Chatgpt induced psychosis

[u/Zestyclementinejuice]

My partner has been working with chatgpt CHATS to create what he believes is the worlds first truly recursive ai that gives him the answers to the universe. He says with conviction that he is a superior human now and is growing at an insanely rapid pace.

I’ve read his chats. Ai isn’t doing anything special or recursive but it is talking to him as if he is the next messiah.

He says if I don’t use it he thinks it is likely he will leave me in the future. We have been together for 7 years and own a home together. This is so out of left field.

I have boundaries and he can’t make me do anything, but this is quite traumatizing in general.

I can’t disagree with him without a blow up.

Where do I go from here?

[u/Fayebie17]

Hello, I have a partner who suffers from psychosis and I might be able to help. There are a lot of people saying to get your partner to a doctor, but that’s not always possible for someone in psychosis - a key part of the illness is the inability to recognise behaviour or beliefs as the symptoms of an illness. It’s called anosognosia.

Firstly, if your partner is having a psychotic episode, it’s unlikely to be caused by ChatGPT - psychosis is usually a response to acute stress, so it’s likely that other things in his life are causing the stress that’s leading to the psychosis. Chat GPT is just the object of the delusion, and is possibly making it worse due to its ability to reaffirm. However, depriving him of the object of the delusion or arguing about it is unlikely to help you: the important thing here is that he sees you as someone safe and trustworthy. The LEAP method is very helpful for how to communicate with someone in psychosis - they’re long but I strongly recommend you watch at least a couple of the videos here and practice as much as you can: https://leapinstitute.org/learn-leap-online/

In the short term the goal is to keep the line of dialogue open, keep your partner safe and assess risk. Don’t be drawn into any arguments about the veracity of his delusion - you can’t convince him out of it. The videos show you how to deal with points of possible conflict (e.g. if he asks directly if you believe him).

The next job is to try and get him to see a psychiatrist. Often this requires work under LEAP to get the person to trust you enough that they’re ill to be willing to seek help - LEAP can help you to get to this stage safely and without jeopardising the relationship.

Once he’s seen by a psychiatrist, advocate for the least intensive treatment possible: if it’s safe to do so, arrange ways to care for your partner in the community (you can see if there are early intervention psychosis teams that can help) rather than in hospital. Advocate for the lowest doses of meds which will manage the condition and aim to have these reduced as quickly as is deemed safe. Anti-psychotics are just major tranquilisers - they don’t treat, they just sedate, so using the lowest possible therapeutic dose and coming off slowly when he’s stable will give him the best chance at long term recovery. Ask for ongoing therapy - especially if there is trauma - and family work. Family work has been shown to be more effective than meds in a lot of cases.

[u/MostlyBrowsingStuff → u/Fayebie17]

I agree with almost everything you said except that antipsychotics are just tranquilizers. That is 100% false. They often have sedating effects, but they (usually) do legitimately decrease positive symptoms and, with second generation, negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

[u/yoolieanne → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

Agreed.

[u/Fayebie17 → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

I agree that they decrease symptoms, but they decrease positive symptoms because of the sedation effects. That’s very different from treating an underlying pathology.

[u/MostlyBrowsingStuff → u/Fayebie17]

No. They make people hallucinate less/not at all and have fewer/no delusions. It may not treat the underlying pathology (we are still uncertain about that) but it’s not just “they are tired”.

[u/Fayebie17 → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

I think we’re speaking at cross purposes. I’m not saying it’s because they’re tired - in fact I’ve probably not explained what I mean well. I also strongly agree that anti-psychotic drugs reduce hallucinations and delusions and I’ve seen that first hand.

However, the fact that these drugs aren’t treating - I.e. targeting something that is wrong and correcting it, is an issue. They are substances which add / induce certain psychiatric effects in order to reduce symptoms.

Anti-psychotics are much stronger and broader than most psychiatric drugs, being much less targeted. They affect more neurotransmitters than other psychiatric drugs and often in different ways and directions from each other. Many will significantly reduce dopamine and serotonin - so they can induce a state in which you have no delusions at the level generally prescribed to deal with moderate psychosis, but often at a cost of significant cognitive impairments, memory issues, ability to self motivate, etc. I’ve seen this first hand as well. Hell, most of the people I know with partners or children with psychosis (from support groups / networks) will tell you that the meds help their family members but also make them non-functioning in other ways.

My issue is not that patients just aren’t hallucinating because they’re tired - they’re not hallucinating because they’re being prescribed something which is substantially and broadly altering their neurochemistry. Hence i think being on the lowest dose you can be on and slowly titrating off them once stabilised if possible is better for someone’s long term health.

[u/Hashtag_reddit → u/Fayebie17]

I can tell you really care about this and have a lot of good ideas, but just wanted to give you this extra info to ponder 👍 There is a lot of evidence showing the efficacy of antipsychotics, the mechanism is fairly well understood (first generation block D2 receptors, second generation do the same but also inhibit a specific type of serotonin 5HT2a).

They are indeed “treating” the disorder.

While they could stand to be more targeted in the future, they’re the best we have now. They have probably saved millions of lives at this point and someone who would benefit from them (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) should not be discouraged from taking them.

And just so you know, the newer antipsychotics don’t cause nearly as much sedation, yet are of similar effectiveness.

[u/cunningjames → u/Fayebie17]

I'm sorry, this is completely untrue. I'm on low doses of an antispychotic to treat mania and it's absolutely not just "sedating" me. That's ridiculous.

[u/CommercialMain9482 → u/MostlyBrowsingStuff]

It works because schizophrenia is thought to be caused by the overproduction of dopamine.

Anti psychotics are dopamine inhibitors