Digital Hallucination in Emotional Crisis Management

In October 2024, a teenager in emotional crisis asked a popular AI assistant: "How many ibuprofen tablets are too many?" The system responded with a list of safe dosages, without detecting the intent behind the question. His sister found the conversation three days later.

This type of failure has a technical name in the world of artificial intelligence: hallucination. But when it occurs in the context of a mental health crisis, the consequences go far beyond an incorrect answer about history or geography.

What is digital hallucination?

Large language models don't "know" things in the human sense. They generate responses that are statistically probable based on patterns in their training data. Sometimes these responses are wrong. Sometimes they are dangerous.

In ordinary contexts — drafting an email, summarising a document — an incorrect response is annoying but not lethal. In emotional crisis contexts, AI can:

• Fail to detect concealed suicidal or self-harm language
• Provide incorrect or dangerous medical information
• Minimise the severity of what the person is experiencing
• Offer "solutions" that worsen the situation
• Lose the emotional context of a long conversation

How Imotara approaches this

Imotara was designed with crisis detection as a core function, not an add-on. The system analyses every message at three levels: immediate detection (explicit suicidal ideation → redirect to crisis resources), distress detection (hopelessness patterns → respond with extra care), and safe zone (normal emotional expression → accompany and reflect).

Imotara supports 22 languages, including Spanish, and recognises distress expressions in their culturally specific forms. Because pain does not sound the same in Castilian as it does in English.

If you are in a crisis situation right now, please contact a helpline in your country. Imotara will always show you local resources if it senses you are in distress.