u/Bright_Dreams235

My home country is Saudi Arabia and most people there think that it's better to be recognized as demon possessed or bewitched than to be recognized as "crazy". It's black or white. Either you are sane or insane.

Things have improve since 2017 with the reforms and educated people are accepting it more and more, but it's still stigmatized to seek the help of a psychiatrist.

View Poll

This is the first part of the story on this sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/SchizoFamilies/s/0acC2vwU6w

I am posting the update now unsure if I really did the right thing. The person in question is now hospitalized. His parents called me the next day to thank me. I am not usually this nosy and I take no pleasure in getting involved in other people's business. But as a recovering patient with a schizophrenia type disorder, the incident last Sunday at church and the following 2 hour conversation with him raised a lot of alarms about potential harm to his parents or other people around. 5 years ago I hurt my own father with a knife during a psychosis. The events that led to the unfortunate incident looked very similar.

So two days after the initial two hours call (because I was busy), I had another conversation on the phone. Now he was more insistent that medications are pointless because what he was experiencing was a demonic possession. He would twist parts of the Bible to explain that one cannot rely on mental medications for the cure even though he agreed that diabetics need insulin. He had previously said the following:

1. Demons are aliens who have hidden satellites in earth orbit to inspire evil in people and animals and that he needed to find those aliens and kill them.

2. Upon being reminded that he could unintentionally hurt his parents in such state of mind, he said that it would be acceptable as per another silly citation from the Bible.

I sensed something will go horribly wrong soon. So I changed strategy and began challenging him more on his beliefs, knowing he would get very hostile towards me. And he did. He wanted to meet me in public at an intersection to physically fight and "crush my skull". I thought about it momentarily and agreed to this "duel to the death" and asked him to meet me at 10 PM there (kind of also to get him farther away from his parents).

Of course I had no intention to meet him and instead called the police and explained the whole situation from the church incident to the threatening messages. I emphasized that I don't want to press charges, only to get him hospitalized. I later called them to update them that he is now at that intersection. He was eventually taken to the hospital after the police contacted the parents to confirm that they were indeed fearful of retaliation if they were the ones to send him to the hospital, which the pastor told me about. I didn't really fear retaliation because I have martial art training, but my thought was that the parents could be attacked in their sleep.

Do you think I acted appropriately even if it involved some degree of manipulation?