Posted by Seminal Wellness Team on 9/1/2024 to
News
We all have been hearing a lot about AI. It will either rescue us from the world's greatest ills or take all our jobs—or both. But, what often gets overlooked is how AI can be a boon to mental health, giving users a guide, even a confidante, in tracking their progress, identifying techniques that work, and minimizing distractions toward focusing on improving their well-being. We'll focus on how AI can promote wellness; apps to guide your wellness journey; making AI a creative spark; and, using AI to be your best self.
AI can be among your best wellness companions. AIs can scour millions of data within milliseconds (Du et al., 2024), to arrive at accurate, ideally precise, answers across disciplines. This enables AI to pinpoint the right techniques, strategies, and activities that will lead you to fulfill your wellness goals faster. Additionally, AI can expertly eliminate irrelevant information—omitting the noise, and increasingly the misinformation, though that's still a work in progress—providing only the information that you need to know, and the insights that will meet your wellness needs. Plus, AI can diligently track your progress, granting perspective on where you have made improvements, and the areas where you still need to build strength and resilience, including "blind spots" to which you're oblivious, or frankly, which are too inconvenient, or painful, to acknowledge. Simply, AI can do a lot of the "housekeeping" and "homework," permitting you to concentrate on the preeminent task at hand—being a better you.
Promotes Wellness
AI can be among your best wellness companions. AIs can scour millions of data within milliseconds (Du et al., 2024), to arrive at accurate, ideally precise, answers across disciplines. This enables AI to pinpoint the right techniques, strategies, and activities that will lead you to fulfill your wellness goals faster. Additionally, AI can expertly eliminate irrelevant information—omitting the noise, and increasingly the misinformation, though that's still a work in progress—providing only the information that you need to know, and the insights that will meet your wellness needs. Plus, AI can diligently track your progress, granting perspective on where you have made improvements, and the areas where you still need to build strength and resilience, including "blind spots" to which you're oblivious, or frankly, which are too inconvenient, or painful, to acknowledge. Simply, AI can do a lot of the "housekeeping" and "homework," permitting you to concentrate on the preeminent task at hand—being a better you.Wellness Apps
There are a number of AI-based wellness apps available for Android and IOS.
- Wellness.ai offers personalized mental-health advice in a secure, safe space that prizes your privacy. It also links you to professionals that give you an expert perspective on your challenges, and will make accurate diagnoses as needed.
- The Feeling Great app—inspired by groundbreaking psychiatrist, Dr. David Burns—offers enriching and dynamic courses, alongside a friendly chat bot, that will equip with the tools to take control of your mental health. Some users have noted marked decreases in unhappiness, anxiety, inadequacy, shame, and anger, among other negative emotions, after just one day.
- VOS.health stands as an all-in-one mental-health and wellbeing toolkit, replete with a mood tracker, AI tracker, and meditation or breathing exercises. This "pocket psychologist" begins by asking you what aspects of your life would you like to make better, and proceeds to create personalized sets of activities, daily, to propel you along your wellness path. Wysa is a therapy chatbot for mental health, depression, stress management, and anxiety.
- Wysa also provides free mindfulness exercises, along with daily spiritual meditations, that are ideal for solo, joint, or family mindfulness sessions.
- Voice: Mental Health Coach is more of a gamified companion that helps you battle mental-health challenges.Voice strives to help you minimize stress, deal with mood disorders or mild depression, normalize your sleep patterns and sleep more deeply, and even recover from caregiver burnout in less than 10 minutes for some.
Creative Spark
Though AI is more than happy to give you answers (and not always the correct ones), it's better to use it as a springboard, lighting your creative spark. Rather than taking AI's responses as answers, use them as suggestions and entries to further exploration. Was there a new technique that AI presented? Was there an ingredient you want to add to an organic recipe? Was there a wellness book mentioned in one of the AI's reference articles? Take this as an opportunity to explore these items or concepts further. Let the AI give you ideas. You're too smart to have answers handed to you.
Be Your Best
As we suggested above, AI takes care of a lot of the "chores" and the "dirty work," giving you the freedom for reconnection, engagement, and, ultimately, wellness. We've discussed how AI may best be used as a vehicle for exploration, creativity, and curiosity. Rather than relying on AI for your answers, employ it as a prompt for finding the best ones, and crafting solutions. Here are some suggestions for utilizing AI in your wellness journey:
- Use AI-guided searches for wellness approaches on Google, Safari, Bing, etc. but always triangulate—determine if at least two other reputable sources provide the same information
- Use AI-generated visuals to create "visionboards" of where you'd like to be. Revisit these visuals to maintain your drive and momentum.
- Brainstorm with the AI about daily wellness regimens (e.g, 20 minutes of meditation day and night, calming music in the background and at least 6 hours of sleep), try them during the week, and settle on the ones that work best for you.
- Ask AI to review your diary entries or similar notes, and surmise key themes or discern core issues. Don't take the AI's word for it; reconcile it or synthesize it with your own insights (while taking notice of what you might have overlooked).
- Ask the AI (e.g., Copilot) to create a presentation documenting the progress you've made in your wellness journey, and ask it to devise some new goals for the next six months.
In utilizing these approaches, you'll discover new sources of strength, adaptability, and invention. A setback can become steps forward. Essentially, you become a better—and, eventually, the best—the you. This is where we've come with AI. We've released the ghost in the machine; and, we'll always stay in control.
AI doesn't mark the end of our autonomy; it heralds a new age of inspiration.
References
Du, H., Niyato, D., Kang, J., Xiong, Z., Zhang, P., Cui, S., Shen, X., Mao, S., Han, Z., Jamalipour, A., Poor, H.V., & Kim, D.I. (2024). The age of generative AI and AI-generated everything. IEEE Network, (July 2024). doi: 10.1109/MNET.202.3422241
Feeling Great Corporation. (2024). Feeling great—About this app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.feelinggreat.app
Kemp, A. (2023). Competitive advantage through artificial intelligence: Toward a theory of situated AI. Academy of Management Review, 49(3). https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2020.0205
Touchkin. (2024). Wysa: Anxiety, therapy, chatbot—About this app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bot.touchkin
VOS.health. (2024). VOS: Mental health, AI therapy—About this app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/detals?id=com.vos.app
YaqeenTechAI. (2023). Wellness.ai—About this app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/detailsid=ai.yaqeentech.wellness
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1 Comments
Lena
Date
9/3/2024
The apps sound cool but I don't want AI taking jobs.
Seminal Wellness Team
Date
9/3/2024
Many people have that same concern Lena. Thanks for raising that point. There will always be a need for human connection and intervention. AIs may take some jobs; but, they will grant even more opportunities. You can stay with your trusted therapist; and, the therapist can use an AI to analyze session notes, reveal recurring themes and pressing issues, toward optimizing approaches with you. We're all still figuring it out; but, we just need to keep purpose at the top of mind. What are we striving for? How can we help more people? How can we save the planet? By consistently answering those types of questions, we'll ensure we're always in control and AI will never control us. Thanks for the comment.