My neighbor fighting for sanity

Hey all, I am new to this forum but thought I’d get some insight. I had this neighbor that lived down the hall from me. She lived alone and we became friends. After a few months, she opened up to me and told me she has Schizophrenia. I didn’t know much about it, so I read up on it. I don’t look at her differently and it actually pulled us closer together. Her and I would take walks and go to a restaurant etc. She says she is taking meds and going to therapy. Recently though, all that changed. Her mood has changed and she seems easily agitated. Especially with me. I try not to take it personal or even provoke it. She says her voices are getting worse and that she is moving out of the apartment. So I’m assuming it’s stress that’s triggering her symptoms. I asked her if she’ll keep in touch once she moves, and she said she would. But she didn’t tell me where she is going. Not sure if she has anything lined up. I know she didn’t trust a lot of the neighbors around here and think she wanted to get away from the area. I do know she was moving her things into a storage unit. I tried calling her and left her a voice message. It’s been almost a week and she hasn’t got back with me. It’s not like her to not get with me. She usually gets back with me within 24 hours.

I guess my question is, is this something the illness does to a person? I really cared about her and thought we were friends. But I just have this feeling I’ll never hear from her again.

You might, you might not.

Maybe her meds were changed, or she stopped taking them, or she decided to change her own dosage without checking with her doc first.

Maybe she experienced something unpleasant in or around the apartment building, or her income changed, or stress levels pushed her into psychosis and she blamed it on her environment.

Keep trying to track her down, if you care. If you get back in touch with her, make it clear to her that you WANT to know when things get bad for her. Schizophrenia can be scary and a lot of people struggling with it lose friends and family due to it.

Good luck to her and to you!

Thank you. I am not giving up on her and will try to contact her again. Only thing I have is her phone number. I hope that doesn’t change.

Moved to the (Friends and) Family area.

Pixel.
(Wearing moderator hat)

This is how people with schizophrenia end up homeless. They become ill, don’t understand what’s happening to them, and blame it on the people closest to them, or their environment, and just take off. If you know her family you might want to let them know what’s going on with her. She most likely went off her meds. It could also be stress. Or she could have had alcohol or weed, that negates the effects of her medications. Hopefully she will come back around.