Columbia University’s Technology & Democracy Initiative and The Jed Foundation have formed a partnership focused on how AI systems respond to teenagers experiencing emotional distress or suicidal thoughts. The project brings together AI safety specialists and mental health and suicide prevention experts, two groups the partners say increasingly work on the same problems but still lack a common framework for translating clinical knowledge into technical system design. Its first phase will include an expert roundtable followed by a jointly authored working paper. The partners intend the paper to provide a practical foundation for AI developers, mental health specialists, policymakers and platform safety teams working on youth mental health. The focus extends beyond the response a chatbot gives after a student or young person discloses distress. The project will examine how expert judgment can be incorporated throughout an AI system, including the policies governing it, how the technology recognizes that someone may be struggling and how it connects users with support.