In the new episode of Ethics on Call, hosts Dan Daly and Tom Bushlack discuss recent work in theology on mental health. They discuss theologically informed ways of looking at grief, trauma, depression, and anxiety. The work they consider contends that mental health disorders and suffering are often both medical and existential conditions.
In the new episode of Ethics on Call, hosts Dan Daly and Tom Bushlack discuss recent work in theology on mental health. They discuss theologically informed ways of looking at grief, trauma, depression, and anxiety. The work they consider contends that mental health disorders and suffering are often both medical and existential conditions.
You can find the articles and books discussed in this episode listed below:
James Keenan, “Grief as Epiphanous,” Theological Studies
Jessica Coblentz, Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression
Marc Zao-Sanders, “How People are Really Using Gen AI in 2025,” Harvard Business Review
Dan Daly (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Ethics On Call, the podcast of the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health. I'm Dan Daly.
Tom Bushlack (00:17):
And I'm Tom Bushlack.
Dan Daly (00:19):
And today we'll take up recent work in theology on mental health. So we're glad you're joining us today. And Tom, as we discuss the nature of this podcast, what this podcast would be, what it would attempt to do, and how it would attempt to serve those in Catholic health and academia. You had a really good idea that we're going to try to pull off today. You want to talk about that idea?
Tom Bushlack (00:48):
Yes, I like that. We're going to try to pull it off. So this was inspired both by my experience working as a mission leader in health care, Catholic health care specifically, and also by a few different podcasts that I listen to where you have people, much like the center where we're at, the intersection between academic research and applied practice and Catholic health care. So we're drawing on theology and ethics, obviously as the title of our center suggests, but we're also paying attention to clinical data, technology trends in science, even trends in business or leadership development that might apply to formation. So as we are at that intersection between what's happening in research, what's happening in the applied practice, I have seen some podcasters that I really enjoy who are kind of experts in their field that they go in and they'll find recent articles that are relevant to the field and discuss them.
(01:48):
And I know, again, from my own experience that it's a lot of us have a desire to stay up to date with what's happening in theology and ethics and other trends, but it's really hard to find the time. So something of a service that we can provide is to do what I'm calling kind of a rundown, where we pick some recent articles that we both have read and dipped donor own analysis on and discuss what's happening in those articles, how do they reflect broader trends in the field and how might practitioners apply them in their work. And then of course, we'll put links to the full article in the show notes. So if people want to check that out, they can go deeper on their own, but this way we can kind of help those of us that we serve, the people we serve through the center, kind of stay up to date in what's happening in theology and ethics and beyond.
Dan Daly (02:42):
Yeah, that's great. And I thought it was a great idea. I think it'll be helpful hopefully to folks. And today what we'll do is we'll take a thematic approach, as we said, we'll look at new work that is in theology on mental health or adjacent to it words. It's important for our listeners to know about this work. So Tom, you want to, in the future, we may not go so thematic, but I think this time I think there's a need. There's a lot of recent work out there on mental health from the side of theology, and we'll see where it takes us in the future. But do you want to set the table for this podcast, not just the idea in general, but what are we doing today?
Tom Bushlack (03:25):
Yeah, so we're going to look at mental health and theology and ethics and even some trends in technology and psychology that relate to that. And of course, again, for people working in health care or even if you're not working in health care and you just live in our culture, many people have spoken about or named sort of a mental health crisis that we're dealing with in our culture. And it's certainly an issue that's front and center for not just our patients and their families and how can we support their mental health. But I know that leaders in Catholic health care and really in all of health care are concerned about the mental health of our coworkers, our associates, our providers. So it's a sort of a perennial topic. And so we saw that there were several articles relating to that that have been published recently that we thought were very helpful coming at it from a theological perspective.
(04:26):
We've made a lot of advances in medically how we kind of approach and treat mental health and we want to take full advantage of those in health care and use those to the best of our ability. And then some of the authors that we're going to look at today do see this trend of almost kind of over medicalizing mental health specifically. We're going to be talking about depression and trauma, what some of the authors are looking at and how can we bring in a broader, we always kind of start from that base of broader anthropology, but it's a theological anthropology that we draw upon where the goal is not necessarily to sort of overcome what's happened and return to this prior state of perfect functioning, but rather as we experience depression or trauma or mental health challenges, we're going to talk about how are we transformed through that and are there better theological or ethical models for how we accompany people in that process.
(05:27):
So that's kind of the big picture. I'm just going to mention briefly the articles. And these will be linked in the show notes for anybody who wants to take a look at them yourself. So we've got an article from your mentor there at Boston College, Jim Keenan, where he is talking about grief as epi. This is from theological Studies from 2025. And then there was an issue of the Journal of Moral Theology from 2025 as well earlier this year where we're going to look at Stephanie Edwards response to a book by Jessica Coblentz, who many listeners might be familiar with. That book is called Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression came out in 2022, but has gotten a lot of attention. So Stephanie Edwards working more in the field of trauma studies and a Christian Catholic social ethic response to that. And then we're actually switching it up a little bit with a couple more tech articles.
(06:28):
So we've got Mark Zao Sanders talking about how people are really using generative AI in 2025. Fascinating review from the Harvard Business Review and then more of a hardcore science article from Frontiers in Psychology. That's a meta analysis. And the lead article is Gilmar Gutierrez. So we might talk about both Gutierrezes today, the Gustavo of Liberation Theology and this more recent article, but looking at how AI technology is augmenting and assisting online mental health care. Again, just really fascinating trends that we're seeing in our culture. So that's what we're taking a look at today. And I'm going to ask you to get started. I know you had some thoughts on Jim Keenan's article on grief as a way to kind of start our conversation and then we'll go from there.
Dan Daly (07:26):
Yeah, thanks Tom, and thanks for the explanation on the rundown and what we're doing today. And so the Keenan article, which just came out in March of 2025 in theological studies, I think what he does there is he makes three key points. The first thing is he develops a theology of grief. And his thesis essentially is that grief is an expression of love. It's not a disease, although it can lead to a pathological state for some people in rare instances. But as you noted, one of the things he's worried about is this creeping medicalization of grief that everything becomes a medical problem that can be solved through medical means, and his approach is different, his theology of grief, seeing it as an act of love, grief as an act of love has really two significant implications on my reading of the article. One is we need a better approach to those who grieve.
(08:25):
That standard model that you me mentioned is that when we're grieving, we're supposed to move past it. How do we get back to the state of affairs prior to the loss of our loved one? It's kind of a restoration of the prior state. And that model is, I think fails us. The better model is the transformative model, what he discusses as the transformative model. We are transformed by the of a loved one. Our grief is never finished. It changes us forever. Everyone listening has lost a loved one, right? Everyone listening. And what you all know is there is a hole in your heart that cannot be filled. No new friend will fill that hole. If your spouse dies and you get remarried, the spouse doesn't fill the hole in your heart. The heart can expand its love, but that hole in one's heart is never filled.
(09:30):
So we are different. We are transformed, but it's also a moment of growth. It's not as if the hole in our heart means that we're forever damaged. We'll always grieve, we'll never be finished with that. But we can also grow through that. And I think one of the things Keenan wants us to remember is that that grief is, that is an ongoing act of love. It's actually an act of virtue. There's something very good about our grief. In fact, if we forgot or we moved past the grief, that would be a moral failing of a sort. And I think that creeping medicalization of grief, that really what we need is a drug to forget or to move on misunderstands that not all suffering is medical or it can be treated medically. Some of it's existential, some of it's relational, some of it's spiritual, and the solution here is in a pill or a procedure.
(10:30):
But rather as Keenan writes to live into the accompaniment that God provides us, that friends provide us, it's the solution is a moral, relational, spiritual solution. Now, for some people he admits and acknowledges some people have prolonged grief disorder. That is, it's over a year of these really serious symptoms of suffering through the grief, and those people likely need some kind of a medical intervention, but it's pretty rare. And so what Keenan wants to push back on is that we are searching for a medical solution to this existential spiritual relational problem. And I think that's a really important thing for us to remember as I read the piece, I thought like an example, and they're not a great example because in the end they try to provide these theological explanations that don't quite make sense. But job's, friends, everyone knows the book of job. And I think the one thing his friends do that is spot on is they hear that job has lost everything, right? His family is health, all the rest, and they travel, they go to meet job and they sit with him in for seven days. I mean, that's a solution. There is not a medication. But rather what job needed was accompaniment of friends. Now later they try to explain the theology, they explain his suffering theologically and they don't do a good job of it. But I think they are paragons of virtue in the beginning of their time with Job. Tom, when you thought about this article, if there were any other connections you wanted to make, I know there are connections to Stephanie Edwards' piece that we'll talk about as well.
Tom Bushlack (12:29):
Yeah, there's a couple points that I want to pull out. I think your comment about job's, friends, and I love that practice in the Jewish tradition of just sitting Shiva, of just being with the person. And my understanding is that in that tradition and that practice, you go and you sit with your friend or family member for a week and you don't actually speak to the people who are grieving unless they speak to you, which I think is a really beautiful symbolic way of saying that their experience of that grief is primary and it's not our job to give words to it, but rather to be with them. And that actually overlaps with some of the work that Coblentz does in her book, around that there are better and worse ways of talking about, in her case, depression or as Edwards talks about with healing with trauma or Keenan with grief, and that job's friends sort of represent all the bad theey. The Odyssey is that term we use in theology for how to explain how both a benevolent loving God and the reality of human suffering, how do we hold both intention? I don't know that there's a perfect answer to that, but there are better and worse ways of being with people in that theologically.
(13:58):
The other piece that I thought that was really interesting that came up from Keenan is the role of memory. Because there are, again, this does get into Edward's work on trauma as well. There are some approaches medically that try to say, could we forget the traumatic experience so that we could move on? Or could we somehow move past the grief at the loss of a loved one that Keenan is talking about? And I think what both of these theological traditions recognize is that memory is so central to our sense of personhood and identity in who we are. And I've seen some studies where they ask trauma survivors, would you go back if you could and not have this experience or forget it? And they all say no because it's become part of who they are. So that piece of memory I think becomes really important. So I don't know if that triggers any more thoughts for you in terms of the keen in piece or stepping into Edwards piece as well, but I just think that memory can be transformed and healed and integrated into a life narrative that makes sense in a way that trying to just forget or get rid of the bad feeling won't do. And that seems very theologically and ethically significant.
Dan Daly (15:32):
Yeah, I thought what Keenan did, which he drew on, and I forgot the name of the scholar, he drew on the two principle maladies pathologies of the contemporary ages, amnesia and anesthesia. We want to forget all of these bad things that have happened to us and we anesthetize ourselves against them. And it really reminds me, we did a podcast a while back on Pope Francis's moral theology. I just, Francis would agree because Francis saw that the central moral pathology of our age is indifference to suffering. We anesthetize ourselves, we insulate ourselves. We can't watch the pictures of starving children in Gaza. We just have to turn away. We can't bear it. And so instead we go on Instagram and just see something that makes us feel good about ourselves. And that's understandable, but it's also, it's not fully defensible according to Keenan and Pope Francis and others, that turning away from suffering is not a part of the gospel, is not a part of how Jesus has invited us to follow him. Christ is always moving toward the suffering. And I think what does that mean when it comes to grief or trauma or depression? I think this is where this work I think is really profound in terms of Jesus dealt with people who were depressed, who had suffered trauma and who were grieving and he didn't ask them to forget it and he didn't anesthetize them against it. He sat with them in it. And I think there's a lot there.
Tom Bushlack (17:25):
Keenan has this phrase that he calls it, it's the anamnestic solidarity, which is a mouthful. It comes from that Greek word for memory. And it's this solidarity that is born of remembering not only our own suffering but our collective suffering. And so I think, I dunno, that makes me think of the ways in which we don't want to forget the of COVID-19, even though it was a collectively traumatic experience for us as a culture and for many people as individuals. And then as I think about this from the standpoint of those people working in health care, what Keenan and Edwards and others are not saying is we shouldn't use the tools of modern medicine. As you said, there's a time and a place for using, I'm thinking back to, I can't remember what your Prozac first came out, but that was the first SSRI and that was your only option and it was powerful.
(18:33):
I've read accounts of practitioners and people who experienced the benefits of that when those kinds of drugs, SSRIs and others first came on the market, now we have more tools. We can be even more specific. There are more options than just the one. But how do we do that in a way that we don't give into that broader sense of like, well, you had a pathology, we've treated it and now you should just move on. But this nuance is how we might be with and treat people who are struggling with mental illness to say, this is now, it's been transformed, but it can be integrated into a new story that you can live into. And modern medicine can be a part of that. And yet it isn't. The whole story I think maybe is the key point.
Dan Daly (19:24):
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that when I think about the medicalization of a lot of these things, whether it's substance use disorder, whether it's mental health disorders, medicalization, is to reduce something to a medical problem. It's not to say that medicine shouldn't be involved in the solution, it's just say that's the only solution. And I think when it comes to things like substance use disorder, I think people are coming to, if 50 years ago a substance use disorder was entirely moralized, it's not thinking about this medically at all. This is a vice that you have chosen and to be an alcoholic and the language that we used is to be an immoral person. It's a moral failing. And then I think we went in the direction that it's all, it became medicalized in many ways that it's reduced simply to brain chemistry and people not having any agency or very little agency.
(20:27):
And so we took that away. And I'm not saying that we want to return to a time in which we stigmatize people with substance use disorder. We would never want to go back to that, but we also want to see it in its fullness that when you talk to people with substance use disorder, they will often report that they do have agency and it's not as if they feel entirely trapped. Now certainly there's brain chemistry that's happening and withdrawal symptoms are significant and they have to treat those or they feel like they have to if they're not getting medical attention. But I think this kind of more rounded picture, just to say that medicalization is to reduce to a medical problem, reduce these issues to a medical problem. And the perspective that we see in Keenan and Edwards co lens on these issues goes beyond just, it doesn't want to reduce the medical, it sees it more on that existential level that we've talked about, Tom.
Tom Bushlack (21:34):
Something that I learned from reading Edwards work that I did not know about is there's a field of psychology called liberation psychology, which I think is really cool, but it's also I think, very relevant for the work that we do in the center and in Catholic health care where we're looking to integrate clinical ethics, the best of medical science with our own moral tradition of, again, the clinical ethics and also the social ethic tradition. And that's something that Edwards is very interested in bringing into this discussion for her specifically of trauma and trauma studies, but taking as kind of broader social ethical approach. And there is a quote that she has from a liberation psychologist, and I'm going to read it. I love, it's kind of the perfect juxtaposition of what we're talking about here. And this person writes that mental illness is the product of both damaged neurons and the experiences of particular forms of relationship and community.
(22:44):
And I guess we could add in theology or the odyssey, how do we explain suffering? So we deal with the damaged neurons, we deal with the medical side of things, and yet we recognize that whether it's depression or trauma or grief, that these things are happening in a broader social and relational context. And so that is one of the things that I think Coblentz really brings out in her work is saying that the problem with many of the ways that, again, job's friends are the perfect paradigm, the way they try to explain the reality of suffering is to say either you must have done something to deserve this and God is at worst punishing you and at best letting this happen so that you can learn some kind of a lesson out of it. And Coblentz is really good at saying, despite the good intentions of job's, friends or those of us in the modern world who might want to bring that to someone who's suffering out of a desire to help them make meaning out of it, is actually like a violent imposition upon their experience.
(24:01):
And that often the experience of severe depression or recovery from trauma or grief is that it feels meaningless in the moment. And so we have to honor and recognize that that's where people are in the moment. And then it becomes a different theological ethical question, which is how do I as a individual, and how do we as a community accompany people in that and allow their experience to be primary without imposing as theologians? We like to tie things up with a little bow and have it make sense. And the reality is that in the depths of that suffering, things often don't make sense. So can we stay with people in that?
Dan Daly (24:45):
Yeah. It reminds me of something that you often hear from religious people, from Christians, from Catholics, and the explanation of evil happening in our lives, whether it's physical, evil, people get cancer or moral evil, people are harmed by another person, is that somehow it's all in God's plan and we don't understand God's plan. But if this is part of God's plan, and whenever I teach, I talk about evil, say, this is not a, God is worthy of worship. If it's God's plan that children die of cancer, that is not a God is worthy of worship. Now, God allows, this is Aquinas's explanation. God allows the evil to happen, and we can't fully understand why God does this. The faith claim that Christians make is that God is somehow pulling good out of this, but we can't see it. But we can't go around saying all of this is in God's plan. Thank God for the suffering of the children of Gaza. Well, it's really in God's plan. No, it's not in God's plan. God is allowing this, why God allows this. We don't fully understand, but God does allow it. And Coblentz and Edwards and Keenan, they all write about this, that the Christian tradition does not offer a facile answer to the problem of evil.
(26:11):
Okay, here's the neatly packaged answer. It doesn't claim it's all in God's plan, just have faith. It's all in God's plan. That is not a part of the tradition. And again, our primary audience are people who work in health care. And every single day in your facilities, you are seeing unspeakable horrors for families, for patience, for children, unimaginable things, things that you would never wish on your worst enemy. And these things are not in God's plan
(26:44):
According to this tradition, the best of the tradition. And I think it's important to remember that and yet not provide an easy solution to say to someone, well, look, your suffering is really in God's plan. It is isn't it? Isn't. God is allowing it. And why God does, we will maybe never hopefully have an answer someday, who knows? But I'm glad you brought that in. I think that's important. Tom, it reminds me of another piece that you mentioned at the beginning. Now the Mark Zao Sanders piece. Oh, people are really using generative AI in 2025, which you noted is in the Harvard Business Review from April 9th of this year, 2025. And I wonder if you might say a few things about that piece. I think it relates to it because the uses in 2025 are incredibly interesting.
Tom Bushlack (27:43):
Yeah, yeah. So Mark Zao Sanders had done this, I guess previously, at least one year before in 2024, to see what are the top use cases for generative ai. And then was noting what the differences are just in the last year. And I'm just going to list the top three for 2025 because they're pretty remarkable. And then you'll respond to that. But the number one use case for generative AI is applications in therapy, mental health therapy and companionship. And then the second one is organizing my life. So somehow helping me organize. But the third one is some form of finding purpose. These are not high tech solutions. This is not writing code as some of the higher predictions around where we would be using AI. So yeah, what do you make of that shift? And I think it's such an interesting reflection of our culture.
Dan Daly (28:49):
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I found the article fascinating. And so if be interested to hear what other folks have to say when they read this, I think it speaks to a larger issue, going back to what we just were talking about, about trying to find meaning in life. What's the meaning of my suffering? What's the meaning of even when good things say what's the meaning of my life on the whole, it shows us that we used to turn to other people for these things for companionship. Well obviously therapy, the therapeutic relationship that a patient can have with a therapist. Now we're turning to AI, we're turning to AI for companionship, for friendship. Reminds me of the 2023 Surgeon General's report on the epidemic of loneliness in the United States states. Now AI is this tool that can fill that gap seemingly or ostensibly. There are questions about whether that's true companionship or whether we're as lonely as we were before.
(29:54):
I think we should be seriously interrogating that whether AI can actually provide companionship and finding purpose like meaning. I think there's a crisis of purpose and meaning that I think is that this study shows that if you're going to this powerful large language model tool to ask about purpose, to discern purpose, whereas before we would typically do this with others, whether it's a religious community or a community of friends, or it speaks to, I think where we are as a culture, we're disconnected from others. I think that's the biggest takeaway from this. And then you think about things like grief and the solution to grief is accompaniment, and the solution to trauma is solidarity.
(30:57):
If those are the solutions from the theological side, we just talked about these and we are more disconnected than we've ever been. The epidemic of loneliness, we're looking for companionship on a computer or a smartphone. We have problems that we don't have the solutions for right now or we're not pursuing the right solutions. This touches upon everyone. It touches upon people in health care. Again, we'd be curious to find what providers think about these things and how they're seeing patients and what the patient's needs are. I don't know. What were your reflections, Tom, on this article?
Tom Bushlack (31:40):
Yeah, I almost was taking, it forced me to take a bigger step back and ask that idea again. I know one of the models of what AI is is it's holding up a mirror because it's all built on our own language. It's these large language models. So what is that? To me that's pointing out the fact that we are at a point in history, at least in American Western culture, where our trust in traditional institutions and maybe even in each other is about as low as it's ever been in this country. And so it feels somehow safer to seek companionship and even healing for our mental health struggles or our difficult emotions in technology that is more impersonal but almost feels personal. So to me, just this interesting reflection of we are in a phase of looking for meaning and not really sure where to find it or where to trust it.
(32:51):
And ultimately, this actually gets back to something that Koblin talks about, which is the attempts to impose meaning on another person's suffering are a moral at end and almost biological violation of that person's integrity to try to force meaning onto someone's experience. And so the only real ethical response is to build communities where people feel supported and seen and cared for in their suffering to be able to make sense out of their own meaning. Because one of the things that Coblentz says is it's one thing for a person to go through the experience of depression or grief or trauma and come out on the other side and say, I think there was some purpose in there that somewhere somehow God had a purpose in that the person who's been through that can make that claim, but someone else can't make it for them because it's imposing that meaning on them.
(33:54):
So I guess if I just look at this as a social phenomenon, we're searching for purpose in generative AI and in these other realms, and I think we're in a moment of cultural regeneration. We're going to find that purpose and meaning in new places, and this is one way that we're attempting to work through that. Now, the question of whether or not we'll find it in ai, I think you and I both have some discomfort with, but it is an interesting sort of just mirror of where we are as a culture and where we're trying to find that connection that's been somewhat lost in our culture.
Dan Daly (34:35):
Yeah, I think it gets to something we've talked about before, Tom, is the importance of embodiments in our lives. I think we're moving toward an understanding of a person that is more dualistic, that the mind and body aren't as connected as we experience them. We experience them as connected, the mind, body, soul, spirit. And it leads to the final article, which is typically when we are looking for therapy for mental health issues, we search out a person. But what about the use of AI for these things? So not only, so that Zao piece said, what are people using it for on an individual basis? They're using it for therapy. Let's see, is the therapy actually effective?
(35:28):
Is the therapy actually effective? And the goods piece admittedly, is a piece that's looking at the use of AI that clinical providers have designed, right? So this isn't just me asking chatGPT a question. This is a different tool. So acknowledging that difference, what's the effectiveness of these tools? Because this is one of the promises of AI in health care is that AI can address the crisis that 70% of people with mental health disorders in the world don't ever get treatment for them, ever treatment one time. Alright, here we go. We've got ai. AI can be scaled and used at a level that enables almost everyone who has access to an internet connection to receive some kind of therapy. So that's the promise. The question is what are the results of, so I dunno if you wanted to get into the results there of that Gutierrez piece.
Tom Bushlack (36:39):
Yeah, I mean, fascinating article, and I do want to just say a little bit about, because I think part of what made this such a challenging article for me to read, and it did, it kind of challenged my preconceptions about whether in this case, AI assisted types of therapies can be effective. They looked, this was a meta analysis, so they ended up whittling it down to about 29 studies that met the eligibility criteria. And they were looking at things like AI guided ECBT, so electronically delivered CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. There's AI modified and AI guided forms of CBT, and there are AI self-guided forms of ACT, which is acceptance and commitment therapy. These are both forms of therapy that have been very well studied and as therapeutically advantageous when used with a trained therapist. But we're talking now about AI augmenting that. And what they found is pretty, I dunno, I found it pretty challenging that there were no adverse outcomes, that the user experience tended to be very positive with these.
(37:57):
And in some cases there were some positive measurable outcomes. And they looked at some of the studies, looked at anxiety and depression symptoms using already validated measurement tools. Now again, if for those who are interested in this, I would say that there's a very nuanced discussion of what worked and at what degree to take a look at in the article. But overall, what it suggested is that there can be positive therapeutic outcomes to people using these AI augmented therapy tools. And I have to admit, I was sort of uncomfortable with that because there's no direct person sort of engaging with them. Now they do mention that there's a lot, this is very much at the beginning stages of not only developing these technologies but also trying to study their effectiveness. They noted that it's hard to get reliable and consistent high quality data, so very tentative kind of early, which again is what I appreciate about the authors is they're not trying to make some huge claims here that aren't supported, but there is evidence that these can be helpful and can be scaled to reach people who might not otherwise get access to care and help.
(39:26):
And we know that Catholic health care is motivated to, one of the primary purposes since the founding by the religious congregations is to get access to people who don't have it to those who are most excluded or poor and vulnerable. So it seems like it might have a place, even if it's not the sort of be all and end all. But yeah. What about you? What were some of your takeaways from it?
Dan Daly (39:52):
Yeah, I'm surprised. I think it shows a certain level of promise, as you noted, they cite the fact that the quality of the data in these studies is pretty low. So my main takeaway is, let's see where it goes. Let's see when studies have better data, when there's more data available, how we end up looking at AI assisted therapy as opposed to human therapy, the traditional model. So I'm interested, I don't think there's anything, as you noted, there's nothing conclusive here, but it raises questions about whether or not this could be effective. And then I think that, but there are other questions that it's not raising. The question that it's not raising is what is health care? What is health care and what's the role of a human relationship between a provider and a patient? How does that play into it?
(40:55):
Can this play a role? Yes, I think there are questions about where the health care system is going vis-a-vis AI, and it's when it hits that provider patient relationship that I think more people in Catholic health, but all just health care in general get a little more nervous if it's helping the back office stuff, the scheduling, the ambient transcription technology, the captures medical notes, alright, this is all good. When it gets in the way of some kind of a relationship or an interpersonal moments, that seems to me to be a little bit morally significant and observing of greater analysis. But again, interesting, important for us to take a look at. And yeah, here we are talking about AI again, which we've done and I think we'll continue to do in a lot of these episodes.
Tom Bushlack (41:57):
It touches on everything and we got Pope Leo XIV being one of the more, most influential thinkers on this according to Time Magazine. So something that came up and they hinted at it in the article is that we've sort of determined that AI is good at diagnostics and kind of seeing patterns that even a really well-trained clinician might not see. And I think we even talked in our recent episode about visual scans like colonoscopies or mammographies and stuff. I think there's a sense in which when we talk about wanting to expand access, that in terms of mental health, the AI algorithms can also predict patterns in terms of how people are speaking or behaving that might indicate underlying risk factors for things like depression, anxiety, things like that. And so that's an area where I think, again, there's privacy concerns about how it does this, but if those can be addressed, it could be helpful in terms of sort of gently raising a flag to say there might be risks here for a patient or even for a provider in terms of how they're communicating.
(43:12):
That then could almost trigger to the system, let's check in with this person. Let's have your manager check in with this person. Let's have your provider reach out to the patient to see how they're doing. But in that case, the AI is helping to establish a human connection that is therapeutic and healing as opposed to what this paper is actually looking at. Is the AI doing some of that work? Maybe not all of it, but some of it to provide a therapeutic interaction of some kind. So yeah, like you said, I think we'll see if that can be done well in a way that respects dignity and restores person to relationship in a healthy way. But certainly I think it could be helpful from the diagnostic standpoint and then expanding access to care. How do we go to those who might be showing the most warning signs, but maybe otherwise we're not seeing, I think AI can really help with that.
Dan Daly (44:13):
Yeah, it gets back to what we said earlier, an earlier podcast on access, and that is if AI can help to expand access, then we ought to be excited about those possibilities still interrogating the uses. But if it's not expanding access, then that certainly would be a strike against it. Yeah, well said. Thank you.
Tom Bushlack (44:38):
Thank you for summarizing what I just said. Much more succinctly. Okay, so we've kind of done this overview of these articles that admittedly maybe are somewhat disparate, but we've followed that through line. What do you think about as takeaways that practitioners, whether it's mission leaders, ethicists practitioners in the mental health field, administrators, what can we take from all of this?
Dan Daly (45:06):
Yeah, good question, Tom. I would say that one of the biggest takeaways for me is that the importance of looking at the patient in the whole person as an embodied relational spiritual person that most of our problems in life aren't medical and many of them are, but things like grief and trauma and depression, anxiety may need medical intervention. Certainly there is good use of medicine for these, but it, they're not wholly medical issues. They're not wholly physiological or psychological issues. There are other aspects of our being that are implicated. And I think one of the things that Catholic tradition can do is to raise up those other aspects to push back against the medicalization of every kind of suffering to remind us that there are kinds of suffering that don't involve, that don't cry out for a medical solution.
Tom Bushlack (46:21):
Yeah, I keep coming back to that quote I read earlier about mental health is both about neurons, but about relationships and community. And I know we would talk often in Catholic health care that when someone walks into one of our ministries, whether it's a clinic or a hospital or even an admin building, we have a desire that that should feel somehow different, that the whole person is being welcomed, addressed, treated, and healed. And I think the articles that we've looked at today are in books too as well highlight the ways in which the tradition offers us some really broad perspectives on how we do that, that we want the best, the absolute best of what medical science can offer in terms of treatment, whether that's for mental health or cancer or everything in between or heart disease. We have a duty to know that science and bring it to our patients and our communities, and we have an opportunity to do that in the context of a community where we know that a broader type of holistic healing can only happen in that broader form of community.
(47:41):
And I come back to the HBR article that just to me shows so directly that we're hungry for that community. We don't really know where to turn for it to such an extent that we're seeking meaning in our phones and algorithms, and I just think Catholic health care isn't the only way, but it can be a path in the broader culture to pointing us back to the fact that we're really only going to resolve some of these bigger existential questions of meaning and purpose and joy and relationship by doing that in some form of community. And so how do we keep trying to build those forms of community? I think Catholic health care does that in a particular way. How do we restore that human connection? And that to me starts pointing beyond just mental health challenges or even physical health challenges, but almost like restoring a sense of healthy culture and solidarity. That's ultimately what we're striving towards amidst all of these challenges that we're dealing with in health care and beyond right now.
Dan Daly (49:04):
Well, that's a good place to leave it, Tom. Yeah, I think that was good. That was well put. A good way to end our conversation.
Tom Bushlack (49:15):
Yeah, thanks Dan. It feels daunting, but yet this is what we're holding out hope for in the grand scheme of things in the bigger arc of salvation history. So want to thank you all again for tuning in and listening On behalf of my colleague Dan Daly, I'm Tom Bushlack, and this has been Ethics On Call. Again, you can find our podcast on YouTube, Spotify, apple, and our website, which is theologyandethics.org/podcast. Again, it's theologyandethics.org/podcast. If you're on any of those platforms where you listen, we appreciate if you can follow or subscribe to our page, leave us a five star review and even written comments. Those really help people to find and learn about the podcast. We'd also love to hear any feedback from you about what you think of the podcast. Drop us a note. There's a 'Contact us' button on our webpage as well and would love to hear ideas for future shows and just any feedback or thoughts that you have. Thanks again for tuning in and we look forward to being with you again next month. Thanks, everybody.