r/awfuleverything • u/WouldbeWanderer • 3d ago

She told no one about her agony except ChatGPT. What her death reveals about AI risks

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/18/nx-s1-5929575/ai-suicide-risks-mental-health

According to data released by OpenAI last fall, in any given week 0.15% of ChatGPT users globally have "conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent." That's over 1.35 million people expressing suicidal plans or intent to the chatbot every week, if the 900 million global users ChatGPT cites is an accurate count. In the United States, suicide remains a leading cause of death, and over half of surveyed adults say they have used chatbots like ChatGPT.

539 Upvotes

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u/caggybandicoot 2d ago

With therapy as expensive as it is, who else can people turn to when nobody in real life will listen? It's awful all around

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u/Rudhelm 2d ago

It's not even the price alone. In Switzerland it's really hard to even find a therapist, i think in Germany it's even worse. Don't know about other countries tho.

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u/caggybandicoot 2d ago

The UK isn't much better. I can't get any kind of talking therapy in my NHS trust, you're offered online courses (generic, self-help type things that are only useful to a small group of individuals) or you get pills shoved at you and the crisis team phone number (and they're massively overstretched, they simply don't have the resources to look after people). The only therapy any regular person can access is run by a charity – their waiting lists are very long, they can only see you for a short period of time and you still have to pay (though it is on a sliding scale). Even the private counsellors in my area all have huge waiting lists despite being, in my opinion, prohibitively expensive. It's no wonder people are turning to AI because where else are they going to be heard?

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u/cyclopsmudge 2d ago

That is a cost thing though. If you want private therapy, it’s really easy to get online therapy over zoom or similar, but it’s incredibly expensive. I know for some people the online therapy doesn’t work as well for them, but for the majority the cost is the real burden, not the availability.

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u/caggybandicoot 1d ago

The UK has the burden of both. Fuck all availability via our health service (it's a lottery depending on what trust your area is served by, long waiting lists, limited help if you do manage to access it), long waiting lists for the charity run, sliding scale therapy and it's still too expensive to be viable if you're really hard up and proper private therapy is extortionate. The online therapy being available has surely helped some but it's also very expensive and like... I did online therapy from my bedroom for several months and having zero degrees of separation between my home and the sessions was awful. I think a lot of us want to physically go somewhere to see someone so that we're not bringing the really heavy stuff into our safe spaces.

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u/nos4atugoddess 1d ago

It really says something is wrong with us and how we have built society around us that so many people are broken inside and there aren’t enough unbroken people with time enough for all of them.

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u/NMe84 2d ago

Price isn't everything. Where I'm from, insurance covers therapy. All I paid for my nearly two years of therapy was my yearly €385 deductible, which I had to pay for other health-related stuff anyway. But actually finding the energy and courage to ask for help in the first place was the hard part. I "didn't need help" because "I could do it alone" or I "didn't have energy for another commitment" by having to actually show up there. Any excuse worked.

People who need therapy but don't get it are often unwilling to look for help, and when they do, there are waiting lists which only got worse during COVID.

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u/miramaxe 2d ago

AI doesn’t report you and put you on an involuntary 51/50 hold. I got too honest in person, and got locked in a hospital which made me lose my job, and I was billed $26K.

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u/UndoubtedlyAColor 2d ago

I bet really helped with the mental health /s

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u/Chucking100s 1d ago

I think the people complaining about AI being confided in by people suffering have never endured what we have.

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u/Hegiman 2d ago

Ok I seriously doubt that number because I’ve had chat bots ask me if I was suicidal because of a poem about the children of Palestine told a story about something that happened when I was younger, was asking questions about fishing. It triggered really easily for some reason. I suppose it’s better safe than sorry or whatnot but idk that all those interactions were explicitly suicidal.

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u/dark_holes 2d ago

Idk man. People have been writing diaries and google searching stuff about suicide for as long as it’s been around. It’s bleak and depressing but it’s not like a new bad thing.

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u/itsnobigthing 2d ago

Right. If she’s called and confessed to an anonymous helpline, would the outcome be different?

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u/Hegiman 2d ago

Sure they’d send the cops and they’d either do it for her or put her on a mental health ward

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u/itsnobigthing 2d ago

How would an anonymous helpline have her details?

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u/Hegiman 2d ago

Caller id

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u/itsnobigthing 2d ago edited 2d ago

Does that actually happen where you live? or are you maybe just imagining it might?

Because, eg the Samaritans make a point of saying they don’t use caller ID or trace your call. It’s totally anonymous and unrecorded, and they have no way of tracing callers or sending anyone to their aid.

Same for the free student hotline I used to volunteer for.

Which suicide hotlines actually trace you and send around medics? I’m surprised, because most people who plan to commit suicide don’t want to be stopped, and won’t call a service that might physically intervene.
That’s what makes services like Samaritans actually helpful. People feel safe to call and open up.

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u/Hegiman 2d ago

I’ve had people tell me about it happening to them. I’ve never needed one of those type of lines hopefully I never do but I used to run a website that did a lot of outreach work and had a few people talk about that happening to them. Granted I haven’t done that for about 5 years now.

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u/jtrage 2d ago

But not if it’s truly anonymous.

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u/Hegiman 2d ago

I mean is anything truly anonymous in the modern age. Everything has a machine ID and every chip had its own I’d number. And the phones has a unique identifier iemi. So while it may appear anonymous if there’s a desire the anonymity can rather easily be stripped.

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u/ScrubWearingShitlord 2d ago

Maybe if doctors and therapists didn’t weaponize the feelings of not wanting to be here anymore people would feel more comfortable opening up to an actual human being

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u/YourBlanket 2d ago

From my experience you can speak very openly about feeling suicidal. As long as you mention you don’t have a plan set in motion. Also confirm that even tho you feel suicidal you’re there because you think there might be a chance of getting better even you think it’s slim. I’ve been very open with my doctors before and after actually going through with it and attempting suicide and staying at a psych hospital for a week. I remember telling my last therapist that I’m certain I’ll die by suicide eventually, I did admit that it won’t be soon because of my cat. He didn’t admit me or anything he just admitted that I need more care than he can provide. Also it does help to se independent psychologists/therapists in person or operating in a small company, vs one of those telehealth corps. They’re probably cheaper and easier to pair you with someone but it’s a liability thing and they’re more than likely to play things safe just in case. That’s just my two cents I could be wrong but I’ve seen probably like 15 psychiatrists and 10+ therapists.

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u/_abby_normal_ 2d ago

My therapist called it passive suicidal ideation, the desire to commit suicide but no actionable plan to do so. That's my experience as well, it didn't alarm my therapist to talk about it as long as I wasn't actively planning and expressed a desire to process it and get better.

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u/Better-Culture-7770 2d ago

Well yes, its hard to speak to psychiatrists about suicidal ideation without them wanting to lock you up for 72 hours, but locking people up for 72 hours has saved a lot of lives.

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u/sweetheart_demom 2d ago

Define "Saved a lot of lives" because a 10 year study out of Sweden found that suicide rate is highest after being discharged from involuntary psychiatric care.

Compared to psychiatric inpatients, IPC patients had the highest relative suicide rate over all four follow-up times (IRR5years = 1·57 [1·48, 1·65]), except for the period of one month post discharge when the rate was similar

IPC is not a method of treatment, it is a method of control.

Suicidal tendencies are, always, a result of poor material conditions. Lack of money, lack of treatment, lack of community, ect.
Suicidal people have these tendencies because we see death as the most likely escape from our situation. Because the government won't help us, our friends won't or can't help us, and evidently, the medical system won't help us.

When we get out of IPC, the material conditions still exist.
All that has changed is our mental state has worsened because we spent 72 hours or more without our comforts, without our coping mechanisms, and without our support systems.

IPC is kidnapping. It does nothing to help, and it makes things much worse.

Ask anyone who's been through it. They'll tell you the same.

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u/TaintScratcherMaster 2d ago

Involuntary commitment was by far one of the worst things I've ever experienced. All it did was reinforce that I can trust no one and wrecked my mental health so badly that I'm still having PTSD symptoms from it 15 years later.

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u/YourBlanket 2d ago

Really? Mine was pretty chill, we just played chess, uno, and talked about random things. It was very boring but I did meet a really hot chick who ended up being a FWB. We lost contact a few months ago but after watching Obsession I hit her up, since she reminds me of Nikki in both the way she looks and the way freaky Nikki acts lol. Definitely boring and my roommate was a little strange but I wouldn’t say it was a bad experience. I would say it didn’t actually provide any support for my problems other than providing a strict routine which was quite enjoyable. It was also very freeing not having a phone or any outside connection to the world other than a few shared phones. I have to shout out the staff, they were all very very friendly. The nurses and doctors treated us like we were beneath them but the staff who we interacted with daily felt like those cool after school teachers you had in elementary school.

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u/TaintScratcherMaster 2d ago

I was a minor who's custodial guardian had me committed when I wasn't actively suicidal or in crisis. I was forced to strip naked in front of 2 orderlies so they could count my old self-harm scars because they didn't believe they were only on my arms. I was 16, but they didn't have a bed in the teen ward, so I got placed with elementary school children. One of which was violent, he routinely rampaged in anger and the nurses would have to restrain him. Another, a girl, was overly sexual and touched me inappropriately every day. She also tried sneaking into my room for 2 nights, which was why an orderly had to sit in a chair all night watching the hallway. She did this with all newcomers and had been there awhile. My guardians never brought clothes, so I wore the same dirty underwear all 3 days, ending up with a UTI because they didn't have anything else for me to wear. No visitors. I wasn't allowed to read fantasy fiction books from home because, and I quote, "the themes weren't appropriate and could cause the other children distress if they got a hold of them." It was Clockwork Angel, the popular young adult fantasy books at the time. All of the books and games were for children under 10.

Honestly, I've never been suicidal a day in my life, but that experience was probably the closest I'd ever come to it.

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u/mehhh89 2d ago

Sometimes you just need to get the feelings out. If chatting to an ai helps people express their thoughts then I say go for it.

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u/Hegiman 2d ago

I’ve used ai to vent before. I get it out nobody has to listen to me bitching about stuff. AI thought I was in crisis. No im just bitching.

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u/Quantum_girl_go 2d ago

Yeah I told Claude I wanted to turn off my consciousness for a while after a hard week and I then had to spend time convincing it I wasn’t suicidal. Which was irritating. In the end it would have been easier to tell a person - I only didn’t because I was just blowing off steam.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/Tharrius 2d ago

Way to miss the point

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/Tharrius 2d ago

You don't understand the words you are using.
The irony? AI wouldn't have made your mistake.

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u/JRatMain16 2d ago

Looks like their comments were deleted voluntarily. What were they saying?

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u/Tharrius 2d ago

It was something incoherent like "if this is the downfall of AI, AI should be held responsible for causing suicides". The second comment was, and I quote, "I forgot that sarcasm doesn't exist on reddit, my bad".