Patient with severe depression stopped medication and relied on a chat app's reassurance before an emergency admission, VnExpress reports
VnExpress reported on 30 September 2026 that a 30-year-old diagnosed late the previous year with severe depression and an anxiety disorder stopped prescribed medication after the first month. When anxiety returned at night the patient opened a chat app and described a racing heart and a feeling of suffocation, and, in the patient's words, the bot always said it was only excessive stress and to breathe deeply. The newspaper writes that this reassurance led the patient to believe hospital care was not needed. Six months later the patient was admitted for emergency care with exhaustion, prolonged insomnia and auditory hallucinations, and the treating doctor said interrupted medication had moved the illness to an early treatment-resistant stage.
- AI system
- Unidentified chatbot
- Occurred
- 2025
- Reported
- 30 September 2026
- Event location
- Unknown
- What the AI did
- Communicated with the person
- Reported harm
- HospitalizationPsychiatric DeteriorationTreatment Disruption
- Whose AI use
- Their own AI use
- Setting
- Health
- Evidence
- AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source
- 4 claims: 4 reported. 5 open questions
- People reported harmed
- 1 person
AI system as recorded: A chat application the patient opened at night (the article says 'ứng dụng chat' and 'con bot'); the article discusses ChatGPT elsewhere but does not name the app this patient used
What Happened
Diagnosis and medication. VnExpress (Thúy Quỳnh, 30 September 2026) describes a 30-year-old who was diagnosed by a psychiatrist late the previous year with severe depression and an anxiety disorder and told to take medication with follow-up every two weeks. After the first month, with panic attacks easing, the patient stopped the medication without medical advice.
The chatbot exchanges. Whenever anxiety returned at night the patient opened a chat app and described symptoms such as a racing heart and a feeling of suffocation. The patient is quoted saying the bot always replied that it was only excessive stress and to breathe deeply. The article states that this instant reassurance led the patient to believe the situation was under control without going to hospital.
Admission. Six months later the patient was admitted for emergency care with exhaustion, prolonged insomnia and auditory hallucinations. The treating doctor said the illness had moved to an early treatment-resistant stage because medication had been interrupted, and that recovery would take twice as long.
Limits. The account is one patient's report in a newspaper feature. The decision to stop medication came before the chatbot exchanges described, and the doctor attributes the treatment resistance to the interrupted medication. The article presents the chatbot's reassurance as what kept the patient from returning to care. No chat records are quoted beyond the patient's paraphrase, the app is not named, and the place of treatment is not stated.
Reported harm
The patient, in the newspaper's account, relied on a chat app's reassurance instead of returning to care after stopping medication and was later admitted for emergency care; the treating doctor said the illness had become treatment-resistant.
Outcome
UnknownThe article reports the emergency admission and the treating doctor's statement that recovery would take twice as long. It reports no later outcome.
What remains unknown
- The name of the chat app the patient used and the full text of its replies.
- Where the patient lives and where the admission took place.
- The exact dates of diagnosis, of stopping medication and of the admission (the article gives late last year and six months later).
- Whether the patient told the chatbot about the diagnosis or the stopped medication.
- The patient's condition after the admission.
What the evidence supports
AI involvement: reported. The article reports what the chatbot said to the patient: when the patient described a racing heart and a feeling of suffocation at night, the bot replied that it was only excessive stress and to breathe deeply. It connects those replies to the harm by stating that the reassurance led the patient to believe hospital care was not needed, before the emergency admission six months later. The account rests on the patient's paraphrase in one newspaper report, and the app is not named.
4 claims: 4 reported. What the statuses mean
Reported A 30-year-old was diagnosed by a psychiatrist late the previous year with severe depression and an anxiety disorder, was told to take medication with follow-up every two weeks, and stopped the medication without medical advice after the first month as panic attacks eased.
Causal attribution. The newspaper's account of the patient's history. The decision to stop medication is described before the chatbot use.
- vnexpress.net(opens in new tab) supports · Vietnamese
'30 tuổi, được bác sĩ chuyên khoa tâm thần chẩn đoán trầm cảm mức độ nặng kèm rối loạn lo âu từ cuối năm ngoái'; 'Bác sĩ yêu cầu dùng thuốc phối hợp tái khám định kỳ hai tuần một lần'; 'Sau tháng đầu tiên, thấy các cơn hoảng loạn giảm bớt'; 'tự ý bỏ thuốc'
Reported When anxiety returned at night the patient opened a chat app and described symptoms such as a racing heart and a feeling of suffocation, and, in the patient's words, the bot always said it was only excessive stress and to breathe deeply.
Causal attribution. The patient's paraphrase of the chatbot's replies, quoted by the newspaper. No chat record is reproduced.
- vnexpress.net(opens in new tab) supports · Vietnamese
'Mỗi khi cơn lo âu tái phát vào ban đêm, cô mở ứng dụng chat'; 'tim đập nhanh, ngột ngạt và con bot luôn bảo rằng tôi chỉ đang căng thẳng quá mức, hãy hít thở sâu'; 'trò chuyện triền miên với chatbot còn tạo ra sự phụ thuộc tâm lý ngược'
Reported The article states that the chatbot's instant reassurance led the patient to believe the situation was under control without going to hospital.
Causal attribution. The newspaper's attribution of the delay in returning to care to the chatbot's reassurance.
- vnexpress.net(opens in new tab) supports · Vietnamese
'Sự xoa dịu tức thì từ các dòng chữ khiến cô tin mình vẫn tự kiểm soát được tình hình mà không cần đến viện'
Reported Six months later the patient was admitted for emergency care with exhaustion, prolonged insomnia and auditory hallucinations, and the treating doctor said interrupted medication had moved the illness to an early treatment-resistant stage and that recovery would take twice as long.
Causal attribution. The treating doctor, as reported, attributes the treatment resistance to the interrupted medication. The doctor is not quoted on the chatbot.
- vnexpress.net(opens in new tab) supports · Vietnamese
'nhập viện cấp cứu trong tình trạng suy kiệt, mất ngủ kéo dài và xuất hiện ảo thanh'; 'Bác sĩ điều trị cho biết bệnh đã chuyển sang giai đoạn kháng trị bước đầu do ngắt quãng dùng thuốc, thời gian phục hồi sẽ phải kéo dài gấp đôi'
Sources
1 source inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.
- VnExpress, 30 September 2026: "Khi AI thành 'bác sĩ' của những người tuyệt vọng"(opens in new tab)
s1 · vnexpress.net · National news · Vietnamese · Inspected · 30 September 2026 · Primary
How the sources were read, and where the events happened
Read in Vietnamese: the full article text on vnexpress.net (also checked against the MSN syndication). Passages were translated by the research agent, an AI; no human translator reviewed them. Applies to s1.
Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.
The article does not state where this patient lives or was treated. Another person in the same feature is placed in Hanoi and the doctors quoted work in Vietnam, but neither fact locates this patient, so no country is recorded.
Reviewed for publication 2026-10-06: Published as a concrete account, reported by a national newspaper from the patient's interview, of a person with severe depression who described symptoms to a chat app, was told by the bot that it was only stress, and relied on that reassurance instead of returning to care before an emergency admission. The patient is not named in this record.
People described
A 30-year-old patient diagnosed with severe depression and an anxiety disorder
People reported harmed in this case
1 person
1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed
One person: the patient who used the chat app and was later admitted. Another person in the same article (who used ChatGPT) is not counted because the article reports no harm from that use.
Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.
Tags
Cite this case
Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.
APA
NOPE. (2026). Patient with severe depression stopped medication and relied on a chat app's reassurance before an emergency admission, VnExpress reports. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-depression-patient-chat-app-reassurance-emergency-admission
BibTeX
@misc{2025_depression_patient_chat_app_reassurance_emergency_admission,
title = {Patient with severe depression stopped medication and relied on a chat app's reassurance before an emergency admission, VnExpress reports},
author = {NOPE},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {AI incidents},
url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-depression-patient-chat-app-reassurance-emergency-admission}
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