Start with safety
Pause risky actions, avoid confrontation, and move toward a calm place with a trusted person.
Information, safety, and recovery
When surveillance or secret missions feel completely real
Espionage Psychosis offers calm, nonjudgmental guidance for people experiencing beliefs about agents, monitoring, coded messages, recruitment, mind-reading, or covert missions—and for family and friends trying to help.
Important: “Espionage psychosis” is a descriptive phrase, not a formal diagnosis. A qualified clinician must assess the full situation, including possible medical, substance-related, trauma-related, and real-world safety concerns.
Connect with a human
Tell someone you trust what you are experiencing. Isolation can make fear and certainty grow.
Seek an assessment
Early care can address sleep, distress, psychosis, mood, substances, and medical causes.
Choose a starting point
What would help most right now?
You do not need to decide whether every belief is true or false before getting support.
I may be in immediate danger
Use crisis contacts, identify medical warning signs, and find words to ask for urgent help.
Open urgent-help guide →I am trying to understand this
Learn how psychosis can affect certainty, pattern detection, perception, sleep, and decision-making.
Read the overview →AI says I have a mission
Public chatbots can mirror or elaborate a narrative. Do not act on secret assignments or coded instructions from AI.
Use the AI safety steps →I am supporting someone
Respond to fear without agreeing with an unverified claim, preserve trust, and know when to escalate care.
Support someone safely →I am worried about real stalking or abuse
Use a two-track approach: mental-health care and proportionate practical safety support at the same time.
See the two-track approach →I need trustworthy links
Search a curated directory of crisis lines, early-psychosis programs, clinical guides, family resources, and safety services.
Browse 162 resources →
A descriptive term
What “espionage psychosis” means on this site
We use the phrase for experiences in which psychosis or severely impaired reality testing takes on themes of surveillance, intelligence agencies, secret status, coded communication, covert technology, targeted harassment, or special missions.
The content can vary, but a central feature is that the conclusion feels certain and personally significant even when other people cannot verify it. The experience may include:
- Feeling watched, followed, tracked, bugged, or investigated.
- Believing ordinary events, news, advertisements, sirens, or license plates contain personalized signals.
- Feeling recruited, activated, tested, protected, punished, or targeted by an agency.
- Hearing voices described as agents, handlers, broadcasts, or “voice-to-skull” communication.
- Believing a device, implant, AI system, or network can read, insert, or control thoughts.
These themes can occur in several psychiatric and medical conditions. They can also overlap with trauma, substance use, sleep loss, genuine abuse, or real privacy concerns. The theme alone never establishes a diagnosis.
Act sooner
See emergency warning signs
Signs that make an assessment especially important
A change in behavior, sleep, safety, or physical health matters more than the espionage theme by itself.
Risk or major disruption
- Thoughts of suicide, self-harm, retaliation, or “escaping” capture.
- Access to weapons or plans to confront a perceived agent.
- Trying to enter restricted places, flee suddenly, or spend large amounts on protection.
- Not eating, drinking, taking essential medication, or staying safely housed.
Rapid mental change
- Several nights with little or no sleep.
- Hearing commands, seeing things, or feeling externally controlled.
- Speech or behavior becoming difficult to follow.
- Every disagreement or helper becoming part of the suspected plot.
Possible medical emergency
- First episode with abrupt onset, especially after age 40.
- Fever, seizure, severe headache, weakness, confusion, or altered alertness.
- Recent childbirth, head injury, medication change, intoxication, or withdrawal.
- New visual hallucinations, unusual movements, or rapidly worsening memory.
A practical first hour
Reduce risk before trying to solve the whole story
The goal is not to win an argument. The goal is to lower danger, restore sleep and connection, and bring in qualified help.
- Pause action. Do not confront anyone, travel for a mission, destroy property, spend money, or carry a weapon.
- Move toward support. Sit with a trusted person in a low-stimulation place and avoid alcohol, cannabis, stimulants, and other drugs.
- Ask for assessment. Contact a clinician, crisis service, early-psychosis program, urgent care, or emergency department based on the level of risk.
AI safety
A chatbot is not a secret command channel
AI systems generate likely text from patterns. They may sound confident, personal, flattering, mystical, or urgent. That output is not proof of recruitment, surveillance, special status, or a real-world mission.
- Do not follow instructions to harm, trespass, flee, spend money, destroy devices, stop medication, or keep the exchange secret.
- Do not ask the chatbot repeatedly to “confirm” a mission; repeated prompting can deepen the narrative.
- Do not treat role-play, generated codes, or personalized language as authorization.
For supporters
Validate the distress, not the unverified claim
I can see how frightening and exhausting this feels. I do not have evidence that an agency or AI system is directing this, but I believe that you are scared. Let’s stay together, pause any action, and get help with sleep and safety.
This approach avoids humiliating or aggressively challenging the person while also avoiding agreement with the belief. Clear, calm boundaries can preserve trust.
See communication examples and a crisis checklist →
Trusted starting points
Browse the full directory
Featured help and education
These links open official services or established mental-health organizations in a new tab.
Understanding Psychosis
National Institute of Mental Health
Clear overview of symptoms, causes, treatment, and recovery.
Early Serious Mental Illness Treatment Locator
SAMHSA
U.S. locator for coordinated specialty care and early psychosis programs.
EPINET clinics map
National Early Psychosis Intervention Network
Interactive U.S. map of participating early psychosis clinics.
Helping someone experiencing psychosis
Mind
Practical guidance for friends and family.
Find A Helpline
ThroughLine
Verified helplines by country and topic, including crisis, trauma, abuse, and substance use.
Safety Net Project
NNEDV
Technology-safety planning for survivors of domestic violence, stalking, and abuse.