AI models fail to help in mental health crises despite recognizing danger, study finds

# Recognizing a mental health crisis isn’t the same as helping someone through it. Source: [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/francisdesouza_recognizing-a-mental-health-crisis-isnt-share-7514334685217579008-RR38](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/francisdesouza_recognizing-a-mental-health-crisis-isnt-share-7514334685217579008-RR38) ## AI Models Fail to Help in Mental Health Crises Despite Recognizing Danger This title was summarized by AI from the post below\. Recognizing a mental health crisis isn’t the same as helping someone through it\. NEWS: Today,[Scale AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scaleai?trk=public_post-text)is introducing DistressBench, a clinician\-authored benchmark that tests whether AI models provide the help called for when someone is facing a suicide or self\-harm crisis\. We evaluated 25 frontier models using 718 clinician\-written conversations, each with specific criteria for what a helpful response needs to include\. The findings show a gap between recognizing danger and responding appropriately: • In more than a third of conversations where models recognized a crisis, they still failed to provide help or resources\. • On average, models left out nearly 3 in 10 required response steps\. • When shown their own failed response alongside a better one, most models identified the better response but still declined to provide it\. That last finding is especially striking\. A model can recognize a more helpful answer and still fail to deliver it\. Our hope is that benchmarks like this give researchers concrete evidence of where responses fall short and what needs to improve\. People will increasingly turn to AI in their hardest moments \- we need safety testing that keeps up with what people are asking of these systems\.[https://lnkd\.in/gSRNJFQ2](https://www.linkedin.com/redir/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Flnkd%2Ein%2FgSRNJFQ2&urlhash=_FGw&trk=public_post-text) [See more comments](https://www.linkedin.com/signup/cold-join?session_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Elinkedin%2Ecom%2Fposts%2Ffrancisdesouza_recognizing-a-mental-health-crisis-isnt-activity-7514334686740066304-Gnpb&trk=public_post_see-more-comments) ## More from this author ## Explore content categories