I first wrote this on 9/5/14 on another thread discussing Paranoid Schizophrenia
My sis has had psychotic breaks in the last few years, she's extremely paranoid, moves around the country to escape 'them' has been to the police for help in several counties but comes to the conclusion that they are 'in on it', etc she can't hold a job down as within weeks she thinks people are plotting against her. The stories change, one day it's a rich man she dated once 6 years ago, who has employed all these detectives to follow her to check she isn't just after his money, including sending 8 of them after her to Australia. Other times it's someone poisoning others against her on the internet. One by one she has accused family members of being in on the conspiracy and cuts them off, including the last person - me. I haven't seen her for nearly 2 years or heard from her for nearly as long. She hand delivered some rambling letters to my place of work, didn't ask to see me, she thinks her mail is intercepted and my house bugged. She constantly changes her mobile numbers so I can't keep in contact unless she decides.
If she has had a diagnosis she has never let on. She doesn't think she's ill she just wants 'them to leave her alone'. I contacted the mental health team in the town I last knew she lived to ask for advice. I gave away enough detail for them to confirm she was 'on their radar' but she wouldn't engage with them. On their advice I wrote to her doctor, never heard anything. I've written many times, cards, christmas presents, send texts, phone her last known numbers but get no response. I had an official looking letter on the doormat when I got home today - the first thing I thought was it's a letter to tell me she's died. I actually wish she would say cause a scene in a shopping centre or something so the police get called and maybe she would get the help she so badly needs. Currently I look at 'rightmove' to see if her house is up for sale. It's the only way I have of knowing if she's on the move again. She's so vulnerable yet her illness causes her to be paranoid about the very people that want the best for her. I'm all out of ideas and yes she is like a stranger but she's still my big sister and she's completely on her own.
Despite the above my sister had a functioning if not chaotic life so even if she broke contact and then reconnected it always turned out she had been ok. My last surprise visit to her place to check on her I found she had left for a job in France that morning having organised a pet passport and taking her cat with her. (She was back within a few weeks as she thought the French family she went to work for were 'in on it'). She then cut contact with me.
A week ago I had the knock on the door I had been dreading. My sister was found dead last November after people trying to contact her for unpaid bills had called on the police to do a welfare check. It took them 2 months to trace me, her next of kin, as my requests to leave my contact details with the mental health services team I contacted a while back to see what if anything I could do and the doctor they told me to write to where clearly filed in the bin. My beautiful gentle nature loving sister had been dead at least 3 weeks when she was found.
They had to break in and then found all internal doors locked and she had locked and barricaded herself into her bedroom where it appears she had been 'living'.
She had terminated her landline months before. Electricity and Gas had been cut off. She had no money for food and had written the date she stopped eating and her daily epilepsy drug had run out. It was clear she had been terrified and though everything and everyone was out to get her, she was so frightened of hidden meanings and code in normal letters and post she had stopped opening them. She was clearly so distressed and paranoid she just didn't know what to do. No power to her house she sat barricaded in her room with only her thoughts and wrote some notes down which clearly she was very ill. She didn't really commit suicide as in a note she left there were instructions on how to break into her room and if she was found what epilepsy medication she would need and other health concerns of hers, then again she also wrote her last wishes and notes saying she was keeping very quiet so 'they' wouldn't know she was there.
I was her safety net and the one time she really really needed me to step in I assumed it would be like all the other times where she would eventually get back in touch and everything would have been 'ok' in the intervening period
Many times in the last year I thought I needed to drive to hers and check/try get back in touch. I sent periodic texts to let her know she could always get back in touch. The last 15 years she has broken contact with me at times or other family members for up to a few years at a time. The last 3 years she got so much more paranoid and I will never get over that I could have done much more to help her. She was still functioning in July and had gone to citizens advice to get a debt plan sorted and so on. From then to September when she barricaded herself in she had spiralled completely down though I'm now finding notes that show her decline started the first quarter of last year.
I'm so distraught and upset at her death and how she was found. She must have been so terrified isolated and alone and I won't ever forgive myself for not trying to do more. If I had checked on her I would have know she had got so bad and I would have got hers sectioned.