It does need balancing and I will do that in the after-Jam update)
ignoring is made in such a way that if you choose to ignore, it's rather hard at first, just like you'd feel in real life, but with every new level it gets easier and easier (if you won't betray your desigion to ignore, of course) and that tactic will never worry you at the full capacity, so you get the special ending with that. but I'm not sure you could get that right now due to some bugs..
But ignoring AND reacting will make ignoring rather random. I made it this way because I wanted to create a different background story with that. the easy example is with the brother - in the bad scenario he may be writing to her every day, begging for other kinds of help and she's rather tired of that so there'll be only mild discomfort, or he haven't written to her in months and that's the different story) but it does feels uncomplete to me too, I'll think of something to make it more managable and predictable :)
thank you so much for playing and sharing your feedback!