So my siblings and I received a group text this morning from our sister warning us about the stock market crashing on Sept 26, the banks shutting down, power and Internet going down and to have enough supplies on hand for two weeks. Apparently she has known this was coming for a while but was only able to confirm the date last night. NShe then went on to send us some jibber jabber about some US politic garbage, how Trump is going to have past presidents sentenced to death for treason. "Different people" who are "reliable sources" who "can't just come out and say what's going' it's a series of clues with a lot of letters that turn into number clues". She also said that Trudeau has twice tried to have Trump assassinated, she had this on her Facebook a while ago as well. She also has something of Her Facebook currently about the moon disappearing??? apparently it has something to do with Aliens in New Mexico.....
My brother asked two weeks ago if I had received any texts from her as she sent him some weird texts, one of which was linking the BC Forrest fires to Icis..... He did ask her husband about this he just replied saying that she has been following some conspiracy theorists.
There is not a history of mental illnes in our family that we are aware of but this something that we are concerned about. Does she want us to engage in debate? Does she want us to prover her wrong? Prove her right? Or is she just being courteous and warning us? Like I totally think she has just flown off the rails.
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Dunno if you're serious or not, but I found in my family the people who stayed at home all day and didn't work or socialize, tended to drift away mentally (to put it politely). Obviously I'm no doctor, but I would hope your family can get together and get her professional help, rather than pushing it off as someone else's problem. This stuff only gets worse over time.
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Falling for conspiracy theories is a natural human thing; if it wasn't then they wouldn't be as common and effective as they are.
If someone spends huge chunks of their time looking at videos and reading stuff by QAnon or other groups who create/promote/discuss/obsess over these theories, then it's going to influence how one thinks, period. No one is immune, we all want to fit in and the pressure to think how one's peers think is huge (hence the term peer pressure).
And the mind is almost designed to resist reasoned efforts to change the ideas, often evidence that something is wrong will have the opposite of the desired effect; they'll just dig in further.
Not saying there isn't something specific going on (i.e. mental illness or other life factors), just saying I don't think there necessarily has to be; people are vulnerable enough without having to bring in other factors.
As to what to do about it? I have no idea.. my sister dated a guy who was deep into some of this stuff. Thought the moon landings were fake, asked me about sealing his windows to protect against when the nuclear reactors had the problems in Japan, etc... We all just breathed a sigh of relief when she broke up with him.
EDIT: Yeah talking to a professional about what kind of strategy to take would be good. Ultimately you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, but I think they might recommend some kind of strategy that would involve decreasing the influence of that stuff in their life.. Get them out of the house and socialize more.. get together as a family more, etc. No overt attempts to talk them out of their positions, just increasing their connection to the real world to decrease their connection to crazy town.
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I don't know your sister at all obviously, but I think there's a huge difference between being gullible and believing conspiracy theories and being "crazy" as in legit mentally ill.
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But living an honest life - for that you need the truth. That's the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, leads to liberation and dignity. -Ricky Gervais