What should you do when you come across a post of someone that obviously needs help?

[Stiler]

I don't know what to do. I was browsing reddit and saw a strange comment (not at all relevant to the topic, basically incoherent). I clicked on their profile for some reason and their post history for just today was REALLY strange, not posting coherently in any of the topics, not spelling words correctly, etc. However a day before their posts were perfectly normal, coherent posts, full sentences, etc.
I posted a topic about it on some advice forum but not even sure that was the right thing to do.

Anyone ever come across something like this before? is there something more I should do?

 

[xxracerxx]

Message them and ask if they are okay.

 

[nsilvias]

idk it depends what it said.
personally i sometimes can't be bothered to write properly so i just half ass my posts online.

 

[FluxWaveZ]

Why don't you just ask them?

 

[Stiler]

idk it depends what it said.
personally i sometimes can't be bothered to write properly so i just half ass my posts online.

Click to shrink...

From their history it's like a full days worth of things like:
"Are you with them or not ? who to belive is impossible, I keep on dont sleep run "

All day long, multiple posts in different subreddits, before today they mainly posted in a few specific subreddits.

 

[TaySan]

Message then and see if they are alright. Give them the suicide hotline for whatever country they live in.

 

[Necromanti]

I've seen it more on Youtube. People with (obvious) paranoid schizophrenia who upload dozens--at a minimum--of short videos a day. (It seems like it would be an easy thing for Youtube to catch due to the high volume of videos is definitely distinct from the average Youtuber.) Not much you can do unless someone who knows them is able to reach out and intervene. They're not likely (to be able to) listen.

 

[Stiler]

Well things took a turn in the thread I posted about him on reddit to see if anyone knew him or knew how to get him help.

People dismissing it, saying I'm "in on it" or that it's some kind of ARG.

Sigh, just wanted to make sure someone was ok, that's all I wanted to do.

 

[Freakzilla]

Just move on. Whatever happens, happens. Unless they are your friend or important member.

 

[Midramble]

posted about him on reddit

Click to shrink...

See, that was probably the mistake

 

[Ploppee]

yeah, you were meant to message him direct not do a public shoutout.

 

[Stiler]

Update from this morning, not sure if I thought it'd go this far (did msg him last night but never heard from him).

Some people found out who he was from his posts (have no idea how), they contacted his (future) university that he was applying to and supposed to go to an appointment there today (he never showed up to this), his parents, and had a welfare check done on him (he's in Sweden, not the US), they said a welfare check was done with trained professionals and not police or anything like the US.

Really hope that didn't mess anything up for him, but since he missed his appointment for uni people think he really did have something go wrong with him so hopefully he gets the help he needs to get back on his feet and hopefully gets into Uni, really hope those people didn't mess that up for him.

Did I take things too far? On one hand I wanted to help him but I didn't wanna mess up his life with his uni/family or anything, just a welfare check would've been good I thought.

 

[FFNB]

Reach out to them and offer an empathetic ear. Sometimes people just need to know is that they are not alone and that someone is there to listen. Other times there's nothing you can do, but reaching out is a good start.

 

[Stiler]

So final update on this, the guy did have some mental issues and was going through a rough day. His dad ending up getting him and taking him to a hospital for treatment (according to the guy who contacted him/his parents).

Hope he gets things under control and gets back on his feet.

 

[Chopchop]

Glad the guy's okay.

Good job checking on him.

 

[julia crawford]

Oh glad things are going good.

It's always important to reach out, communication is very important at basically all points in life and hardly ever something that will actually make things worse.