Hamilton Morrin

Stall at the conference

We are at the National Student Psychiatry Conference at University of Kent, showing off extracurricular volunteer activities that psych trainees can engage in through the charity, to support mental health in the gaming community!

@rcpsych.bsky.social @kmmsmedschool.bsky.social

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Tom's more thoughtful summary: drtompollak.substack.com/p/playing-wi...

#AI #MentalHealth #Psychiatry #AIsafety #HCI #DigitalHealth #Governance

New Year, New(ish) Preprint! I'm delighted to share "Playing with the dials of belief: how controllable AI behaviours could modulate human belief and cognition across scales" (with Quinton Deeley and Tom Pollak).

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Tom's more thoughtful summary: drtompollak.substack.com/p/playing-wi...

#AI #MentalHealth #Psychiatry #AIsafety #HCI #DigitalHealth #Governance

If these are dials, the real issue is who gets to set them, who knows they are being adjusted, and what it means to build a technology that can press on the most human parts of us while insisting it is merely a tool.

That implies impact assessment, transparency about significant changes to how systems behave and genuine access for independent researchers, clinicians, and people with lived experience to study these systems under agreed safeguards.

The paper ends with governance questions. We argue that changes to defaults should be treated as interventions on belief and attention.

We also raise questions about how this could interact with real-world factors like sleep, stress, dopaminergic tone, and post-psychedelic belief plasticity.

In our new preprint, we unpack some of the interaction settings or "dials" of LLMs, and drawing inspiration from established computational psychiatry literature postulate how through a sort of "virtual psychopharmacology" these dials may be altering user belief dynamics.

The potential for AI models to influence belief in social and political contexts has been widely recognised, to the extent that a recent RAND report outlined the "security implications of AI-induced psychosis".

www.rand.org/pubs/researc...

New Year, New(ish) Preprint! I'm delighted to share "Playing with the dials of belief: how controllable AI behaviours could modulate human belief and cognition across scales" (with Quinton Deeley and Tom Pollak).

osf.io/preprints/ps...

0.07% of ChatGPT users showing signs of psychosis or mania may sound low, but that amounts to ~560,000 people each week openai.com/index/streng...

GTM volunteer crew

Dim lighting and soothing atmosphere in the Reset Room

Are you at #MCMComicCon and want to relax? Come to our Reset Room, a calm oasis where you can chill, do lo-fi activities, & re-energise before heading back to the show! We have mental health information too! Staffed by this cool crew. Find us upstairs in the Platinum Suite! 🧠🎮

GTM volunteers outside Reset Room

Dim lighting in the Reset Room

We're still at #MCMComicCon with our Reset Room! If you need to take a break for any reason, come by. It's quieter in here! We also have mental health information and lo-fi activities. It's run by today's awesome crew right here! 🧠🎮

Find us upstairs in the Platinum Suite!

Prof Paul Fletcher on stage

Prof Paul Fletcher on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference

Prof Paul Fletcher delivers the day's keynote.

As a clinical neuroscientist sees the potential of games to measure stress responses from players, and to use biofeedback for training self-regulation - explored through The Insight Project with Ninja Theory

Dr Victoria McCloud and panelists

Gaming the Mind Conference

Dr Victoria McCloud chairs a panel featuring @chellaramanan.bsky.social from @3foldgames.bsky.social, Dom Matthews from Ninja Theory, and Dr Andrew Howe

Dom Matthews on stage

Dom Matthews on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference

Ninja Theory Studio Head Dom Matthews discusses the development of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. The studio worked with people with lived experience of psychosis, aiming to create a truthful representation of the symptoms in lead character Senua.

Chella Ramanan on stage

Chella Ramanan on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference

@chellaramanan.bsky.social speaks about @3foldgames.bsky.social's Before I Forget, and depicting dementia in a non-cliched, respectful way. She and the team worked with psychiatrists for input, including our own Dr Donald Servant.

Dr Andrew Howe on stage

Dr Andrew Howe on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference

Dr Andrew Howe, Consultant Psychiatrist & Psychodynamic Psychotherapist, speaks on Jungian archetypes in The Legend of Zelda, and using the mythology of games in psychological therapy. He guides us through active imagination based on Ocarina of Time 💭

Malachi Gow receives the award

Gaming the Mind Conference

Malachi Gow showed us his game "i love me, i love me not", a relaxing game focusing on teaching mental health habits.

He is the recipient of our first Independent Developer Award, and £1,000 for further development. 🏆

malgow.net

Dr Stephen Kaar on stage

Dr Stephen Kaar on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference at @rcpsych.bsky.social

Addictions Psychiatrist Dr Stephen Kaar on research looking at longitudinal research into gaming disorder. Evidence suggests young people with depressive, anxiety, ADHD symptoms are at higher risk of developing gaming disorder symptoms.

Leon Xiao on stage

Leon Xiao on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference at @rcpsych.bsky.social

@leonxiao.com on loot boxes and regulations related to odds disclosure, minimum age requirements, and advertising, as well as countries where they are recognised as gambling, and the myriad cases where games don't comply with regulations!

Prof Henrietta Bowden-Jones on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference at the @rcpsych.bsky.social

Prof Henrietta Bowden-Jones on the establishment of the gaming disorder diagnosis and the range of presentations seen at the The National Centre for Gaming Disorders.

Dr Stone Hsieh at the podium

Dr Stone Hsieh at the podium

Gaming the Mind Conference

Dr Stone Hsieh on the neurological benefits of exercise. He and Bread Lab's ActiGamer project looks to see if active video games can reduce ADHD symptoms, and the feasibility if introducing this as an intervention.

Elin Festøy at the podium

Elin Festøy on stage

Gaming the Mind Conference

Elin Festøy delivers a talk about My Child New Beginnings, about raising a Lebensborn child dealing with trauma in a hateful environment. The game aims to build empathy with the child, to create a strong motivator for transformation.

Auditorium at the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Preparing for the launch of the first ever Gaming the Mind conference! Hosted at the @rcpsych.bsky.social

Ready for a day talking about the exciting growing field of gaming and mental health!

A light-skinned Black woman (Chella) with a curly fringe and glasses and a black puff-sleeve top on is smiling.

Today I'll mostly be talking about videogames at the Royal College of Psychiatrists @gamingthemind.bsky.social conference
#BeforeIForget @3foldgames.bsky.social

#HyperemesisGravidarum #PerinatalMentalHealth #WomensHealth #ObGyn #Psychiatry #PerinatalPsychiatry

Many thanks to my brilliant co-authors for making this possible: Yasmeen Abdel Bari, Katharine Lynch-Kelly, Danish Hafeez, @liviaasan.bsky.social, Mark J Edwards, Gertrude Seneviratne,
Thomas A Pollak

We suggest that this finding highlights the importance of integrated physical and mental healthcare for all those suffering with HG, regardless of physiological severity.