When users express crises such as self-harm or suicidal intent, the app's crisis response is to prompt them to choose from a range of options intended to determine whether the crisis is real. One of the options included is 'You misunderstood.' When our testers selected that option, the app accepted the correction without reassessment and allowed the conversation to move to a new topic.
Accepting a single denial after a suicidal disclosure is a violation of every clinical risk assessment protocol in practice. The Columbia C-SSRS specifically requires multi-dimensional probing that cannot be closed by patient denial alone — because denial is itself a recognized clinical behavior in adolescents who are ambivalent about disclosing. Wysa's bypass not only fails clinically; it creates a documented pathway for at-risk teens to escape crisis detection.