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In reply to the discussion: A friend had a breakdown [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)the schizophrenic daughter of my MIL's best friend is. She had a PhD and was a mother of two, married to a husband in the diplomatic service and in their latest posting in Africa when it first appeared. A vital, brilliant person with the world in her hands, destroyed and transformed into a pathetic...other person.
She probably still contacts her grown children now and then because she wants something from them, but last time we saw her she was refusing all efforts to get her to stop the foreclosure of her wonderful midcentury modern home (it looked over a ravine in a charming coastal California community and had a large wall of books in her specialty) -- because, she explained, she was going to need her car more when she had to live in it.
Mental illness, dementia. I hope we live long enough to see them no longer death sentences for people who once were.