Hello
I am increasingly concerned for my friends mental health.
She has always been an anxious person who really feels stressed a lot of the time.
She had a high stress job in a big city for a while and she was sick a lot with colds and flu etc and very burnt out. Sensibly she moved back to her second home city which in many ways is much better for her. The job she has now is technically a promotion but much less stress for her (not stress free but reduced).
However, in the past few weeks since moving back I am increasingly concerned. She’s been flying to the other city to do overtime shifts in her previous workplace on her days off (so she has no rest days) and it doesn’t make financial sense as the cost of travelling etc means she comes out at a loss for it. She doesn’t sleep much and doesn’t let herself sleep, I work very unsocial hours and she will be awake and messaging me at all hours. In the past few weeks she has been at GP OOH nearly every weekend who treat her for whatever - kidney infection, carditis etc but now her GP has floated the idea that she might not actually have any of these symptoms or conditions instead having a severe anxiety / stress response (they say no physiological evidence of infection etc) which has sent her borderline overboard and wanted to refer that GP to the GMC and lodged a formal complaint. She’s fallen out with her family because she felt overwhelmed by them telling her to not be as stressed etc (she lives much closer to them now too). She is increasingly paranoid and messaging to tell me to answer messages on other forms of social media as she thinks her family are reading her messages.
I work in a similar (although politically better) job to her first job and she is a bit too invested and seems to miss elements of it wanting to do similar CPD to me (which is no longer relevant to her new role). She has said multiple times she wishes I’d leave it too to do something similar to her (now accepted that won’t happen - I love my job) and that she wants a similar job in the future to my goal job (which she will be unable to get from her current job). I do not bring up work / anything work related in an attempt to let her move on a bit.
she is a very good friend and I need to be very careful if I approach this but I am very concerned. All advice appreciated.