So I don't like telling this story because it's not necessarily mine to tell. But I'll give you a nutshell version because it's eerily similar. I have someone very close to me who has gone through the same thing with his mom. There was always something "different" with her, but she seemed relatively normal until about 10-15 years ago, where it was like a switch had flipped.

A family business had burned down. A cousin had said something to this person's mom, roughly about it being an inside job and how the family needed to be careful because who knows what these criminals would do.

My friends mom even says that something was said to her, that she could never repeat. But after that, she never left her house..at all. Missed her childrens weddings, would have breakdowns going off on conspiracy theories on how "they're following us all, they hear us, they see us". According to her, we would all know the "real truth" soon enough.

She felt that she would be followed so she never left. My close friends family members tried taking her to the hospital after the initial breakdown, but they didn't help her because at the time she didn't seem like a threat to herself or anyone else, so she got to leave. Now she thinks those relatives are in on it and out to get them.

This woman never did drugs a day in her life, but for whatever reason this mental illness that seemed to lay dormant was awoken by something that was said to her that stuck with her.

She's still this way, refuses to leave, won't touch a telephone even after her husband had been hospitalized and close to death. She can't be trusted with her grandkids because you just never know.

That's why I said about the psych eval, because there could be something that just pushed him over that edge.