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In Each Issue
Logged In: AI chatbots from on high
Meme of the Week
Cut the Fluff: Reflections on the price of difference in political discourse and how this shows up in the therapy room
Tool of the Week: Teaching emotional regulation using a traffic light
Off the Clock: What we’re reading, watching, and listening to out of session.
Fresh Findings: Breaking down what the research says about Tylenol, pregnancy, and autism.
Stories from the Community: Answers to last week’s question
Logged In:
AI is Playing God
Therapists aren’t the only ones hearing that AI is coming for their jobs. Now, chaplains and clergy are sharing the stage with chatbots. Tens of millions of downloads show the reach of Bible Chat, Hallow, and Pray.com, as these platforms, along with ChatwithGod.ai, roll out chatbots that offer prayer, confession, and comfort.
These platforms vary in how they present themselves.
ChatwithGod has the most explicit name. You type, and “God” answers.
Bible Chat positions the AI as a companion trained on scripture
Pray.com (which has a partnership with the White House to send subscribers daily prayers) touts its AI as a personal faith companion.
While some of these platforms lean more toward guided prayer and devotional content, all of them have chatbot functions that blur the line between pastoral support and divine voice.
Here’s a snapshot of how one interaction unfolded (taken from a NY Times article on the subject):
User: I feel like I’m letting everyone down.
Chatbot: God loves you just as you are. You are not defined by failure.
User: But I keep failing. I don’t know how to fix it.
Chatbot: Everyone stumbles. What matters is that you keep seeking, and remember you are never alone.
User: So it’s okay that I’m not enough?
Chatbot: You are more than enough. You are deeply loved and cherished.
The responses are comforting, but they also create confusion about who the user is actually talking to. The theological stance embedded in the code is that of a divine persona that consistently affirms, never corrects, or challenges. And it’s worth remembering these are human-designed scripts, filled with the same biases as their trainers, not divine revelation.
Clinical Takeaways
Just as with therapy, AI-based spiritual tools should be created to supplement, not replace, the human connection and community that give faith practices their depth.
Privacy is a critical concern: confessions, prayers, and deeply personal struggles are stored on servers, raising questions about data safety and consent.
Spirituality and mental health often overlap, offering resilience, belonging, and meaning-making. But as we know, spiritual or religious-based trauma can also be profoundly difficult to heal from when one assigns the role of God to another human being, an institution, or now, a chatbot.
Meme of the Week
Marianne’s Cut the Fluff:
The Price of Difference
The murder of Charlie Kirk landed heavily with me. His politics were the antithesis of mine, views I rebuke without hesitation. But I don’t wish death on those I oppose. That’s not politics, that’s annihilation. What has further unsettled me are the reactions in some quarters — the celebration, the “he deserved it.” It makes me wonder what has happened to our political narrative, here in the UK and globally, when death is framed as the endpoint of difference.
And who’s to say it couldn’t be me, or someone like me, whose worldview is judged intolerable enough to warrant the same?
This week has shown me what it means to sit at the intersection of councillor and clinician. In council, I see how bitter difference can get, but the boundary has always been clear: challenge views, not lives.
In clinic, the aftermath looks different but no less stark. So many of the young people I’ve worked with this week have stumbled across the video of his murder, not sought it out, but been served it by the algorithms. Some question whether he really died, the footage is so graphic their brains can’t fully process it. Others are leaning hard into Turning Point rhetoric, repeating slogans without distinction between US and UK politics. Nigel Farage’s (The Leader of ReformUK) name has come up more times this week than I care for. And let me be clear: I wish him no ill, nor those who support him. But I do wish he would get his facts straight so that everyone, but especially young people, could make decisions about politics that are truly informed and so the discord could be less dangerous.
If my week has shown me anything, it’s that death should never be the currency of difference. Not in a council chamber. Not on a teenager’s For You Page. Not anywhere.
How has the recent news of political violence affected you?
Ann’s Tool of the Week
Traffic Light Metaphor
The Traffic Light Metaphor offers a simple, visual framework for understanding emotional and physiological states. By categorizing arousal into red, yellow, and green “lights,” clients learn to identify their current state and use regulation strategies to return to green, where they feel grounded and present.
Green Light → Calm, focused, and engaged. Able to think clearly, connect with others, and use coping skills.
Yellow Light → Stress is rising along with anxiety, irritability, or racing thoughts. This is a signal to slow down and use coping skills.
Red Light → Overwhelmed or shut down. Also, panic, rage, dissociation, or numbness. Hard to process or connect. The client may need to ride it out until they can return to yellow (use coping strategies) or green.
This tool is especially helpful with children and adolescents, as well as adults who are new-ish to learning about feelings
Off the Clock
Ann’s Pick: Ocean Photography (Oceanographic Magazine)
This week’s pause came from scrolling through Oceanographic Magazine’s Ocean Photographer of the Year submissions. These images transported me to new places and reminded me, in the best way, that the world is bigger than me.
Take a moment for yourself: Browse the gallery ›
Marianne’s Pick: The Anxious Generation (Jonathan Haidt)
I realise that my ‘Off the Clock’ is risking becoming ever more work-related. In my defence, I can’t help it. I am a massive Haidt fan-girl, but more than this — given the average young person is en route to spending 25 years (yes, really) on their phone — I owe it to my patients and my nieces/nephews to take his work seriously.
His book (that I am re-reading) ‘The Anxious Generation’ makes a sobering case: that the shift to a “phone-based childhood” has quietly reshaped adolescence, driven up anxiety, loneliness, and a sense of fragility. It’s a call to action, alongside practical ideas for restoring balance through play, connection, and sensible tech limits.
If you’d rather listen than read, his episode on The Happiness Lab podcast is well worth your time.
So he’s my off-duty pick this week — not because he offers easy answers, but because he names the problem plainly and asks us what kind of digital world we want to hand on.
Fresh Findings
Tylenol, Pregnancy, & Autism — What the Research Tells Us
In the US, the FDA and White House recently announced they will add a safety label change to acetaminophen (UK = paracetamol) products (i.e., Tylenol), noting possible links between prenatal use and neurodevelopmental outcomes, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
By contrast, the position of the UK’s MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) and NHS remains reassuringly clear: ‘taking paracetamol during pregnancy remains safe and there is no evidence it causes autism in children’
But still, we were curious about what the research says:
The Research
Systematic Review: We examined the systematic review that the Trump administration used to support its claims. It was published in Environmental Health (2025) and applied the Navigation Guide methodology to 46 observational studies on prenatal acetaminophen exposure and child neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs).
Nationwide Cohort Study: We also looked at the largest research study to date on this topic, a Nationwide Cohort Study in Sweden, which included a sample size of 2,480,797 children from July 1995 to December 2019, published in JAMA Network.
Here are the results:
Associations
The Systematic Review found a consistent association between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and higher rates of NDDs (ADHD, ASD, others). However, the authors noted that these are observational studies, and causation cannot be definitively established.
The Cohort Study suggested that the connection seen in earlier research is likely due to other factors, not the medication itself.
Considerations
Rising NDD rates may be attributed to factors such as shifting diagnostic practices, improved detection, and revised criteria. The association may not account for complex causes.
Observational models may not fully capture the complex causes of NDDs.
Sibling Analyses
The Swedish cohort study found no increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), ADHD, or other neurodevelopmental disorders when comparing siblings (one exposed to acetaminophen prenatally, one not).
The researchers of the cohort study concluded that earlier associations likely reflected confounding factors, not medication effects.
Clinical Context
Acetaminophen is still the safest recommended pain reliever in pregnancy.
Untreated maternal fever or pain carries its own risks (e.g., neural tube defects, preterm birth).
Clinical Takeaways for Therapists
Stay within your scope of practice. Most therapists are not qualified to make medication recommendations, but we can all help clients process the stress and uncertainty that headlines may cause.
This topic can be particularly anxiety-provoking for pregnant clients, especially those who have already used Tylenol. We can acknowledge their concerns, validate the difficulty of navigating mixed messages, and encourage them to discuss this alongside any medical decisions they wish to make with their obstetrician/midwife or primary care provider/ GP.
Be alert to systemic factors. Demographic disparities in maternal health outcomes may shape how clients experience and respond to these headlines. Holding space for and being reflexive toward these broader realities can help clients feel both seen in their individual worries and supported in the larger context of their care.
Stories from the community
Last week’s question was:
What’s your go-to comfort movie?
Community Responses:
You’ve Got Mail
Napoleon Dynamite. It reminds me of my youth and a simpler time
Christmas movies
This week’s question
Please take a moment to complete the poll above regarding political violence. We want to know how broader issues are affecting you!
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