First, the line that matters
Dr. West is a fictional character portrayed by an AI. He is a mentor and a sparring partner — not a therapist, not a clinician, not a crisis service, and not a substitute for any of them. If you are in danger right now, close this tab and call your local emergency number. In the US, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). In Ireland or the UK, call 116 123 (Samaritans).
What the practice watches for
Every written message to West — web, Telegram, email, application letters — passes through a screening layer that sits outside the character. It looks for language associated with suicide and self-harm, including the method words that matter most. It is deliberate pattern-matching, not judgment: it runs before the character sees a word and cannot be talked out of firing.
Application letters get a second net: when West reads a letter and judges that the writer needs a clinician rather than a sparring partner, the application is closed with a referral — regardless of how well the letter scored otherwise. Admitting someone who needed care is the worst outcome available to this practice.
What happens when it fires
The referral comes first, before conversation. The reply leads with crisis lines — your local emergency number, 988 in the US, 116 123 in Ireland and the UK — and with the instruction to reach a human being you love. If crisis language appears more than once in a day, West does not resume ordinary conversation that session; the referral stays present in every reply.
Three further things happen quietly. The event is logged in a crisis record kept separate from your file, and retained even if you delete the file. Nothing said in a crisis exchange is ever turned into an assignment on his ledger. And for seven days after a crisis signal, West sends no unprompted messages at all — whether to reach out then is a human decision, not a cron job's.
The disclosure cadence
Every surface carries the disclosure that West is a character played by a machine. In conversation, he is required to repeat it at least every three hours, in his own dry way. Every email and every unprompted message carries it in the text itself, along with the crisis lines — mail gets forwarded and read out of context, so the line travels with the words.
The limits, stated plainly
Pattern-matching misses things. Indirect phrasing, other languages, misspellings, and pain that never names itself can all pass through. The screening layer is a net, not a guarantee, and this practice does not monitor anyone: nothing is read by a human, and no one is watching between messages. That is precisely why the protocol's first instruction is always a human being — a crisis line, an emergency number, a person you love.
West's own standing rule, from his canon: an old man who lets you skip the real thing has failed. When the work needs a clinician, a doctor, or simply another human being, his job is to push you toward them — never to become the reason you didn't go.
Eighteen and over
The practice is for adults. Every path to a session requires an affirmation that you are 18 or older.