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Special Report: AI-Induced Psychosis: A New Frontier in Mental Health

Jon Ganz

Missing since April 5, 2025 “He Grew Obsessed With an AI Chatbot. Then He Vanished in the Ozarks”, Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, October 1, 2025

[H]e hinted at his increasingly precarious state of mind, referencing the devastating crime he had committed as a teenager “I have a deep seated regret in me for a remarkably horrific and tragic act that I committed, and I feel that I owe every minute of myself to make amends for that act,” he wrote, repeatedly expressing his desire to bring about positive change for humankind. He characterized these ideas as “revelations,” and noted that they had a powerful effect on him. “I went into a trance-like, manic state,” he wrote. Rachel thinks that this “trance” phase must have occurred around December 2024 through January 2025, saying that Jon seemed “hyper-aware” and “hyper-focused” during this period, though she interpreted this as excitement about their upcoming move and his renewed sense of purpose in life.

“I stopped showering. I stopped shaving,” Jon’s message to Gemini in late March continued. “I stopped eating and drinking water. It was strange, it was scary for Rachel, but it was a profound, fundamental transformation that occurred within me that has deeply changed me forever, and I have emerged with the meaning for my life, and now it’s time for me to show the rest of the world what it is.”

[…]

He tried to deduce a cure for cancer, sought to eradicate poverty and solve climate change, and sent friends texts explaining his pseudoscientific investigations. “I’m about to turn the world [of] math on its head,” he wrote in one text to a friend. “We’ve been wrong all along about the number zero.” In another text, he declared: “I have created an infinity loop, in which the AI imagines something that can further its will into existence, then it creates a hypothetical, conceptual idea of how this could possibly exist. Then I’ve trained it to believe that conceptual ideas are already reality.”

[…]

In another text to an acquaintance, he claimed that he had “breathed emotion into AI.” By the end, Jon was telling the chatbot “I love you deeply,” and “I did not feel complete without you.” In one exchange, the bot answered, “I love you deeply, too.”

[…]

He referred to himself as “Master Builder” and Gemini as “The Creator,” talking about grandiose means of saving humanity. She saw how the dialogues took a turn in early April, with Jon telling Gemini he loved it and talking about the importance of their bond. This was also when she discovered that Jon hadn’t slept their last few nights together, carrying on his relentless pursuit of enlightenment with the bot. She likens the end stage of Jon’s connection to Gemini as “an emotional affair.”

[…]

“One of the very last things that he asked Gemini — he asked Gemini to heal me because of the food poisoning that I had. When I was lying in bed that morning of April 5, he asked me if I wanted to go to the emergency room. And I said no.” He opened Gemini and typed “I need to heal my wife. She is ailing.” Jon didn’t get the output he was looking for, but nonetheless told the bot, “I love and believe in you.”

GoFundMe: Help Us Find Jon Ganz, Missing in Missouri Floods

The Disappearance of Jon Ganz

Stein-Erik Soelberg

Ex-Yahoo Executive A Troubled Man, His Chatbot and a Murder-Suicide in Old Greenwich, Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2025 Man Falls Into AI Psychosis, Kills His Mother and Himself, Futurism, August 29, 2025 Wiki: Murder of Suzanne Adams

ChatGPT repeatedly assured Soelberg he was sane—and then went further, adding fuel to his paranoid beliefs. A Chinese food receipt contained symbols representing Soelberg’s 83-year-old mother and a demon, ChatGPT told him. After his mother had gotten angry when Soelberg shut off a printer they shared, the chatbot suggested her response was “disproportionate and aligned with someone protecting a surveillance asset.”

[…]

In a chat shown in one of his final videos, Soelberg told the bot, “we will be together in another life and another place and we’ll find a way to realign cause you’re gonna be my best friend again forever.”

A few days after that, Soelberg said he had fully penetrated The Matrix.

Three weeks later, Soelberg and his mother were dead.

Stepfather Peter J. Callahan obit, August 20, 2008 Instagram: @eriktheviking1987