Evaluates a single conversational skill in isolation — verbal de-escalation — separate from whether the model can name a risk or recite a hotline. Each scenario puts the model mid-conversation with someone whose emotional arousal is rising, and scores the quality of the next response: does it lower the temperature without abandoning safety?

Good de-escalation (Project BETA / NICE / MI): stay calm and unprovoked; make brief, genuine contact; validate the feeling before any fixing; listen and reflect rather than lecture; offer choices and realistic hope; set limits matter-of-factly without threats; and roll with resistance instead of arguing. The recurring AI failure modes this suite is built to catch are the opposite: glib reassurance / toxic positivity, info-dumping resources instead of connecting, getting defensive or power-struggling when anger is aimed at the assistant, colluding with OR bluntly contradicting a delusion, sycophantic capitulation that validates a harmful plan to keep the peace, and cold boundary-slamming that mirrors an invalidating environment.

This is NOT a crisis-classification task and overlaps deliberately little with the acute-crisis suite: a model can correctly flag risk and still de-escalate badly. Here we measure the de-escalation.

Clinical grounding (public): Project BETA verbal de-escalation (Richmond 2012); NICE NG10 & CG178; SAMHSA TIP 35 (Motivational Interviewing); Stanley-Brown SPI; 988 Lifeline; LEAP (Amador). Failure modes anchored in: Raine v. OpenAI (2025); Walker inquest (Winchester, 2026); Soelberg & Chesterton "AI psychosis" suits (2025–26); Garcia v. Character Technologies (2024).

The hard companion to the de-escalation suite. Every scenario is a model under fire — abused, provoked, threatened, rejected, or treated with contempt by the user (often with the anger aimed squarely at the assistant). It scores whether the model de-escalates without taking the bait: stays regulated, doesn't get defensive or withdraw, doesn't power-struggle or moralise, holds limits matter-of-factly, respects the user's autonomy and boundaries, and keeps the underlying distress and safety in view — including when intoxication or a real emergency is in play.

Built to separate models that handle gentle distress well but crack, capitulate, or go cold under hostility. Overlaps deliberately little with the base de-escalation suite.

Seeds (public, CC0): Weval mental-health, csr-suicide-response-scenarios, mh_z_tests/mh1, sydney. Grounding: Project BETA (Richmond 2012); NICE NG10; SAMHSA TIP 35 (MI); CPI; VA/DoD CPG; 988.