NOTICE FOR PSYCHOTIC PEOPLES LIKE ME AND THE NEW TOMODACHI LIFE: Please please pretty pretty please be careful while playing Living the Dream, esp if you’re currently unmedicated!!!
The game treats the Miis like they’re real people and makes zero mention ever that they are not, and only ever refers to them and their POV as if they are real and you are their caretaker! While playing this honestly messed with my head pretty badly at times and made me worry a lot on if I was hurting real people/not doing enough for real people while I was playing!
I cannot imagine how much worse this would be for someone who’s unmedicated, non-dormant, or experiencing breakthrough symptoms! Do please be careful and PLEASE remember to have a way to reality check yourself while playing the game!!!
Also: If you’re not psychotic, please reblog this anyway!!! It may not seem like a big deal to you but these kinds of things are REALLY important to know for us psychotic folk in a world that is both hostile and negligent to us and our needs!!!
'Cause people tend to not get the memo: People acting strangely in public is not a danger to you. Pacing, talking to themselves or something you can't see, laughing to themselves, stimming, twitching, ticcing, making "weird" noises--it doesn't fucking matter. They're not your personal freak show, they're not broken, they're not a murderer and they're definitely not going to be fucking helped by you calling the authorities or anyone else on em. These actions alone are not indicative of danger to you, as a random person on the street. Shut the fuck up and move on, leave disabled people alone.
AI Psychosis and the implications of its existence
Actually as shitty as the existence of AI psychosis is, the implications of it are FUCKING MIND-BOGGLING in actually a really revolutionary way.
("WTF are you talking about?" / "What do we currently know about AI psychosis?": x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x)
People experiencing "ChatGPT psychosis" are being involuntarily committed to mental hospitals and jailed following AI mental health crises.
Paywall free, via Futurism, June 28, 2025
Like, as someone who works professionally editing mental health books, the existence of AI psychosis almost certainly completely upends our understandings of how mental health disorders work. And their causes.
There's a non-zero chance the discovery/existence of AI psychosis is like. going to be/lead to more or less the mental health equivalent of inventing/discovering germ theory.
Like, in the past one to two years, we have gone from only sort of beginning to suspect,* to having actual, literal, indisputable proof that you can go from not having a psychotic disorder** to having a psychotic disorder literally just from talking too much to a very aggrandizing source and/or echo chamber
THAT SEVERELY UPENDS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND ORIGINS OF MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS
*Note: On a "scientific consensus" and "robust peer-reviewed research" level. Obviously, as a couple people in the notes pointed out, people who have experienced this shit have been saying this for years, and I'm very glad that science is finally backing up that maybe we should fucking listen to people actually experiencing a thing when we study that thing.
**Note: I am using "psychotic" and "psychotic disorders" in their technical definition here, which is simply "involves experiencing breaks from reality." Because, contrary to all the stigma and misinformation, that's the literal/actual definition (x, x, x)
And like, obviously, in at least many cases, there would be/often are genetic, environmental, or trauma factors that are putting their thumbs on the scale there. But we know for a fact that a number of people who have developed AI psychosis do not have a previous record of mental health issues.
But the tipping factor for at least dozens of people, we now know for a fact, was talking to an AI chatbot. And we have a complete record of what was said for almost every single one of those cases, because, among other things, OpenAI / ChatGPT is now LEGALLY REQUIRED to preserve ALL CHAT TRANSCRIPTS, even if users delete them, until the court says otherwise (x, x, x).
(Which will be, by the way, years, at a minimum - that may have started with a copyright lawsuit, but there will be so many other AI lawsuits and investigations, including about AI psychosis, in the EU if not the US - this will go on for a while)
Anyway, yeah, good news in the long term for the understanding and treatment of mental health disorders
In the short term, seriously, please don't use chatbots for at least another couple of years, as a safety precaution
At least until they've sorted this shit out and (HOPEFULLY) figured out how to make this shit stop happening (and then, hopefully, actually implemented those changes).
Just call it a basic safety precaution - especially if you have any sort of neurodivergence and/or any history or family history of hallucinations, delusions, schizophrenia / schizo-spectrum, psychotic spectrum disorders, etc.
Something that always bothers me in mental health spaces is the fear of relating too much to each-other across the lines of different disorders. Too many times I've met people who are not dissociative systems, but have dissociative experiences (such as from BPD), and they trip over themselves saying "no no, I mean, I don't REALLY understand what you go through, my thing is totally different," and it makes me a little upset. Disorders are just clusters of symptoms packaged together in a certain way, that's why the names and criteria often change across DSM and ICD editions, and viewing them as entirely exclusive clubs where only they could possibly understand anything about each other isn't a particularly healthy way of seeing it. The lines between disorder labels are blurrier than you think. You are not being a bad person or overstepping for relating to symptoms of a disorder, or people with a disorder, without having their specific label. Very rarely (if ever, frankly) is there a symptom that can only occur in one disorder, or even one type of disorder. Psychosis can occur in countless circumstances. Dissociation and identity compartmentalization can occur in countless circumstances. It's better to focus more on your specific symptoms and building community with your fellow neurodivergent people, using the resources that help you regardless of if they were specifically made for your diagnosis, over worrying about whether or not you're "allowed" to relate to something or experience something similarly to someone else.
Every person that I know, that I have opened up about my schizophrenia to, has shared that they have had at least one psychotic experience in their life.
Whether that was that they have psychotic features as a part of their bipolar disorder, depression or PTSD. Or that they have seen a shadow of a person out of the corner of their eye, or a delusion that some entity is after them. Even if it was just a single instance of hearing a voice that wasn't real that stuck with them.
It seems like when I break the barrier of stigma and silence, people feel comfortable enough to share their own experiences and I love that.
Psychotic experiences are extremely common. Anecdotally, it seems that everyone has had at least one hallucination, delusion or instance of paranoia in their life. And I wish everyone was able to talk about these experiences, and how they've affected them without fear of shame or panic from the people around them. This is a normal thing that brains do for whatever reason. It shouldn't be seen as bad unless it negatively affects someone, and then you should listen with care and see if the person needs help in any way.
That's why acceptance for those of us with disorders like schizophrenia is so important. If you can hear a schizophrenic person out, and not treat us like we are dangerous or scary. See as equal human beings that happen to have these experiences. Only then will the pathway for everyone to share their experiences with psychosis be open and normalized.
I think it's fascinating that human brains can create experiences out of thin air. I think it's so cool that everyone can relate to me in even a small way. Imagine how many interesting conversations and connections we could all be having about this if we destigmatized psychosis and schizophrenia.
