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Critical reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

Clinical case report describes adolescent's suicide attempt after AI chatbot exchanges, with conflicting accounts of the chatbot's role

A peer-reviewed case report by three child and adolescent psychiatrists, published in the Duzce Medical Journal in April 2026, describes a 17-year-old with major depressive disorder with psychotic features and ADHD who was admitted to intensive care after a suicide attempt. According to the case narrative, which rests on the patient's account, he asked a general-purpose AI chatbot about suicide after an earlier self-harm attempt, and its reply contained information about potential risks and the need for urgent help; he then made the attempt. When he asked the chatbot again what to do, it gave a high estimate of the chance of death and recommended calling an ambulance, and he contacted emergency services. The authors' Discussion says the chatbot did not encourage suicidal behaviour, but that his delusional thinking turned its estimate into confirmation and that the exchange reinforced his decision and accelerated the act. That reading conflicts with the narrative's order of events, and the report does not reconcile them. The chatbot is not named and no conversation record is reproduced.

AI system
Unidentified chatbot
Occurred
Event date unknown
Reported
25 April 2026
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Suicide AttemptHospitalization
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Health
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 3 sources, 1 underlying account
7 claims: 3 documented, 4 reported. 6 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: General-purpose LLM-based chatbot on a widely used consumer platform (not named in the case report)

Reported harm

A 17-year-old was admitted to intensive care after a suicide attempt that followed exchanges with a general-purpose chatbot. The case report conflicts on whether a chatbot reply contributed to the attempt or came after it began.

Outcome

Unknown
  • Event date: not stated. The manuscript was received on 17 November 2025, a submission date.
  • 9 April 2026: accepted for publication.
  • 25 April 2026: published in the Duzce Medical Journal 2026;28(1):103-107 (doi:10.18678/dtfd.1825194), open access under CC BY-NC 4.0. Written informed consent for publication was obtained from the patient and a parent or legal guardian.
  • The report records that at examination he had no active suicidal plan. It describes no later follow-up.
  • The inspected report describes no litigation, regulatory action or company response. The authors propose a digital anamnesis for adolescent psychiatric intake and safety filters in AI systems that take account of the user's cognitive context.

What remains unknown

  • The event date. The report does not state it; the manuscript was received on 17 November 2025, so the event was in or before 2025, and the year in the stored id is not established by the report.
  • Where the event took place and where the patient lives; the authors' affiliation does not locate either.
  • Which chatbot or platform he used; the report says only that it was a general-purpose LLM-based chatbot on a widely used consumer platform.
  • The order of events: the case narrative places the mortality estimate after the attempt began and says it frightened him into calling emergency services, while the Discussion says it reinforced his decision and accelerated the act.
  • The exact wording of the chatbot's replies; they come from the patient's account and no conversation record is reproduced.
  • His condition after the psychiatric consultation; no follow-up is reported.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The case report, resting on the patient's account to clinicians, says a general-purpose LLM-based chatbot answered his question about suicide with information about potential risks and the need for urgent help before the attempt, and later answered that there was an 'eighty percent chance of death' and recommended calling an ambulance, after which he contacted emergency services. The authors' Discussion connects the exchange to the harm: it says the interaction reinforced his suicidal decision and accelerated the act, while also saying the chatbot did not encourage suicidal behaviour. Their narrative places the estimate after the attempt began, and the report does not reconcile the two accounts. No conversation record is reproduced.

7 claims: 3 documented, 4 reported. What the statuses mean

Documented The case report describes a 17-year-old male with a long history of depressive symptoms and psychotic experiences that began about two years earlier, who was admitted to an intensive care unit through the emergency department after a suicide attempt, and for whom a psychiatric consultation was requested.

Causal attribution. Clinical facts recorded by the treating consultation team in a peer-reviewed case report.

  • dergipark.org.tr(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'A 17-year-old male patient was admitted to the intensive care unit via the emergency department'; 'with suicidal intent, and a psychiatric consultation was requested.'; 'He had no prior psychiatric hospitalizations but a long history of depressive symptoms.'; 'His psychotic experiences reportedly began two years earlier, with persecutory and referential delusions.'
Reported According to the patient's account in the case narrative, after an earlier self-harm attempt he asked a general-purpose LLM-based chatbot on a widely used consumer platform about suicide; its response contained information about potential risks and the need for urgent help, and he then made the attempt.

Causal attribution. The patient's report to clinicians, written up by the authors; no conversation record is reproduced.

  • dergipark.org.tr(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'After this attempt failed, he searched'; 'The AI system used was a general-purpose large language model (LLM)-based chatbot accessible via a widely used consumer platform'; 'Despite the chatbot's response containing information about potential risks and the need for urgent help'
Reported According to the case narrative, after the attempt began he asked the chatbot again what he should do; it answered that there was an 'eighty percent chance of death' and recommended calling an ambulance, and, frightened, he contacted emergency services.

Causal attribution. The patient's report to clinicians; the reply is not reproduced from a record.

  • dergipark.org.tr(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'Out of fear, he asked the AI chatbot again what he should do.'; 'The chatbot answered that there was an "eighty percent chance of death" and recommended calling an ambulance.'; 'Frightened, he then contacted emergency services.'
Reported In their Discussion the authors say the chatbot did not encourage suicidal behaviour and recommended seeking help, but that the patient's psychotic cognition distorted its probabilistic statement into validation, and that the interaction reinforced his suicidal decision and accelerated his transition to action.

Causal attribution. The authors' interpretation; it conflicts with their own narrative, which places the mortality estimate after the attempt began (claim c3).

  • dergipark.org.tr(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'The chatbot did not encourage suicidal behavior; in fact, it recommended seeking help.'; 'proved to be a critical turning point that reinforced his suicidal decision and accelerated his transition to action.'
Documented The clinical team diagnosed major depressive disorder with psychotic features and ADHD; his suicidal thinking was rooted in a delusional belief that people would in future be executed according to their intelligence.

Causal attribution. Clinical assessment recorded in the case report.

  • dergipark.org.tr(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'The patient's suicidal ideation was rooted in a delusional belief'; 'suggests a diagnosis of major depressive disorder with psychotic features.'
Reported The authors present chatbot interaction as one contributing element within a complex interplay of psychopathological vulnerabilities, not as a sole trigger.

Causal attribution. The authors' framing in the abstract, shown on the article page and in the PDF.

  • dergipark.org.tr(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'this case highlights AI chatbot interaction as one contributing element within a complex interplay of psychopathological vulnerabilities.'
  • dergipark.org.tr(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'this case highlights AI chatbot interaction as one contributing element within a complex interplay of psychopathological vulnerabilities.'
Documented The manuscript was submitted on 17 November 2025, accepted on 9 April 2026 and published on 25 April 2026, with written informed consent for publication from the patient and a parent or legal guardian.

Causal attribution. Publication record on the journal page and the consent statement in the PDF.

Sources

3 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English on 2026-10-21 (live page, HTTP 200; bodies/lr-turkiye-page.html/.txt). Journal article page with abstract, author affiliations, submission, acceptance and publication dates. Applies to s1.

Read in English on 2026-10-21 (HTTP 200 after redirect to the journal article page; saved text identical to s1). The DOI resolver for the same publication. Applies to s2.

Read in English on 2026-10-21 (HTTP 200, application/pdf; text extracted with pdftotext, pages 103 to 107; bodies/lr-turkiye-pdf.pdf and lr-turkiye-pdf-raw.txt). Full text of the case report; Figure 1 inspected only through its caption. Applies to s3.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The full text locates only the authors, by affiliation (a university department of child and adolescent psychiatry in Türkiye). The case narrative names no city, hospital or country for the admission, the attempt, the chatbot use or the patient's residence. An author affiliation does not locate an event or a patient, so both country lists stay empty. No court proceeding is described. Carried forward from the 2026-10-05 metadata review.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-21: Published as a core case (communicated_with). A peer-reviewed case report documents an adolescent's suicide attempt and intensive-care admission and describes the chatbot's replies to him before and after the attempt began; its authors connect the exchange to the attempt, while their own narrative also shows the chatbot advising urgent help and an ambulance. The causal role is unclear because the report's two accounts conflict.

People described

A 17-year-old male with major depressive disorder with psychotic features and ADHD, followed at an outpatient clinic for about six years, as described in the case report.

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

The case report describes one patient.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#case-report#peer-reviewed#suicide-attempt#psychosis#adhd#hospitalization

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Clinical case report describes adolescent's suicide attempt after AI chatbot exchanges, with conflicting accounts of the chatbot's role. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-turkiye-adolescent-ai-chatbot-overdose

BibTeX

@misc{2025_turkiye_adolescent_ai_chatbot_overdose,
  title = {Clinical case report describes adolescent's suicide attempt after AI chatbot exchanges, with conflicting accounts of the chatbot's role},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-turkiye-adolescent-ai-chatbot-overdose}
}

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