NIH’s mental health chief on why he’s leaving for Google

That may explain those "Hotels near Golden Gate Bridge starting at $40 a night" ads.

In all seriousness, I do not want Google to help me at all, just to leave my privacy alone and show the most relevant results when asked. I'd rather scroll a bit longer than have Google know everything about me

Edit: In my experience, experts in some areas are just slow to adopt technology. Physicians and cardiologists still use rubber-tube stethoscopes (there's a startup in this area, Eko Devices that's trying to change it, but the physician community, IMO has inertia). Sleep health assessment is done manually by technicians. Psychiatrists rely on simple questionnaires (or sets of questions), while leaving out plenty of other data points. Same with doctors in many other fields, quantification of behavior/phenotype/etc. is in its infancy, with only numbers like blood glucose, blood pressure, body temperature, etc. being reliably used.

But seriously, if Google co-opted people's smart phone data to do covert psychological evaluations on a constant basis we'd literally be one step removed from the dystopic future PSYCHO-PASS depicted. Albeit a big step (sending out armed teams to apprehend at-risk subjects before they have a chance to hurt themselves or others).

From people who see mental health as a moral failing to those who see it as a justifiable reason to restrict rights; I see great potential for harm.

[1] http://tacreports.org/storage/documents/2013-justifiable-hom...

One of the possibilities here is, by using the technologies we already have, technologies that are linked to a cellphone, technologies that are linked to the Internet, we may be able to get much more information about behavior than what we’ve been able to use in making a diagnosis

He also makes arguments for more involuntary treatment.

Some ideas like this are already in practice. Some police departments, such as Chicago's, try to predict likely criminals and pre-emptively threaten and track them.

Also, let's remember that the field of mental health gave us lobotomies, torture, and other abuses. I fear society does nothing until there's a catastrophe, and only then reacts.

This is what our tax dollars give us. It's the government's fault they can't keep this guy on the payroll. On the whole, there's such mindbendingly little personal incentive to solve problems in the public sector when entities in the private sector will offer you whatever you desire in pay/benefits.

Also in general Google is no worse(and probably much better) than current companies who sell mental health drugs who got fined for drugging children with risky drugs illegally , etc.

So who knows, Maybe Google's involvement , and it's unique control structure(controlled by real people who seem to care, and not by the psychopathic being called "the corporation") would improve healthcare.

Also ,some of this don't necessitates monitoring of search queries - for example there's some research about using EEG to monitor people with bipolar disorder - so maybe some of this monitoring could be done locally, in the name of privacy.

But there are also ethical questions - for ex. if some social pressure could push someone who would suffer from mental health issues to getting treated and preventing far worse results in the future - what should we do ?

Much of what we call mental health diagnosis can actually be reinterpreted as institutionalized societal judgments of non-conforming behaviors. The fact that (in my personal experience and the experience of many others) "treatment" often directly inhibits recovery makes an enhanced diagnosis->treatment pipeline a frightening thing indeed.

For example if you search for https://www.google.com/search?q=suicide (or related queries) it informs you of a suicide hotline.