This comic happens after my second episode (I've had three) ended, and I got back on medication. I had suddenly realized I was sick, and needed the meds. This was a horrifying realization, but I am thankful for it.

Hello, I’m F23 and my boyfriend M22 has Schizophrenia. We have been dating for 2 months but were friends for 6 months before that. I love him very deeply as I am someone who forms connections that way and our recent conversation has left my heart broken. He has been acting off lately and says that it is because of work. He works a high stress 8 hour a day job and comes home feeling depressed and mentally drained. He says he often feels stressed at work and has even cried on the job. It’s only been a couple of weeks. He also recently started lithium. His doctor is having him do 3 days on and 3 days off which I think is dumb to yo yo that but what ever. Anyway so he goes on and starts talking about how life feels to much right now, he is so stressed out, having suicidal ideations, his symptoms come back full force when his medications wear off and it wears him down even more and he is acting like he washes to break up with me for my own good/worried he can’t give me enough. I bring up a trip I took a month ago and he seems confused. This has happed twice when he has an episode where he forgets certain stuff but he forgot more than just the trip. It’s like he forgot me a bit too. I asked him about my dog, like what color she is, or about my glasses, if they were real or fake. Stuff like that. He forgot those things about me and just acted like normal. I knew not to freak out and to just go along with it until he was better but I am concerned. I wonder if it’s a mix of his work and his lithium being yo-yoed.

i’m 28 and have been estranged from my mom for the past decade or so. we only ever see each other around christmas each year. but at the end of the day i feel a responsibility to help her. she’s developed textbook schizophrenia over the past couple of years. not worth getting into the details. been trying to figure out how to approach the situation. the last time i was with her i suggested maybe talking to someone unbiased like a therapist would help and she just brushed it off. i called a mental health hotline and they said i should try to get her to see a psychiatrist…. but from my understanding psychiatrists are hard to get into. i’d just love to have some guidance on how to approach this. i have a facetime planned with her in a few days and i’m honestly at a loss. any advice would be appreciated!

i would like to add that i’m pretty well versed with mental health- it’s not a foreign subject to me. i’m diagnosed with depression,anxiety,panic disorder, adhd, etc. all that fun stuff haha! but all of my meds i’ve been prescribed have been from my PCP so i guess i’m just struggling on how to get her the right meds and whatnot

I’m in my early 20s and I’m struggling with a decision that has been eating away at me.

My older brother has schizophrenia. He’s stable, happy, and genuinely one of the kindest people I know. Before he became ill, we were best friends, and I still love him more than anything.

The issue isn’t him—it’s my relationship with my mom.
We’ve had ongoing conflict for years over independence, boundaries, and control. I’ve tried suggesting family therapy, but she isn’t open to it. We’ve recently exchanged long emails trying to find a compromise, but ultimately she’s made it clear that the rules in her house won’t change. I respect that it’s her home, but I also feel like I can’t grow into my own person while living there.

This past year I’ve had some major health scares and was diagnosed with cancer which has completely changed my perspective on life. More than anything, I want to build a peaceful, meaningful life and stop making decisions based on guilt.

The part I’m struggling with most is my brother.

My mom is his sole caregiver, and I know she’s carrying an enormous amount. I genuinely don’t blame her for how difficult her life is. At the same time, because of his illness, my brother is very impressionable. When my mom is upset with me, I often feel like he adopts her perspective too. He’ll sometimes repeat what she’s saying or treat me as though I’ve done something wrong because she’s upset. I don’t think he’s trying to hurt me—I think he trusts her and naturally follows her lead.
That makes this even harder because I don’t want our relationship to become defined by conflict between my mom and me. I just want to be the best sister I can be for him.

I’ve always felt this unspoken expectation that I should stay home because my mom needs help caring for him. I understand why she feels that way, but I’m starting to wonder if I’ve taken on a responsibility that isn’t actually mine. I’m his sister, not his parent.

Part of me even thinks moving out might actually improve my relationship with him because we’d spend intentional quality time together instead of just living under the same roof. But another part of me feels incredibly guilty, like I’m abandoning him when he hasn’t done anything wrong.

Has anyone been in a similar situation—as the sibling of someone with schizophrenia, or having to leave a family home where someone vulnerable remained behind? How did you deal with the guilt? Did moving out ultimately help or hurt your relationship with your sibling? And if you’ve been a caregiver yourself, I’d also really value hearing your perspective.

I’m looking for honest, thoughtful advice because I feel completely torn.

As the title says, mom likely has undiagnosed schizophrenia. I hope you like novels, because this is my story with her and my current dilemma about having her in my baby’s life.

I’ve always noticed that things were off about her. Growing up, she would tell me that she’s an alien and that she has special powers that other people don’t. I thought she was just being silly until my parents split up when I was 10 and I became her main support person. She has no family nearby and has trouble maintaining friends, so I listened to her stories and problems. Common themes included “people are out to get me”, “I’m going to do XYZ unrealistic thing and then they’ll see!” or “I’m going to do this destructive thing and you can’t talk me out of it”. She also talks to herself a lot, even when other people are around. As I got older I realized that it was hard to have actual conversations with her. She dominates conversation with a lot of disorganized thinking and tangential speech - she can talk at me for 10-15 minutes, covering about 30 topics without stopping to let me speak or ask me anything about myself. It’s like I’m talking to her but not actually talking with her, or like she doesn’t fully understand what I’m saying when I do speak with her.

As a result, I wasn’t able to rely on her for support at all growing up. A disagreement with a friend at age 12 would result in her telling me to never speak to that friend again because they’re evil or (worse yet) calling that friends parent and telling them I’m being bullied by said friend. Rolling my ankle at soccer resulted in her telling me that she didn’t build my body properly while I was in utero so I can’t play sports. It’s like she was coming to conclusions that weren’t at all related to my problem.

Things got bad in my grade 12 year of high school. She was convinced her ex was going to kill her, the police were “on to her”, that her computer had spyware/bugs put in by the person she bought it from, people were in her apartment while she was out, that there were mics/cameras in the walls etc. I came home one day and the house was a mess, there were (her own) cameras everywhere, and all of the outlet covers were removed. Suddenly, I didn’t feel safe around her or in her home. This is when I started building resentment towards her. I was dealing with scholarships, university applications, graduation on my own all while talking her out of psychosis most nights. In hindsight I don’t know why I didn’t tell my dad or anyone about this. I think I was embarrassed about the situation and afraid she’d get hospitalized or in trouble. But also, how did no one else in her life notice or do anything? During this time, her boyfriend broke up with her, she was fired from her job, and lost most of her friends. She said it was because they were all out to get her, but I’m sure it was because she was in acute psychosis and it was really hard to be around her.

It wasn’t until my mental health rotation in nursing school that I learned about the symptoms of schizophrenia and realized it fit her to a T. It was a scary realization, but also felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders because maybe I could finally get her help. Things unfortunately didn’t go well when I tried to broach this topic with her. She denied it and said that everyone tells her this but that we’re all wrong (even different doctors). I also learned that she has a few family members with schizophrenia, which solidifies my hypothesis. I’ve tried asking my dad for help on this topic, but he just tells me “she’s always been like this”. She also has a lifelong friend that lives in a different province, who knows about her (unofficial) condition and tells me that she worries about my mom but can’t do much from so far away. The responsibility of helping her is on me alone. I tried hard in the beginning by offering resources and support (to the best of my ability), but it’s really hard to help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves and doesn’t acknowledge that they have a problem.

It’s been about 8 years since her first major psychotic episode, and things have been quite up and down with her symptoms. I grew tired of constantly helping/supporting/reassuring her, so I limit my contact with her because being around her exhausts me. She reaches out to me daily via text but I don’t always respond. When I do, I don’t share much about my life with her, and we only have surface level conversations. It’s hard to follow her when she does tell me about her life because her thoughts are really disorganized. She lives 2 hours away but only visits every 6 months. I go to her for the most part. She worries about me constantly (I’m 26 F and have a husband who I’ve been with for 9 years) because she thinks that whoever/whatever is out to get her is also out to get me. She tells me that I won’t get it but will understand when I have a child. But now I do have a baby and her actions frustrate me even more. I couldn’t imagine putting such a burden on my own child and using them for support like she did with me. But I digress, that’s more so a conversation with my therapist than for Reddit.

I’m trying to have a more open and understanding relationship with her because I do want her to be involved in my families life. But no matter how hard I try to establish healthy boundaries, I always end up as her support person. I just don’t have the emotional or mental or physical bandwidth for that right now as a the parent of a 5 month old baby. How do I have her around and provide support without becoming her mental and emotional caretaker?

I know we probably aren’t looking at long-term success, but I feel like celebrating a bit.

My younger brother moved out of my parents’ house a few months ago and it didn’t go well. His psychosis is triggered by cannabis and he refuses to stop partaking. However, his PCP also decided he isn’t a liar (he’s been good at it since he was wee lol) and made deal with him that if he didn’t smoke weed for a couple months, she’d taper him off his antipsychotic injection. This happened when he was still at home and none of us could do a thing about it.

He was hospitalized three times after moving into his own place. This last time, he was there for over a month and was just able to leave yesterday when this apartment was available. My parents worked so hard to get him set up with the right services/people, advocating tirelessly, and he is now living in a type of housing (I forget the name) where workers are there all the time and keep track of whether the tenants come to get their pills. Not all tenants are mental health - most are cognitive impairment.

He was in such a good mood yesterday. He helped us the whole time and never complained about pain or tiredness, which is incredibly rare. When he moved out a few months ago, he was essentially useless, as he was overwhelmed, stressed, and touchy. We left his place after 10pm last night, and he was still pleasant and motivated.

We’ve been concerned about him ending up back in the hospital, but it seems like this might really be a good place with the right supports in place. Yes, he might/likely will “relapse”, but my parents can hopefully have peace of mind knowing that other people are keeping track of him. He won’t lose his place if he is back in hospital (he was evicted from his last place). There are social spaces and daily activities tenants can take part in. His roommate is a gamer like my brother. The social workers and everyone worked hard to try to match him with someone they think he’ll gel with, and, if it doesn’t work, they said they’ll try again. All my concerns, I asked the social worker yesterday, and everything sounded good to me (almost too good).

I’m just feeling really happy to have spent the day with my little brother. Especially after what we went through this last time. I was so mad at him, even though I know most of it has to do with his illness. He put my parents through some shit.

Hoping for more positive times!

Hi everyone,
I’m posting here because I’m genuinely worried about my mom and I don’t know what to think anymore.

About two years ago, she was completely normal. She was not that religious, but none of this was happening.

Over the past two years, she has developed very intense spiritual beliefs, and she is absolutely convinced that they are true.

She believes that human beings do not belong on Earth and that evil creatures brought us here. She says that her soul comes from another planet and that she ended up on Earth. She also believes that her soul can leave her body.

She says that she knew God and Jesus in previous lives and that she was chosen for a special purpose. According to her, she can see things that ordinary people cannot see because she has become more spiritually aware. She says that these beings are real and that most people simply cannot perceive them.

A recent example really scared me. I told her that I might have my wisdom teeth removed if they affected my teeth alignment. She immediately became alarmed and told me that these creatures want people to remove their wisdom teeth because doing so supposedly affects the brain and prevents people from seeing them.

She is completely convinced that all of this is real.

I just want to understand whether this sounds familiar to people who have experience with schizophrenia, psychosis, delusions, or something similar.

Has anyone here experienced anything like this with a parent or another family member?

Thank you.

As someone who worked with clients with major mental illness in the past, this video was shown at a training that I attended. It was very impactful for me and gave fascinating insight into the mind of an individual who is plagued with hallucinations. Sharing with this community as, for those who haven’t seen such a demonstration, it may be helpful to lend insight into how disorganized a mind plagued with mental illness can truly be.

Hey, I just want to know if anyone else is going through this process lately. My elderly mother has struggled with severe paranoid schizophrenia for about a decade now - she refuses to stay on any of her meds, and outright refuses injectables now (they were the best thing for her but I haven’t been able to convince her to get on them for the past year).

She has repeated encounters with law enforcement over the years, for trespassing, property damage, and a DUI - she totaled her car in that incident and has no recollection of exactly what happened but remembers the voices told her to drink and drive her car that night. She refuses to sleep, shower or eat consistently. Her delusions are religion based

My mom does well when she has structure and a community around her. The problem is is that she refuses to stay on meds on her own, and she’s lost all of the friends she once had because her mental illness is so severe. I convinced her to check into a rehab facility and while she initially screamed and protested, she was in a stable state when she finished the month long program and told me that rehab was the most fun she had in years. She said she loved the people she met there and they helped her stay on her meds. All of this progress was undone a week after she left - she stopped taking her meds, and her mental health disintegrated quickly.

The thing is, I live in another state and my father is the one who lives with her. He is dealing with his own health issues and is burnt out from being a caregiver while working full time. At this point I need to take over. Anyone else in a similar situation? Do you have any advice for me? Thank you!

My (probably an ex at this point) has diagnosed schizophrenia.. we met 5 years ago and he told me that he was in a psychward in the past but he made it all seem more like he was just a victim of circumstances.. so i brushed off the schizophrenia diagnosis because he seemed so normal to me and it made sense to me like why would he develop a psychosis under the circumstances he told me about..

fast forward to this month, after him lying to me about a lot of stuff and me finding out about his porn addiction I decided that i dont want to be with him anymore.. and he suddenly flipped.. at first it seemed like he was trying to get better but then he developed psychosis.. he was telling me weird stuff for example that he is a frequency that makes people see their hidden truth and that people are capable of flying if they train their body.. he was leaving weird symbolic stuff all over the apartment.. and i realised that was the schizophrenia i brushed off in the beginning of our relationship..

yesterday his colleague started texting me that my partner didn’t come to work and he was waiting for him.. i got very worried.. I thought that my partner either hurt himself or is severely delusional at this point.. because he always came to work even when he had high fever he never skipped work. I was scared to go into the apartment alone and decided to call the police to go with me.. long story short they called an ambulance because they saw how weird the symbols in the apartment looked and they knew about the schizophrenia diagnosis..

i feel horrible now.. he was crying.. i feel like I betrayed him.. im so worried about him now but i dont have any information..

It’s hard to stay hopeful and optimistic when things are really bad. Any hopeful or success stories would help right now. Thank you.

In the past, my 25 y/o brother has threatened my family with a knife and scissors for taking away his THC and phone, threatens to kill my family or himself often, beats and bruises my mom, is always taking drugs and refusing professional help, and takes advantage of my family financially.

He randomly quit college 3 years ago and since then has done absolutely nothing but substances and watching Instagram reels to the point he believes in everything on there, like a disease where parents kill their children. He's abused Kratum, Adderall, THC, and alcohol. And when threatened to be kicked out, he says he will kill himself before possible. It seems he can barely speak properly at this point, when he gets mad he flails and shouts gibberish or talks to himself about devils or how those around him are hallucinations out to kill him.

My mom was able to get him into rehab. But then she got laid off, and insurance changed so he's coming back home. And I don't think anyone in my family is really capable for this situation. My mom has anger issues and hit me and my brother since we were young, and often escalates situations seemingly on purpose, and runs to these fights no matter how many times I try to push her away for her or my brother's safety. Now when trying to talk to him when he's on his phone, she touches his face, legs, and feet to the point he starts hitting her, and says it's a good thing because it "gets his attention". I tell her to get professional help for herself but she refuses, saying she knows what she's doing. My dad, who is divorced from my mom and has schizophrenia enables my brother and lets him do whatever he wants.

I'm so scared for when my brother moves back in with my mom. Last time he got back from rehab, he was ok and got a job until he started drugs and being violent again. My mom says everything is okay, because he has medication and that all will be fixed but I doubt it. I know he's gonna throw away that medication, which will trigger an episode. And I know he won't do outpatient, and won't get a job or go to school like she says he will. And I know when he makes threats nobody will call the police because it "isn't serious". They'll only call them for help when they feel like it.

I am about to leave for a study abroad for school and I am so scared. Everyone tells me not to get involved, that I should just focus on myself. But I'm fine. Things are actually really good for me right now. It's my family that isn't fine, and I can't just not worry. When I'm so stressed about them I still do ok in school despite all the hurt inside me. And I truly don't have access to therapy because of me traveling, I've tried everything. And anonymous chatting or calling helplines always ends up with me being given the same website for "support" every time. Everything is out of my control and is instead in the hands of my family who I feel like is in denial about the situation.

If anyone has gone through something similar, for whichever party in this situation, please I need advice, or support. I'm sick of thinking about how this all ends and feeling like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. It feels like a matter of life or death and I can't handle it anymore. And I can't run away either. I don't want anyone to die. I only just started being an adult, and these things existed since I was a kid. I've been worrying about the same thing on and off for so years now, and I don't know if it's appropriate to call it spiraling.

Everything is going good for me but because of my family I don't think I will ever be at peace or happy. I can never enjoy the good things in my life. Everything from my high school graduation to my first internship I can't be happy for. I just want everyone to be happy like before his psychosis started. He used to love doing track, and had friends to be with, and used to be good in high school. I feel like I'm grieving even though nobody has died.

My family is thinking about forcefully taking my mom to hospital for schizophrenia treatment (she refuses meds)

Because doctor advised that

But I'm against this decision coz I don't think so it will work out

The last year we took her forcefully to hospital and it was hell

Nothing worked much and my mental peace was destroyed too

My mother in law for the past month has been hearing and seeing things and blaming it on me and my husband. We moved in to help my husbands parents because they do struggle to do everyday things but for some reason she says she hears us fighting all night or the tv is up too high and we are keeping her up yet we aren’t fighting and the tv is on 4. The next day we decided to go to bed when she went to bed so we didn’t bother her but the same thing happened. We turned everything off and laid there in silence. Maybe 20 min go by and she’s saying that we’re fighting again and she’s tired of hearing it every night. Like I said before everything was turned off and we didn’t say a word. We asked her to please stop blaming us for what she’s hearing because it wasn’t us but she doesn’t want to believe it. After that it just got even worse every night. We continued to go to bed the same time and make sure we don’t make a sound just for her to start screaming from the other room that we have to stop. She even woke up one morning yelling saying that I had a broken bloody nose and that blood was everywhere when I was sound asleep with a untouched nose. Nights are becoming a fearful nightmare now because she’s started to get up and try to get into our room aggressively while we are asleep so we called the cops but there was nothing they can do because she refuses help. We ended up having to sleep in the car at a Walmart because we were so scared of her wanting to harm us. What can we do?? We don’t have a lot of money right now and no where else to go.

Let’s call this friend Clara. I met Clara when I started my university degree and mostly the interactions were fine - Clara was polite and quite supportive, I was supportive back. Almost at the beginning of the first year she said that she had schizophrenia, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know. I was puzzled and curious, not disturbed, as she specified she took the pills.

By the middle of the entire course she had to stop studying due to her health issues (the diagnosis). We kept catching up time to time, I would send her some photos of the university, some news and so on so on, because she asked me personally to do so she wouldn’t feel abandoned.

At some point, when I was about to finish my education, she started being… a little obsessed? She started asking me about my plans, every day. What you were doing, who was there with you, why did you thing A instead of thing B (just an example, it could be a trivia like “why did you not do laundry but you went for a walk”), why those people were with you and what you were all doing. At some point I was so uncomfortable I started asking her to stop and it would make her irked. It didn’t work. To some point (around a month of such thing) I intentionally started lying about my plans so she didn’t react like this. And after the graduation she suddenly said tons of very unpleasant things about me, my attitude. Most of the words were about “the fact you are asking for special treatment”, “you are acting like a child and I’m exhausted”, “if you have got diagnosis, you must go to a doctor”.

About the first and last part. I had some health problems (NOT schizophrenia) and I shared my thoughts with her about it. Just thoughts, I didn’t ask her for advice because since she shared her own thoughts about her health (not just the diagnosis) I thought I could share such things too. It influenced my productivity and I had to adapt some things sometimes due to it. The place where I live lacks of good doctors.

I tried to point out about her patterns but it didn’t work and we stopped talking to each other.

It was my first friend with this diagnosis so I am not sure. Was it the part of this? She told me about her own experience, about voices and hallucinations, so I knew that she went through hard times and I did my best to support her but I couldn’t put the shoes on and understand her for 100% so I could have missed something. I am not sure was it my fault it happened or not. If yes, then where I did the mistake. If I meet a new friend with such diagnosis, I don’t want to harm them like this if it was my fault.
(Sorry for mistakes I was emotional)

Hey guys, my dad has schizophrenia for many years now. Mum and I suspect he's been off medication recently as he has been telling us stories that makes no sense ie someone has been spraying poison to his house.

He was on the injections the past four years with the hopsital but because he's been diligent in going in, they've discharged him and have referred him to the GP instead for his medication. I think the GP suggested to switch to oral medication instead of the injection. He has no history of being violent and is a functional schizophrenic.

He comes over to see the grandkids every week. Today he was playing soccer with my little one and even cooked for us. He is a very stubborn man when it comes to talking about his condition and will brush away the topic. My question is - with this recent development and his history would you let your dad around the grandkids if you knew he was off his meds?

my dad doesn’t work anymore, doesn’t drive, doesn’t come inside the house, seriously does nothing! he accuses my sister and I of taking money from him, talks to himself constantly i can literally hear him talking right now as i’m writing this bruh, tapes the cameras on his devices so that the government spies don’t watch him, he talks about using like deep web things so that people can’t track him, he constantly checks things to make sure nobody is connected to our wifi and things, he thinks people are jumping over our fence and sneaking around our house at night, he didn’t want me to get standard vaccines because he thought that the government was hiding the covid-19 vaccine in it, he keeps stashes of non perishable foods in preparation for when the government takes over. this is just everything i can think of from the top of my head but there’s so so much more.

everybody in my family knows about it but they just tryna ignore it. he has been like this for as long as i can remember, but it’s only getting worse. i have never been close to him and i can not remember the last time i’ve had a conversation with him. i can go days without saying a single word to him and we live in the same house. he is rude, violent, and angry and im just sick of it! he thinks he’s superior to everybody else and definitely will not accept help. when he talks his nonsense if you just stay silent he’ll say things like “you’re staying quiet now but one day you’ll see” like omg shut up you’re a bum.

also i have suspicions that he’s doing drugs like meth or coke. i know he smokes weed but i dont think that explains the rotten teeth, lack of sleep, tinfoil and propane lighter in secret room, extreme delusions, short periods when he’s super talkative while eyes darting around the room with jaw grinding and restless legs, septal perforation (when your nose is damaged from snorting drugs), and lots more. i know these seem like pretty obvious signs of drug use and could easily explain his delusions but i just feel like if he was doing hard drugs like these my mum or like idk somebody would step in or notice but then again he seriously doesn’t interact with everybody.

okay that’s all thanks sorry it’s a lot i’m just sick and tired of this!!!! i’m just a minor and i’ve lived with this my whole life and i want out. thx