[mlizzy]

You KNOW when something isn’t right with one of your kids. YOU KNOW. What you do about it, or in this case, not, measures the level of courage within you and speaks to the core of who you are as a human being...

I agree with you, Mary. Mental illness can easily be a lifetime struggle, and if the parents aren't strongly part of it (siblings too), where does the sick person go? I wonder if the parents either agreed to or encouraged his further education. Too.much.stress for someone in his condition (no matter what it is). Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, and it makes a great deal of sense to me:

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Prayers for all involved.

[TigersEye]

If he was schizophrenic, which is a very strong possibility, then he was as normal as anyone most of his life. Schizophrenia comes out of the blue, with no known prior indications whatsoever, and usually occurs in young adults. It starts kind of gradually and builds to whatever maximum level it will with the individual which can take a few months or a few years. Some cases are mild and some are extreme.

It would be noticeable to the parents but hard to understand what it was or how bad it was seeing their adult child, who had been as normal as any child all along, become stranger and stranger as a young adult. The schizophrenic would probably speak to them less and less as the illness increased too (paranoia is a major feature of schizophrenia) so they would know little about how bad it was getting.

Since the child would be an adult the parents would have little legal or emotional influence over them either. They would have to go to court to have them adjudicated incompetent and the legal threshold for doing that is steep. As it should be.