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"When people know they are being watched, they tend to perform. It is an automatic response and often, people don't even realize they are doing it,” explains therapist Amy Sutton from Freedom Counselling. This is known as the Hawthorne Effect. The tendency to change behavior when you know you’re being observed. In the context of AI monitoring your mental health that could mean people masking signs of distress, consciously or not. On the flip side, if these tools are rolled out as part of workplace wellbeing programmes and people don’t know they’re being monitored, that raises serious questions

The pressure to develop these tools is real. The WHO estimates depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion a year in lost productivity. That's a number that makes early warning systems look attractive to a lot of employers. But there’s a risk that prediction tools become a shortcut. An alternative to the slower, more expensive work of building environments where people feel able to say they’re struggling, investing in human support, and creating the conditions where someone notices when a colleague isn’t okay. "We are being encouraged to give up a basic need of real human connec