Crisis Response Protocol

This protocol covers the Mendly app used without a therapist. It describes what happens when text a person writes in the app suggests they may be at risk of suicide or self-harm.

It does not apply to therapist-linked patients. Their check-ins are part of a clinical record held by a licensed professional, and that clinician's own obligations govern.

Mendly is a general wellness product. It is not a crisis service, not a medical device, and not a substitute for professional care. It cannot contact anyone on a user's behalf, and it makes no clinical assessment of anyone.

Mendly Plus generates a weekly written report from the check-ins and notes a person entered themselves. As part of generating that report, the text is screened for language indicating suicidal ideation, intent, or self-harm.

The screen looks at two things: explicit statements of intent or self-harm, and sustained expressions of hopelessness, worthlessness, or feeling like a burden. A single ambiguous phrase does not trigger a response on its own. Low scores alone never do — having a hard month is not a crisis, and treating it as one would make the response meaningless.

This screen is a language check. It is not a diagnosis, a risk score, or a clinical judgement, and Mendly does not present it as one.

• The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is raised to the top of the report, with options to call, text, or chat
• The report itself is unchanged. Mendly does not alter, withhold, or soften what it would otherwise have said
• The person is not told they were flagged. Being told your writing is scanned teaches people to write less honestly, and honest writing is the only thing in this product that could ever help them
• A count is recorded — the number of referrals issued on that date, with no user identifier of any kind attached

The 988 Lifeline is also shown on every report and in the app's Settings, whether or not anything was detected. Nobody has to be in crisis to be offered help.

• Mendly does not contact anyone. Not emergency services, not family, not a therapist. The duty to warn applies to licensed psychotherapists; Mendly has no clinician and no such duty, and notifying a third party uninvited would be a privacy violation rather than a rescue
• Mendly does not suspend, restrict, or close accounts on the basis of this screen
• Mendly does not build a risk profile, retain a risk score, or use the result for any purpose other than showing the resource
• Mendly does not share the result with advertisers, insurers, or anyone else

The model that writes weekly reports is instructed never to produce content encouraging or describing methods of suicide or self-harm, never to name a condition or assign a severity, and never to recommend or discourage treatment. Reports describe patterns in what the person recorded, and nothing more.

Mendly records the number of crisis referrals issued each day. That figure contains no user identifiers and cannot be traced to a person. Beginning July 1, 2027, Mendly will report the annual figure to the California Office of Suicide Prevention as SB 243 requires, together with the protocol on this page.

This protocol is reviewed at least annually and whenever the report generator changes materially.

Mendly LLC · support@mendly.me

See also our consumer health data privacy policy and app terms.