I can say I’m an outlier and I’m much happier in my 20s vs my childhood. Not going to go into my situation, but what caused it is rare so I feel like I can’t give you any advice on that front.

I can however give very solid advice on how to recognize you might be developing a mental disorder during this time period.

Generally, it’s schizophrenia, schizotypical, and bipolar you have to look out for. They’re all very closely related (I’m surprised they aren’t recognized as a spectrum yet in the dsm tbh). Gaining these conditions suddenly isn’t really something that is typical of other mental illnesses. Outside of the three I mentioned, a lot of other data is really misleading as they are just most likely diagnosed in their 20s. For a ton of mental illnesses, you can’t even get diagnosed with it as a child. they typically put it under a more vague depression/anxiety as the features that make it easier to hone down into a specific diagnosis only appears later. But it was still the same condition, it’s not like schizo disorders where it appears seemingly outta nowhere. There is also late onset schizophrenia, which is a really new idea currently in papers that suggests schizophrenia can also be triggered in your 50s and 60s as well (however it has to be unrelated to dementia), so if true, it’s not like 20s and 30s are the only time you need to be somewhat concerned.

Schizo disorders are genetic. The first and most important thing for you to analyze is to focus on the mental health of your family. If you have multiple family members who have experienced delusional thinking and dramatic mood shifts, and ESPECIALLY a fear of doctors and treatment, it’s something you have to consider as potentially likely for yourself as well. If you don’t have people like this in your family, there’s not much to worry about. Someone in this thread recommends smoking weed, and Yeah I smoke a lot too. However if you recognize these patterns of behavior in your family, please seriously reconsider trying any hallucination (which Includes THC). Hallucinations, when you are genetically predisposed to schizo conditions, can trigger intense delusional thoughts that remain even after drug use. It is extremely devastating. We don’t know why. It’s not the fact that you hallucinate as there are some extremely novel hallucinations currently in research that currently appears to not cause a psychological break in predisposed individuals, which is amazing, but these aren’t available anywhere even on the street. But, like I said, if you don’t recognize these behaviors in your family, it doesn’t seem to be a concern as far as I’ve read up about it.

Thankfully, while these conditions SEEM to appear out of nowhere, they actually don’t. What happens first is a slow decline, months to a year before fully developing, but the symptoms you experience aren’t what you’d recognize as typical schizophrenia symptoms. You don’t hallucinate and you only start to slowly develop delusions at the tail end of it. so it’s why people think it just suddenly happens… The symptoms before full development are pretty much identical to depression at first. Brain fog develops. Thinking becomes harder. Sudden nosedive in academic or workplace performance is a huge sign as well. If these symptoms suddenly appear or worsen and you are predisposed, seek medical attention immediately…hopefully you’ll be able to. It can really save yourself. And even if it isn’t a schizo disorder and just depression, it’s honestly FAR better to treat it very early on vs years into depression. You shouldn’t just “deal with it” until you can’t bare it anymore and break down. That’s just cruel to yourself. You don’t have to reach of threshold of being “mentally ill enough” to get treatment.

So with all this in mind, you shouldn’t worry about this in particular too much.

(Glasses are off and im legally blind without them so sorry for typos or whatever lol)

I don’t think you were pushy. Don’t worry at all!

I totally get it. I use Linux on all my machines as well lol.

I think I’ll just tell her that if she wants to do something optional to be a bit safer, I can help her set up Linux Mint and teach her how to use it…but I’d be sure to tell her she doesn’t have to. I would love for her to use Linux of course, but I really worry that I might make her feel like she HAS to use it to be safe. She has anxiety and other mental health issues that are still being managed. The last thing I’d want to do is unintentionally make her feel like using Windows for anything will have the NIS kicking down her door.

Also, for me personally, pushing her in any way to use Linux as a daily driver just feels kinda wrong and over controlling for me to do. I refuse to be THAT kind of Linux user LOL

But of course, I appreciate you suggesting it! It’s a good idea, but I’ll probably instead help teach her opsec alongside tails. Thank you!

These are amazing resources, thank you! This, alongsides the resources in the other comments, are just what I’m looking for.

And don’t worry. Both of us are well aware of the danger she might be put in because of this. She does use a VPN, but like you said, that really isn’t enough. She’s not very technically literate so I was wondering what the best option would be for her…but after thinking for awhile I think the best option would be giving her a live USB with Tails OS on it, and telling her to only look at these materials online with TOR while using the USB. That would be the cheapest and easiest for her to use.

I know TOR was literally made by US military and the US government has been accused of compromising the service before by TOR themselves…but I think it’s probably the best option as she definitely wouldn’t be a major target compared to other TOR users.