How To Help Someone Who’s Having a Breakdown

“We have to go, we have to get out of here!”

Those were the first words my sister said that made me realize something was very wrong.

We were in our early twenties and sharing an apartment when she came out to the living room one night, looking like her usual artist self with her short messy hair and paint splattered jeans, but unlike her usual self, she was wide eyed and staring straight ahead.

I’d been sitting on the couch, reading, and I glanced around the room. Did she know something that I didn’t? Were we somehow unsafe?

“What do you mean? Where should we go?”

But she didn’t answer, instead she said something even more bizarre.

“I’m a witch in a war zone.”

It would have been funny if she didn’t look so frightened, but she seemed to believe what she was saying, and I realized that she was hallucinating. I tried to reason with her and tell her that we were safe, but she was in her own world and it was like I didn’t even exist.

I thought back to the past couple of days and I realized that she hadn’t been eating or sleeping, so I tried to make her some food, but she stared straight ahead as I fed her like a baby.