Friends
I Tried, but I Couldn't Save My Friend From Mental Illness
Mental health can disrupt a friendship, but a fix might be beyond you.
Posted February 6, 2026 Reviewed by Tyler Woods
My friend Anna (not her real name) was the smartest person I knew, the most brave and capable, and when she began to succumb to mental illness, I was sure it was just stress.
I was wrong.
We first met when I fled a disastrous first marriage in Pittsburgh for Manhattan. I scored a tiny shoebox of an apartment, and even better, I scored Anna as my first new friend. When she knocked on my door, so charismatic, I felt sparks shooting from her. “Let’s play in the city,” she said.
And oh, my God, did we. She got us free tickets to the ballet, the theater, and the opera, just by charming other patrons. We lounged in cafes, crashed parties, and danced in the clubs at five in the morning. A professional modern dancer, she had created her own successful business of water dancing. Man after man fell wildly in love with her, and truly, who wouldn’t? I loved her, too.
But the best times, the ones that mattered most to me, were at night in her apartment, when we talked until four in the morning. She listened hard; she advised gently; we championed each other. We both fell in love at the same time, living with our boyfriends, going out as a foursome. But then, four years later, two weeks before my wedding, my boyfriend dropped dead in my arms of a heart attack. And I fell apart.
Loving, ferocious, and kind, Anna stayed by my side. She moved me into her apartment for two months. She made sure I ate. She made sure I got out of the house. She held me while I cried.
A year later, I was strong enough to move back to my apartment, and Anna’s life was the one to shatter. Her boyfriend cruelly left her. Her business fell apart. It was my turn to take care of her, to stay by her side. That was when she was sure her phone was tapped, her mail opened. Abruptly, she decided she needed to move back to Los Angeles, while still keeping her apartment, which I took to mean she’d be back.
A week later, Anna called from L.A., her voice jumping.
“You have to help me,” she said.
She’d been arrested while driving and put into a mental health hospital against her will.
“Get a lawyer for me,” she begged.
Stunned and furious, I did. I waited. And waited. And then, a few days later, her doctor called me.
“Listen to me now,” he said.
Anna had indeed been arrested. She had indeed been placed in a facility against her will. She had been erratically driving 80 miles an hour, the wrong way, on the L.A. freeway. When she was stopped, she insisted the government was after her, trying to kill her. She mentioned space aliens doing experiments on her. She couldn’t stop screaming.
“Psychotic break,” the doctor told me. “Schizophrenia.”
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe or speak.
“We’ll treat her,” the doctor said.
I was stunned. I called her, but she was livid that I hadn’t gotten her free. I kept calling, but it was six months later when she finally spoke to me. The hospital was releasing her, and she wanted to see me in Manhattan. I was exhilarated, but the Anna who arrived wasn’t the Anna I knew. Her energy was gone. Her clothes were dirty and she had spackled on blue eyeshadow and garish purple lipstick. She refused eye contact, and when I tried to hug her, she jerked away from me. “Anna, what happened?” I said, and she stared into space. “I love the Lord,” she said.
She jolted up, walking, and I quickly followed. She pressed her body against the walls of the buildings, pushing people aside. She veered into traffic, grabbing for car doors. Drivers swore at her. “Anna!” I cried, terrified, reaching for her. She smacked my hand away, just as she opened a cab door and got in, vanishing into traffic. I panic-called every friend I knew she had, until I found her, safe on the Upper West Side. “She won’t talk to you,” I was told.
How could I do that? I called and called and sometimes, over the months, I reached her. Once, when she was living with a guy who had 13 cats. Once, after she mailed me a copy of the book she had self-published about her time in the mental hospital, the cover a photo of her before she was admitted. A photo so disturbing, I couldn’t bear to look at it. The writing was gibberish. I didn’t know what to say, so I told her I was proud of her.
She got sick again. Her brother emailed to tell me she was in the hospital again, but she had taken on a new name, Milly, a new personality that seemed to make her happy.
But when I called, asking for Milly, I could hear her shouting. “It’s not time to talk!”
A few days ago, missing her, I called the hospital. But when Anna got on the phone, she didn’t know who I was.
“It’s Caroline. I miss you; I love you,” I said.
There was deep silence.
“I need you to stop talking,” she said. “I need you to be quiet.”
She repeated it over and over, making me so distraught, I told her goodbye. I hung up, mired in guilt.
I bet you wish there were a happy ending to this. So do I. I refuse to believe I can’t fix her, that there won’t be some miracle cure. All I can do is reach out, letting her know I’m here, now when she’s sick, and later, if she gets well. Because love doesn’t go away, does it?
