyeball grows too long from front to back, according to the American Optometric Association (AOA). This physical elongation causes light to focus in front of the retina rather than directly on it, making distant objects appear blurry.

The study suggests that myopia isn’t caused by the digital devices themselves, but by the low-light environments where they are typically used. (iStock)

Researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry identified a potential specific trigger for this growth. When someone looks at a phone or a book up close, the pupil naturally constricts.

COMMON VISION ISSUE COULD LEAD TO MISSED CANCER WARNING, STUDY FINDS

“In bright outdoor light, the pupil constricts to protect the eye while still allowing ample light to reach the retina,” Urusha Maharjan, a SUNY Optometry doctoral student who conducted the study, said in a press release.

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“When people focus on close objects indoors, such as phones, tablets or books, the pupil can also constrict — not because of brightness, but to sharpen the image,” she went on. “In dim lighting, this combination may significantly reduce retinal illumination.”

High-intensity natural light prevents myopia because it provides enough retinal stimulation to override the “stop growing” signal, even when pupils are constricted. (iStock)

The hypothesis suggests that when the retina is deprived of light during extended close-up work, it sends a signal for the eye to grow.

In a dim environment, the narrowed pupil allows so little light through that the retinal activity isn’t strong enough to signal the eye to stop growing, the researchers found.

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In contrast, being outdoors provides light levels much brighter than indoors. This ensures that even when the pupil narrows to focus on a nearby object, the retina still receives a strong signal, maintaining healthy eye development.

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The team noted some limitations of the study, including the small subject group and the inability to directly measure internal lens changes, as the bright backgrounds used to mimic the outdoors made pupils too small for standard equipment.

Researchers believe that increasing indoor brightness during close-up work could be a simple, testable way to slow the global nearsightedness epidemic. (iStock)

“This is not a final answer,” Jose-Manuel Alonso, MD, PhD, SUNY distinguished professor and senior author of the study, said in the release.

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“But the study offers a testable hypothesis that reframes how visual habits, lighting and eye focusing interact.”

The study was published in the journal Cell Reports.

Khloe Quill is a lifestyle production assistant with Fox News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of story topics including food and drink, travel, and health.