So he isn't actually working directly with clients right now. Perhaps he needed to step away from clients for personal reasons. Perhaps he did not feel he should or could work directly with clients right now.

I am not defending him, but it sounds like he has done this for some combination of self-care and client-care. If he doesn't feel in the right place to work one-on-one with clients, that might have been a good decision on his part. I'm sure it feels awful on the client end, but if he isn't up to working with clients, perhaps he feels doing this is the right thing to do; perhaps he feels he would not be able to be effective with clients directly due to whatever is going on with himself.