I think Dick Van Dyke had a made-for-television movie (but I can’t find it on his filmography). He’s a father living in a nice suburban house with his wife and at least one teenage child, he has some sort of breakdown, locks himself in the master bedroom suite. The wife waits for him to come out because he’s hungry but it turns out he’s lowering a basket on a rope and his daughter is sending in food. Then he moves to somewhere in lower Manhattan or Brooklyn, eventually his wife and kids decide he’s not crazy or wrong and join him. My strong memories are the suburban house with the basket and rope and the wife discovering the daughter is collaborating and the husband greeting the wife on the sidewalk when she goes to find him in the city.
Drop-Out Father (1982)?
It’s Dick Van Dyke, and he has a sort of breakdown and locks himself in his room for 11 days.
Part of the synopsis from here: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/27/arts/tv-dick-van-dyke-faces-midlife-in-drop-out-father.html
After locking himself in his bedroom for 11 days, during which he reads all of ”War and Peace,” Ed emerges with the announcement that things must change. ”I’m tired of giving,” he cries, ”and not getting enough back.” He burns the family’s credit cards. He takes away the older kids’ cars. He announces that all of the children should be out of the house and on their own by the age of 18. His wife protests that she has read ”Passages,” but Ed says she has become too addicted to group therapy, romance novels and television made for bubbleheads. With his daughter Elizabeth as willing partner, he heads for New York City and a new life of what he hopes will be relevance.