She was in and out of the state mental hospital every few years, starting when I was in 1st grade. She first started having her episodes around the time that antipsychotic medications were becoming a thing and doctors were figuring out how to use them (mid 1950s). She'd get stabilized on the meds and come home, but eventually she'd have another episode. Some (but not all) were due to going off the meds. She complained that she didn't want to be a drug addict nd didn't seem to understand the difference between drug addiction and being dependent on medication to manage a chronic condition.
Fortunately, she was never violent, but omg, the delusions. People were always (according to her) spying on her, and something as innocuous (to a normal person) as the next door neighbor having a visitor would have all kinds of sinister implications actions to her. Even when she wasn't floridly psychotic, she was paranoid in small ways. For example, if she misplaced something, the first thing she would say was, "Who took my XYZ?" not "What did I do with my XYZ."
The TV was a major bone of contention when she was having one of her spells. She believed that if we turned on our TV, the neighbors could see us on theirs. This led to some heated arguments when I was a teenager and wanted to watch my favorite shows. It's hard when you're a kid, especially one getting close to adulthood, to deal with an adult who has an utterly irrational belief system. Kids look to their parents to help them navigate this big, confusing world, and my mother was off in lalaland half the time. I used to get so frustrated. On one level, I realized she couldn't help being the way she was, but on another level, I was often angry with her for believing things that I (a kid) could clearly see were ridulous and impossible. Especially when her delusions got inthe way of things I wanted to do (like watching TV).
It was a roller coaster. I have some fond memories of really good times, in addition to memories like the ones described above. I could write a book about some of the weird stuff that happened (and may do so, one of these days). Suffice it to say, I knew more about paranoid schizophrenia by my teen years than most people learn in a lifetime. Not that I understood it, but I definitely knew what it looked like and sounded like and acted like! 😐