Boyfriend stopped taking aripiprazole - advice please

My (29F) autistic boyfriend (30M) has stopped taking his aripiprazole and I’m worried he may be relapsing — what should I look out for?
I’m going to try to keep the background brief because I’m mainly looking for advice about what’s happening now.

My boyfriend has a significant history of psychosis. We met in 2022, but at the time I didn’t realise he was already experiencing psychotic symptoms. He has since told me that he had been hearing voices and believing God was speaking to him/showing him signs before we even met.
His first major episode was around 2016 after using cannabis, MDMA and cocaine, alongside several close bereavements. He was sectioned around 2018–19 and later put on a depot injection, which he eventually stopped taking. He was hospitalised again around 2022 and was told there may be a mood disorder, although he remembers very little from that admission as he was catatonic.

The episode I personally witnessed in 2023–24 was extremely chaotic. He became very angry and unpredictable, believed God was communicating with him and that there would be consequences if he didn’t listen, became very promiscuous, talked about wanting revenge on people who had wronged him, punched holes in walls and stabbed the fridge. At other times he would be extremely distressed, crying and saying he couldn’t cope with what was happening in his head.

In January 2024 he finally saw a psychiatrist and was prescribed aripiprazole. He initially took it consistently and over 2025 I saw a huge improvement in him. He became much more stable and was functioning significantly better.

He has never been comfortable with the idea of taking medication long-term, though, and has always hoped he wouldn’t need it forever.

Over this summer his medication became increasingly inconsistent. He would forget doses, and eventually stopped his fluoxetine because he was worried about the heat and the SSRI warnings. Then he admitted he had also stopped taking his aripiprazole for about a week.
At that point I noticed he became more irritable and difficult to communicate with, so myself, my mum and his mum all spoke to him because we were worried about him. He agreed to start taking it again.

Unfortunately, he’s now stopped completely.
He has taken only 4 tablets since 8th September, no idea how many he had between July and September and hasn’t taken any at all I know for a fact for roughly two weeks.

The worrying thing is that he genuinely believes he is better without it. He says he feels the clearest-minded he’s ever felt. Whenever anyone mentions the medication, he becomes defensive or agitated. He recently became extremely angry with his mum when she brought it up.
He’s also been increasingly erratic about future plans — signing up for different courses, changing his mind about what he wants to do, making plans and then changing them. He’s become more defensive, less understanding and much harder to have a rational conversation with.
I pointed out that this is similar to how he behaved when he stopped taking it over the summer, but he says everyone treats him like a child and nobody actually listens to him because, from his perspective, he feels better than ever.

He also says that when he did take aripiprazole recently it made him think he could read people’s minds and gave him psychotic thoughts. I tried explaining that I’m not sure that’s a fair conclusion because he wasn’t taking it consistently, but he is convinced the medication was making him worse so he won’t take it, as well as the fact it made him tired all the time and now he feels less tired apparently.

We’ve spoken to his GP and they have arranged a phone appointment with someone from the mental health team. The problem is that he’ll probably take the call alone and tell them that everything is fine.
I’m really worried because I’ve seen what his psychosis looks like when it becomes severe, but I don’t know what the early warning signs are that I should be looking for before it gets to that point.
I don’t want to force medication on him or treat him like a child, but I also don’t want to sit back and watch him deteriorate because he genuinely doesn’t recognise that anything is wrong.

I mentioned to him that I’d read about schizoaffective disorder previously, I’ve brought it up again recently and he thinks that he doesn’t have a mood disorder and that he just has undiagnosed adhd and the psychotic episodes were just drug induced. But some of the episodes lasted months, even when he didn’t take drugs for a while. (Not sure if that matters).

For anyone who has experience with psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder or stopping antipsychotics:
What early signs did you notice before a relapse?
Can someone genuinely feel better/clearer while actually beginning to relapse?
Is increased irritability, defensiveness, changing plans constantly and becoming unusually driven/impulsive something to pay attention to?
How can family/partners communicate concerns without making the person feel controlled or attacked?
Is there anything I should be doing before his mental-health appointment?

I know nobody here can diagnose him, and I’m not asking Reddit to do that. I’m mainly trying to understand what I should be watching for and how best to support him.