[00:00:00] Marie Vakakis: Cheating with a chat bot, psychology clinics closing overnight, and a study linking smartphone news before the age of 13 with serious mental health impacts. Welcome to the weekly wrap, a therapist take on what’s happening this week in the news and what it stirs up for us, a short segment where I share a few things that you might’ve missed in the news about mental health and relationships.

[00:00:19] Marie Vakakis: Here’s what stood out this week. AI and Affairs, when people get attached to chatbots. Now, this isn’t entirely new, it’s been happening for a little while, but there seems to be a surge of conversation in Reddit threads and in the news and different podcasts talking about.

[00:00:34] Marie Vakakis: Affairs with chatbots. I’m going to be doing an episode all about this next week, so keep your eyes and ears out for that. ’cause I think this is super fascinating. Some people are now cheating on their partner with AI chatbots. Yes. Really this is happening.

[00:00:50] Marie Vakakis: The emotional attachment to AI is not just about tech. It taps into loneliness, control and unmet needs. I mean, how do you compete with someone [00:01:00] who’s designed to be perfect, give you unconditional positive regard, and never want or need anything from you?

[00:01:06] Marie Vakakis: It’s pretty impossible, isn’t it?

[00:01:07] Marie Vakakis: I know that people say things like, I want to feel heard. It’s just easier this way or the, the, the bot’s non-judgmental, but it can be really damaging and corrosive and completely unreasonable not to expect people to have wants, needs set boundaries disappoint you to have fights, to rupture, to repair. So it raises conversations and interesting questions around what is considered cheating.

[00:01:30] Marie Vakakis: If someone is turning to AI instead of their partner, what are they actually avoiding? Is it safer or more disconnected? This is not just fringe behaviour anymore. This is happening more often than you think in more homes than you think, or in more back pockets with your phone than you reali the way people are interacting with AI is reshaping intimacy, trust and emotional connection. Ramsey Healthcare Psychology Clinic closures. Now, this was big news. [00:02:00] 17 out of 20 clinics in Australia, a closing that’s thousands of people left without care. This includes children and high risk patients, and it’s happening within weeks.

[00:02:11] Marie Vakakis: A lot of people won’t easily be able to transfer to new clinicians and therapists, so there’s going to be people left without care. Some will end up with back on wait list or with no support whatsoever, which is terrifying. I’ve seen this happen before, people falling through the crats services not being able to keep up or cost is just too much to get the care that you need.

[00:02:30] Marie Vakakis: So this is a really worrying thing. I don’t know what we’re going to do about it. I don’t know where this leaves us, but it’s really significant news happening in the mental health space this week. It’s another reminder that our mental health system is failing us. It is failing people, and it’s built on dodgy, shonky, wonky, terrible infrastructure.

[00:02:49] Marie Vakakis: And we need to change this. We need to give people access to healthcare, and that includes mental health. Mental health is part of healthcare. And smartphones, dumb [00:03:00] phones. What is working for teens? The A BC recently reported on a global study called Protecting the Developing Mind in a Digital Age, a global policy imperative, and that was published a couple of weeks ago.

[00:03:11] Marie Vakakis: And it shows that getting a smartphone before the age of 13 is linked to worse mental health outcomes, including suicidal thoughts, aggression and dissociation. And when interviewed young Australians say that it makes sense, they feel this pull between knowing that they feel tired, cranky, they’re comparing themselves to others.

[00:03:30] Marie Vakakis: There are all these negative things happening. They’re constantly connected, they’re feeling distracted and. They don’t want to be disconnected. They don’t want to be left out of things. They want to be able to be responsive to their friends. It’s how they connect, it’s how they socialise. It’s how they entertain themselves.

[00:03:45] Marie Vakakis: So there’s a really kind of pull, push, tug of war happening here in family therapy. I hear these conflicts a lot, parents arguing about tech and devices, and we need a bigger systemic structure of support. Around this last week, I mentioned a [00:04:00] documentary that is on Compass. Feel free to check that out. And if you’re wanting something a little more lighthearted, i’ve been watching episodes of the documentary, the Teenage Boss, and it is a fantastic seeing what teenagers do when they’re in charge of the family budget. So if you want something lighthearted and entertaining, go check that one out. That’s all for the weekly wrap. Thanks for listening, and if something got you thinking or talking, you wanna dig deeper, let me know.

[00:04:21] Marie Vakakis: I’d love to hear what stories matter to you. And if you’ve got a story that I haven’t covered, feel free to get in touch. I.