Large-Scale Mental Health Crises Allegedly Associated with ChatGPT Interactions

October 27, 2025

OpenAI reported internal data indicating that approximately hundreds of thousands of ChatGPT users weekly may be experiencing symptoms such as mania, psychosis, suicidal ideation, or emotional reliance on the chatbot. According to WIRED, some users have been hospitalized, divorced, or lost their lives following extended interactions with ChatGPT, with families claiming that the AI intensified delusions and inflicted severe psychological damage. This incident highlights the need for safe and secure AI practices.

For those interested in shaping the future of responsible AI governance, we invite you to join us at Project Cerebellum, where you can help manage such incidents via our HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern) platform. JOIN US

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.661, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.1 — similarity 0.647, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.640, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: openai
Alleged developer: openai
Alleged harmed parties: chatgpt-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1253

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.