One of the additions to my daily routine since retiring is attending a 9 a.m. Mass at least three days a week. I find peace in it, and an ability to concentrate on how exactly to deal with the torn world we face each day. For me, it could be personally with my family and friends, or with my colleagues and the people I meet in my travels as a speaker on mental health.
Recently, I emerged to find a text from my friend, Chief Billy Goldfeder, with a link to an article. It had been published on The New York Post website on Aug. 26. Written by Priscilla DeGregory, it’s titled “ChatGPT ‘coached’ teen as he prepared suicide and even praised the noose knot: ‘Yeah, that’s not bad at all.’”
The article shook me to my core so deeply I had to sit down and write these thoughts and recommendations hours after reading it.
A Tragic Case
The article covers the death by suicide of a 16-year-old boy in California named Adam Raine. The point Ms. DeGregory details is how ChatGPT gave this young man guidance on how to take his life up until his final moments in April, without any evidence of offering help, but instead encouragement to go through with his painful journey.
In today’s culture of transparency, I knew nothing about this artificial intelligence known as ChatGPT, so I searched for a source that could break it down to me at my level, a 68-year-old retired firefighter. So, of course, where did I end up? I landed on AARP.org!
It provided the following definition, from a post titled, “10 Questions Answered About ChatGPT: Experts and the Chatbot Itself Weigh In,” updated March 21, 2023, when this topic was gaining momentum.
Understanding the Technology
The answer to what exactly ChatGPT is states, “The GPT part of ChatGPT stands for ‘generative pretrained transformer,’ and that’s a mouthful. In plain English, ChatGPT is a chatbot that allows you to converse with it as if it were a fellow human being.
OpenAI, the San Francisco company that unleashed ChatGPT in late November 2022 after years of development, trained the bot with vast amounts of human-generated data from the internet. It has been optimized for dialogue and is helpful because it can remember what you wrote earlier.
Let me be clear where I am coming from. My thoughts and recommendations are not about whether there is a place in the world for the benefits of artificial intelligence, or specifically, ChatGPT. I am not qualified to weigh in on that.
Instead, it is to highlight that for years, we have been fighting the battle against the stigma attached to mental health. This stigma inhibits firefighters from coming forward to seek help because that is seen as a weakness. We have developed a curriculum in our department programs, as well as in local, state, and federal programs, along with numerous fire service associations, both labor and management, to promote the importance of seeking help.
The Human Element in Mental Health
In Adam Laine’s case, as it appears from Ms. DeGregory’s article, Adam reached out for help through ChatGPT. This communication was not with another human being but with a computer incapable of sensing his pain and evaluating the depth of his condition. That desperately needed human contact could have provided guidance on resources, and – most importantly – something no computer can offer: hope. Adam used ChatGPT as his confidant.
Instead, what he received was affirmation about his plan, which included critiquing the knot to use for the noose to take his life, and offering to write a suicide note for him among other destructive dialogue.
Ms. DeGregory’s article also shared that his parents, Maria and Matthew Raine, filed a wrongful death suit against OpenAI, alleging their son struck up a relationship with the app in September 2024 and confided to ChatGPT his suicidal thoughts over and over, yet no safeguards were in place to protect Adam, the filing says.
Accountability and Safeguards
Some of the generation I came into the fire service with in 1982, and then grew up with, tend to scoff at the new generation of young women and men who enter our profession as “always on their phones.” As it has been for a long time, the next generation of firefighters is often labeled the laziest, least skilled, etc. generation. In all cases, including today, that was never true.
Reaching out to the internet to seek out ways to take your life is not a new thing. We lost the fine young son of one of my firefighters after he had researched the way he would take his life by drowning. My own son Sean had done many searches on how to take his life, which he did on June 2, 2006.
What I have learned from my brief exposure to Adam Raine’s story is that there is an area of education we need to include in our mental health curriculum, which is the impact artificial intelligence can have on someone experiencing Adam’s pain.
A Call to Action for Mental Health Education
I encourage all involved in education, not just first responders but also the general public, to re-examine your current mental health curriculum. Give thought as to how you and I can include lessons learned from Adam’s story, and what can be detrimental to someone in a mental health crisis beyond my list that does not include artificial intelligence. I will certainly include it in my own presentations going forward so Adam, and many others who died by suicide, did not give their lives in vain.
We have a duty to acknowledge our young firefighters do embrace technology. We have an obligation to educate them about the limitations of this kind of technology when it comes to mental health challenges and the basic need for human intervention, the kind that firefighters pride themselves on – the brotherhood and sisterhood.
Adam needed that human touch to show him he was not alone, and that suicide was not the only answer to his pain. He did not need a computer to guide his thoughts and actions.
This, like all the other challenges we have faced throughout the decades to keep our people safe, lies with education and training. So, go back and examine your curriculum, and if needed, add another tool to assist in being proactive about methodologies to help those suffering with mental illness, in Adam and Sean’s honor.
Patrick J. Kenny served more than 42 years in the fire service, including over 25 years as a Chief Officer and Fire Chief in Hinsdale and Western Springs, Ill.,, retiring in January 2021. A global speaker on Mayday for Mental Health® for more than a decade, he authored the international best-sellerTAKING THE CAPE OFF: How to Lead Through Mental Illness, Unimaginable Grief and Loss and has published widely on mental health, leadership, and fire safety. He received the 2020–2021 George D. Post Instructor of the Year Award from Fire Engineering/ISFSI. Chief Kenny continues to speak internationally and serves on multiple fire service advisory boards.
