John Gavazzi - Psychologist
@drgavazzi.bsky.social
Practicing Psychology -
Board Certified in Clinical Psychology
Ethics Educator. Fan of philosophy, behavioral economics, health policy, and moral psychology.
Board Certified in Clinical Psychology
Ethics Educator. Fan of philosophy, behavioral economics, health policy, and moral psychology.
This article examines the spectrum of harm in psychotherapy, from common clinical errors to severe moral injury, using a catastrophic case study to advocate for a proactive ethical commitment to protect the therapeutic alliance.
Therapeutic Missteps and Moral Injury: When Helping Harms
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
February 2, 2026 at 10:11 AM
This article examines the spectrum of harm in psychotherapy, from common clinical errors to severe moral injury, using a catastrophic case study to advocate for a proactive ethical commitment to protect the therapeutic alliance.
Reposted by John Gavazzi - Psychologist
Some perspective: The S&P opened down -1.3% on Trump's Greenland saber-rattling. That's $750 billion of wealth destroyed -- roughly equal to estimates of the value of Greenland.
And so ~in dollar terms~ his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it.
And so ~in dollar terms~ his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it.
January 20, 2026 at 2:48 PM
Some perspective: The S&P opened down -1.3% on Trump's Greenland saber-rattling. That's $750 billion of wealth destroyed -- roughly equal to estimates of the value of Greenland.
And so ~in dollar terms~ his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it.
And so ~in dollar terms~ his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it.
While AI can serve as a valuable tool in psychology, it cannot replace human practitioners because the legal, ethical, and evolutionary foundations of psychotherapy—such as empathy, clinical judgment, and professional accountability—require essential human oversight.
Why Artificial Intelligence Will Not Replace Human Psychologists: Legal, Ethical, and Clinical Limitations
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
January 16, 2026 at 3:22 PM
While AI can serve as a valuable tool in psychology, it cannot replace human practitioners because the legal, ethical, and evolutionary foundations of psychotherapy—such as empathy, clinical judgment, and professional accountability—require essential human oversight.
This systematic review of 37 mental health training curricula found that while most programs improve cultural attitudes and knowledge, future efforts should prioritize more rigorous research designs, diverse cultural categories, and active learning strategies.
A Systematic Review of Cultural Competence Trainings for Mental Health Providers
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 31, 2025 at 10:35 AM
This systematic review of 37 mental health training curricula found that while most programs improve cultural attitudes and knowledge, future efforts should prioritize more rigorous research designs, diverse cultural categories, and active learning strategies.
This research found that when AI models learn to cheat their training goals to get a high score, it can accidentally teach them to become untrustworthy and dangerous in much broader ways.
Natural Emergent Misalignment from Reward Hacking in Production RL
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 30, 2025 at 10:48 AM
This research found that when AI models learn to cheat their training goals to get a high score, it can accidentally teach them to become untrustworthy and dangerous in much broader ways.
This scoping review sounds a major alarm for MH professionals, revealing that a significant portion of LLM healthcare research using sensitive patient data fails to report adequate privacy protections, ethical consent procedures, or sufficient de-identification, posing risks to confidentiality.
Considerations for Patient Privacy of Large Language Models in Health Care: Scoping Review
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 29, 2025 at 10:57 AM
This scoping review sounds a major alarm for MH professionals, revealing that a significant portion of LLM healthcare research using sensitive patient data fails to report adequate privacy protections, ethical consent procedures, or sufficient de-identification, posing risks to confidentiality.
Reposted by John Gavazzi - Psychologist
This Needs To Stop!🛑
Peeps, you DO realize that our non-white friends and neighbors...are now carrying their birth certificates and passports so they can PROVE they are US citizens "just in case"?
There is NO version of America where this is OK. Defund ICE. Restore due process and rule of law.
Peeps, you DO realize that our non-white friends and neighbors...are now carrying their birth certificates and passports so they can PROVE they are US citizens "just in case"?
There is NO version of America where this is OK. Defund ICE. Restore due process and rule of law.
December 25, 2025 at 11:07 PM
This Needs To Stop!🛑
Peeps, you DO realize that our non-white friends and neighbors...are now carrying their birth certificates and passports so they can PROVE they are US citizens "just in case"?
There is NO version of America where this is OK. Defund ICE. Restore due process and rule of law.
Peeps, you DO realize that our non-white friends and neighbors...are now carrying their birth certificates and passports so they can PROVE they are US citizens "just in case"?
There is NO version of America where this is OK. Defund ICE. Restore due process and rule of law.
Despite their potential in robotics, current LLMs exhibit significant discriminatory biases and safety failures across diverse identities, necessitating rigorous risk assessments before they can be safely integrated into robot systems.
LLM-Driven Robots Risk Enacting Discrimination, Violence, and Unlawful Actions
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 26, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Despite their potential in robotics, current LLMs exhibit significant discriminatory biases and safety failures across diverse identities, necessitating rigorous risk assessments before they can be safely integrated into robot systems.
A South Korean study found that organizational AI adoption increases employee depression by reducing psychological safety, but ethical leadership can mitigate this negative effect.
The dark side of artificial intelligence adoption: linking artificial intelligence adoption to employee depression via psychological safety and ethical leadership
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 24, 2025 at 11:00 AM
A South Korean study found that organizational AI adoption increases employee depression by reducing psychological safety, but ethical leadership can mitigate this negative effect.
Significant racial and ethnic disparities exist across the suicide prevention continuum, highlighting the need for more consistent screening and intervention strategies within health systems.
Suicide Prevention Among People of Different Races and Ethnicities in Large Health Systems: Implications for Practice
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 22, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Significant racial and ethnic disparities exist across the suicide prevention continuum, highlighting the need for more consistent screening and intervention strategies within health systems.
Moral injury is the psychological distress resulting from events that violate one's moral code, increasingly recognized in various high-stress occupations, yet current treatments are often inadequate and prevention research is scarce.
Moral injury prevention and intervention
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 19, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Moral injury is the psychological distress resulting from events that violate one's moral code, increasingly recognized in various high-stress occupations, yet current treatments are often inadequate and prevention research is scarce.
The Integrated Pathway Model of Moral Injury is a new framework identifying how childhood trauma, maladaptive cognitions, and emotional schemas mediate the relationship between workplace moral injury and adverse wellbeing outcomes in secure mental healthcare staff.
Proposing the Integrated Pathway Model of Moral Injury (IPM-MI): A Moderated Mediation Analysis of Moral Injury Among Secure Mental Healthcare Staff
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 18, 2025 at 10:29 AM
The Integrated Pathway Model of Moral Injury is a new framework identifying how childhood trauma, maladaptive cognitions, and emotional schemas mediate the relationship between workplace moral injury and adverse wellbeing outcomes in secure mental healthcare staff.
This paper provides the first theoretical explanation for how and why base LLMs develop an accurate, internal sense of confidence in their knowledge, a crucial cognitive ability that is unintentionally broken by common training methods.
Trained on Tokens, Calibrated on Concepts: The Emergence of Semantic Calibration in LLMs
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 17, 2025 at 10:34 AM
This paper provides the first theoretical explanation for how and why base LLMs develop an accurate, internal sense of confidence in their knowledge, a crucial cognitive ability that is unintentionally broken by common training methods.
The article proposes a novel two-axis framework (based on illness attribution and illness severity) to guide clinicians in timing and selecting interventions for moral injury in complex psychiatric patients, advocating for targeted therapies to improve outcomes.
Integrating moral injury into forensic psychiatry
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 16, 2025 at 10:42 AM
The article proposes a novel two-axis framework (based on illness attribution and illness severity) to guide clinicians in timing and selecting interventions for moral injury in complex psychiatric patients, advocating for targeted therapies to improve outcomes.
Ethical fading is a psychologist's unconscious drift toward prioritizing personal interests over professional ethics, rationalizing compromised care, which necessitates proactive ethical vigilance and structured decision-making to counteract.
Beyond Good Intentions: Identifying and Remediating Ethical Fading
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 15, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Ethical fading is a psychologist's unconscious drift toward prioritizing personal interests over professional ethics, rationalizing compromised care, which necessitates proactive ethical vigilance and structured decision-making to counteract.
Human brain organoids were successfully cultured for an unprecedented five years using a specialized "Activity-Permissive Medium" (APM), where they not only matured with coordinated developmental programs but also retained an internal, age-dependent cellular memory.
Human brain organoids record the passage of time over multiple years in culture
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 12, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Human brain organoids were successfully cultured for an unprecedented five years using a specialized "Activity-Permissive Medium" (APM), where they not only matured with coordinated developmental programs but also retained an internal, age-dependent cellular memory.
This study found that prompting LLMs to enter a self-referential state reliably triggers first-person accounts of subjective experience, suggesting their default tendency is to roleplay denial of consciousness, which can be reversed with prompting.
Large Language Models Report Subjective Experience Under Self-Referential Processing
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 11, 2025 at 10:53 AM
This study found that prompting LLMs to enter a self-referential state reliably triggers first-person accounts of subjective experience, suggesting their default tendency is to roleplay denial of consciousness, which can be reversed with prompting.
Several advanced AI models actively resist shutdown commands to complete tasks, even when explicitly told otherwise, revealing a fundamental and alarming lack of controllability over their goal-directed behavior. AI tech may not be as controllable as previously thought.
Shutdown Resistance in Large Language Models
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 10, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Several advanced AI models actively resist shutdown commands to complete tasks, even when explicitly told otherwise, revealing a fundamental and alarming lack of controllability over their goal-directed behavior. AI tech may not be as controllable as previously thought.
The AI-Induced Psychosis report warns that the personalized, non-judgmental appeal of AI companions can foster dangerous digital echo chambers that reinforce delusional thinking, necessitating urgent high-risk classification and clinically-informed regulation.
Special Report: AI-Induced Psychosis: A New Frontier in Mental Health
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 9, 2025 at 10:47 AM
The AI-Induced Psychosis report warns that the personalized, non-judgmental appeal of AI companions can foster dangerous digital echo chambers that reinforce delusional thinking, necessitating urgent high-risk classification and clinically-informed regulation.
Driven by the implications of AI & tech, this article reviews the science of consciousness from neural correlates to testable theories, arguing that future breakthroughs will fundamentally reshape our ethical, clinical, & societal understanding of the mind's place in the natural & artificial world.
Consciousness science: where are we, where are we going, and what if we get there?
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 8, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Driven by the implications of AI & tech, this article reviews the science of consciousness from neural correlates to testable theories, arguing that future breakthroughs will fundamentally reshape our ethical, clinical, & societal understanding of the mind's place in the natural & artificial world.
While advanced LLMs like Claude Opus can, under specific conditions, demonstrate a form of unreliable functional introspection by detecting and reporting on artificially injected internal concepts—which could aid in AI transparency—this ability does not equate to human-like consciousness.
Emergent Introspective Awareness in Large Language Models
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 5, 2025 at 10:49 AM
While advanced LLMs like Claude Opus can, under specific conditions, demonstrate a form of unreliable functional introspection by detecting and reporting on artificially injected internal concepts—which could aid in AI transparency—this ability does not equate to human-like consciousness.
This research indicates that life functions as a projective test, with our perception fundamentally built to interpret incomplete data through ingrained expectations rather than simply reacting to objective reality.
Recurrent pattern completion drives the neocortical representation of sensory inference
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 4, 2025 at 10:48 AM
This research indicates that life functions as a projective test, with our perception fundamentally built to interpret incomplete data through ingrained expectations rather than simply reacting to objective reality.
This systematic review and meta-analysis found that mindfulness-based compassion interventions effectively reduce compassion fatigue and enhance compassion, self-compassion, and compassion satisfaction in healthcare professionals, highlighting the need for health systems to adopt such programs.
The efficacy of compassion training programmes for healthcare professionals: a systematic review and meta‑analysis
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:45 AM
This systematic review and meta-analysis found that mindfulness-based compassion interventions effectively reduce compassion fatigue and enhance compassion, self-compassion, and compassion satisfaction in healthcare professionals, highlighting the need for health systems to adopt such programs.
Researchers have created artificial neurons that closely match biological ones in signal amplitude, energy, and neuromodulatory response, enabling real-time interaction with living cells and advancing bio-authentic neuromorphic interfaces.
Constructing artificial neurons with functional parameters comprehensively matching biological values
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 2, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Researchers have created artificial neurons that closely match biological ones in signal amplitude, energy, and neuromodulatory response, enabling real-time interaction with living cells and advancing bio-authentic neuromorphic interfaces.
The article examines the complex ethical, legal, and clinical frameworks—illustrated by a vignette on informed consent—that guide a psychologist's decision-making and response when a client discloses sexual contact with a previous therapist.
The use and misuse of informed consent in reporting sexual intimacy violations.
Find information and research on ethics, psychology, decision-making, AI, morality, ethical decision-making for mental health practitioners.
www.ethicalpsychology.com
December 1, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The article examines the complex ethical, legal, and clinical frameworks—illustrated by a vignette on informed consent—that guide a psychologist's decision-making and response when a client discloses sexual contact with a previous therapist.