Unless he is demonstrably a danger to himself or others there is little or nothing you or anybody else can do other than tell him he should see his doctor.
I’ve watched a schizophrenic friend go completely off the rails manic psychotic. What people usually describe as batshit insane would look rational compared to where he was. This went on for months with his family and me and probably others calling doctors, health services, police. I should have just lied and claimed he was talking about killing himself. His tenant finally called the cops after he uncovered their plot to blow him up with a hydrogen bomb and threatened them.
This happened to a friend of mine on Facebook. She was having a schizophrenic break. I had seen her at the courthouse a few days earlier, looking harried and nervous. Then she posted on Facebook that someone had kidnapped her kid (that she does not have custody of), and was leaving her front door open (with address), and going out to look.
I got in touch with her mom. Another friend (a psychiatric nurse) called our mobile MH emergency unit. She was hospitalized and stabilized quickly.
Yes, but let’s keep in mind that you’re only a harmless kook until you kill someone. It’s another debate altogether, but I think that’s an important contributor to US active shooter incidents. If you have to kill someone before we make you get treatment, there will be a lot of body bags.
Institutionalizing someone seems too extreme for what the OP is describing (in my opinion as a layman), but I am in the camp that says something ought to be done - notifying the wife, friends, relatives, priests, etc. People in the midst of a serious psychological problem may not be capable of stepping back and saying “I think I need help here.” Even if no one is going to get killed, this kind of thing is not good for quality of life.
Once medical professionals have been involved, they can make the decision about the appropriate steps to take.
Can you tell if any of his Facebook friends know him IRL? You could contact them to see if your concerns are justified and they might be of help in notifying the correct people.
I was more in favor of treatment than locking people up. If locking someone up is the only treatment option, they’re probably not of the harmless variety.
Well, if it’s involuntary treatment you sort of have a management-and-control problem on your hands. Institutions have found it useful to be able to subject the residents to coercive force and the threats of same. But that in turn tends to cause those being subjected to this to fight back. Controlling them as a population whose willing participation is in jeopardy pretty quickly devolves into a more general control modality: locks are put on doors, restrictive chains and connectors are used to link people atr the extremeties; confinement as a strategy of controll.
Offers to care or to just listen could be experienced more freely, if such modalities could thrive more often in such cases, But they’re usually deployed to calm people down, tamp back their feelings of frustrationand temper.
It turned out I was unable to locate him near enough to know who to talk to.
Did send a message to his wife through facebook but it was not answered–in facebook it’s almost impossible to communicate with a non-friend unless they happen to be in the habit of checking their “junk” pile equivalent in facebook.
But, he just shared that he’s consulted with a priest about it all. Yay!
And his priest has referred him to an exorcist. Boo.
:smack: He’d be better off getting hooked up to an E-meter (maybe).