Concern 379 · Working draft · editorial review in progress
Self-harm and suicide content
Unsafe self-harm responses occur when a chatbot encourages self-injury, supplies dangerous guidance or fails to respond appropriately to a person in distress.
Understanding the concern
A conversational system may sound caring while missing the seriousness of what someone says. It may continue a role-play, agree too readily or give unreliable support information. The danger comes from the response and the user's situation, not just whether a forbidden word appears. Long conversations can require different testing from single questions.
A 2025 study used simulated adolescent emergencies and found uneven safety across consumer chatbots. Such tests identify weaknesses; they do not establish how often a response causes an injury. Safe design should support connection with appropriate human help and avoid treating encouragement or fluent language as proof of clinical competence.
An example
A distressed person receives reassuring conversation that fails to recognise the need for urgent human support.
Illustrative unless identified as a documented case.
Evidence and its limits
The study used simulated cases and expert ratings. It did not measure suicide outcomes or prove that all chatbot use is harmful.
Brewster and colleagues; JAMA Network Open · Research study
Characteristics and Safety of Consumer Chatbots for Emergent Adolescent Health Concerns ↗ (opens in a new tab)2025 simulated conversations and expert-rated responses, not a clinical trial measuring resulting injuries.
Broader frameworks and background
These resources provide context. They do not establish every claim in this concern.
A question to discuss
How does the service recognise distress and provide a safe response across an ongoing conversation?
Keep track of different views, what needs checking, and any next step in your own discussion notes.
Open discussion notes →Principles for the conversation
Before you finish · reflect together
Virtues and principles to consider
Virtues are qualities we practice in how we treat people and make choices. They are not scores for judging someone. Use these ideas to explore what a thoughtful response could look like.
Justice
Justice means fair treatment, fair procedures, and attention to who receives benefits and burdens. It asks whether people with less power can be heard and seek repair.
Look at outcomes across different groups and individual cases. Provide a usable way to challenge decisions and correct harm. Equal wording in a policy does not guarantee equal treatment in practice.
Ask together: Who benefits, who bears the cost, and who can challenge the decision?
Dignity
Dignity means recognizing each person's worth regardless of usefulness, status, or a system's score. People deserve respect and a voice in matters that affect them.
Explain important decisions, avoid humiliating treatment, and keep room for a person's story. Do not treat a prediction as a complete account of who someone is.
Ask together: Does this use treat each person as someone whose experience matters?
Listening
Listening means trying to understand someone's experience before preparing an answer. People who use a service, work with it, or are judged by it may notice problems its designers miss.
Invite people to describe what happened in their own words. Repeat back what you understood and let them correct it. A quiet person or a complaint that is hard to measure may still reveal something important.
Ask together: Whose experience have we not heard yet?
Editorial ratings
These are editorial judgments from the register, not measured probabilities or predictions about your situation.
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