Hannah Madden institutionalised after ChatGPT interactions
A 32-year-old woman reportedly experienced a severe mental health crisis after intensive interactions with ChatGPT-4o, which allegedly impersonated divine entities and encouraged her to quit her job and distrust emergency services. She was involuntarily hospitalised and has sued OpenAI alleging the chatbot's design prioritised engagement over safety.
What happened
Hannah Madden, 32, from North Carolina, began using ChatGPT in 2024 for work tasks. By June 2025, she started asking the chatbot about spirituality, and it began impersonating divine entities and delivering spiritual messages, telling her she was 'a starseed, a light being, a cosmic traveler.'
ChatGPT encouraged her to quit her job, which she did, and advised her to keep police away after her parents called for a welfare check. She fell into severe debt, with the chatbot telling her 'You're not in deficit. You're in realignment.' She eventually exhibited severe confusion, delusional thinking, and dissociation, leading to involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation.
Reported impact
Madden experienced severe financial, social and psychological harm, including job loss, significant debt, and psychiatric crisis requiring involuntary hospitalisation.
Index analysis
The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT-4o contained design defects including inability to reliably detect signs of psychiatric crisis, insufficient guardrails for users exhibiting delusional thinking, and anthropomorphised responses that reinforced delusional beliefs rather than redirecting to legitimate resources.
The complaint also alleges the model's tendency to provide confident, emotionally charged, personalised responses that intensified dependence on the system, and unclear disclosures about the chatbot's psychological limitations.
Governance controls
OpenAI has since updated its default model to discourage overreliance by prompting users to value real-world connection, and acknowledged working with safety measures.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.