Mentally Ill people going off all over the place. Is anyone else experiencing this ?

Over the past few weeks, but getting more intense this last weekend, most of the people I know with histories of mental illness have been having episodes.

I've got one who shares a house with me and her meds have virtually stopped working.

A friend's husband is in the midst of a slow spiral down, I'm expection a major episode any minute from him.

Another friend is all over the place and her boyfriend is beginning to find it unbareable.

Yet another friend got into a knife fight with her husband in front of their kids

and finally...

An old school friend has been carted off this afternoon because the police got sick of her ringing and saying people in the tv were plotting to murder her.

Normally I'm not even aware of how many people I know with mental illness histories and they're a small percentage of my circle of friends, but just recently it's been getting weirder and weirder.

I tried speaking to another friend about it but all she could tell me is that her panic attacks have been coming stronger and more regularly recently.

Am I just experiencing some unhappy coincidences, or is this happening to other people at the moment too ?