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Maybe she’s just worried about me and my grandson. The world feels pretty heavy and unpredictable lately, so maybe she’s just spinning these stories because she’s retired and has way too much time on her hands... looking for any excuse to stir up drama and stay center stage?
David Vaughn75 said:The real question is—do you actually want to help her or not?
You don't give a junkie a hit of heroin just to calm them down; you send them to rehab.
What do you guys think about giving her some vitamins or supplements instead of just relying on meds? Would she be open to that?
Hell no.
She needs antipsychotics, plain and simple.
Yeah, I guess all I can do now is sit tight and wait to see if she blows something up...
David Vaughn75 said:Look, whether it's psychosis or schizophrenia, you can see it from an airplane. It almost doesn't matter which label you use; she needs medical help. The longer she goes without treatment, the harder the recovery is going to be.
Now, the real art form is figuring out how to explain to her that she needs to go to the hospital. She is 100% convinced she's the sane one and everyone else is just too stupid to see the "obvious" truth. Convincing older folks when they're deep in this is incredibly hard. I don't know what to tell you, other than if she does something truly dangerous, don't hesitate—just call 911 immediately.
Thanks for the input. Honestly, at this point, I’m just waiting for her to actually lash out physically at someone. If that happens, I don't even know if I'd have the energy to call 911 myself, or if I'd just sit there waiting for someone else to do it... It's exhausting hearing her obsess over this stuff every single day. I wonder if she’d be open to taking vitamins or supplements alongside her meds? If I framed it as "health support," she might actually listen. She isn't sleeping much either—maybe three hours at a time before she's up again. It's not even a regular sleep schedule; she just crashes whenever she can if she hasn't slept all night. She claims she can't stop her mind from racing, and she says her muscles ache and everything feels tight. Half the night she’s just rocking back and forth in bed or trying to distract herself with a TV show. At least that was how it was when she stayed with me, but I assume it's the same at her own place. And God, if she watches a drama or a true crime documentary, the phone doesn't stop ringing. She'll blow up my phone with texts telling me not to drink anything at someone else's house unless it comes straight from the carton, or to wash the glass before I use it. She'll insist I'm lying about seeing a hair in a drink, and then there's the rule that I can't take a sip until everyone else has started... not to mention her constant rants about organ trafficking and human trafficking whenever we talk about going out...
Richard White8 said:Yeah, definitely psychosis. All those "signs" she's describing, the obsession with the neighbors... it's psychosis. But since she isn't elderly and is highly educated, you might be able to talk her into seeing a psychiatrist. Try appealing to her intellect—remind her how smart and educated she is, and suggest that these "conspiracies" don't hold up to logic. It might actually work.
It’s probably psychosis; she isn't hearing voices just yet. I suggested to her that she might be imagining things and that talking to a professional could help. She just talked down to me...
And if you try to pull the "you're an educated person" card, that'll probably make it even worse... When you've spent half your life as a manager giving orders, you're convinced you're right 100% of the time. Then overnight, you find yourself flipped upside down—from being at the top to being at the bottom. It hits you hard, and suddenly you're just lost, sad, and frustrated. She still thinks everyone else is beneath her, which doesn't surprise me much since she lives out in the rural Midwest; when people there talk about anything, half of them don't know north from south, they just point and say, "it's this way" or "it's over there," and that drives her crazy. Meanwhile, those same neighbors pick on her because she's confrontational and tells everyone exactly what she thinks. They basically tell her, "You think you're so smart, but you can barely find your way out of the county, so stop lecturing us." She's got a difficult personality and zero tact...
Hey, I’ve been debating whether or not to actually post this here for a while now...
Anyway, it’s about my mom. She doesn't have an official diagnosis, but she’s showing a ton of symptoms typical of paranoid schizophrenia. Honestly, I can't tell if it’s actual schizophrenia or just severe psychosis. For years, she's been incredibly suspicious, but I always just chalked it up to her having a rough life and the general chaos of moving to a new country where crime rates felt higher. Since I haven't lived with her since I was 13, I was still just a kid back then—I believed everything she told me, even when she was lying to my face about herself. She's been living on her own for years now... To make a long story short, things have really taken a dark turn over the last three years following the death of my brother, who hadn't lived with us since I was 13. It sounds terrible to talk about my own mother like this, but it's the truth (and sometimes, I catch myself still believing her delusions, or maybe they aren't even delusions)... Lately, every single phone call ends in tears. She claims the neighbors are poisoning her. Now, granted, her neighbors *are* problematic, and being a solitary, confrontational woman makes her a target, so they have given her grief before, but this is different. She thinks they’re putting microbes in her food, which she blames for a wound on her foot that wouldn't heal—though, since she’s diabetic, there are plenty of medical reasons for that too. When I called her out once for leaving candy wrappers all over the yard under the balcony while she was visiting me, she claimed someone was intentionally cursing her, hoping I’d be miserable for picking them up or for attacking her. She repeats this every time we talk—telling me I need to watch my back, calling me stupid or naive because I "can't see the signs," and crying because I don't believe her. It's the same cycle every single time. Then there's the stuff disappearing; she’ll swear she put something in a specific spot, only for it to vanish, then reappear later, at which point she insists she has to burn it because it’s "contaminated." She’s given away half her furniture, and she spends the whole time convinced people are stealing from her. She changes her locks every week, spending half her pension on locksmith services, acting like a pro herself. She once went overboard buying groceries and brought a huge haul to me and my kid, claiming it was high-quality organic stuff, only to call me the next day in a total panic. Because I mentioned my husband had a headache that day, she decided it was the meat—likely contaminated by someone spraying it while she was at the gas station. She refused to keep the meat in the house to cool down after it arrived because she was convinced it would be poisoned. She’s stopped gardening entirely; she only has enough food on hand for that one day. Everything bad that happens gets blamed on those neighbors, and she describes it all with such intense vitriol to everyone she meets. She even sends these frantic messages... claiming that neighbor wants to kill me and my entire family. There's just so much...
For context, she’s highly educated—a Master’s in Petroleum Engineering. She was top of her class and even worked as a teaching assistant for older math students during her undergrad. She knows history inside and out, not just textbook stuff, but specific global events and dates from the news. She’s 61...
She’s a wonderful mother, truly the best, and that’s why this hurts so much. I only started suspecting this might be a mental health issue after a friend of mine who works at a nursing home suggested I look into these specific symptoms. Since I haven't lived with her, I used to just get frustrated and blame the neighbors, thinking I just needed to fix my own life so I could protect her from them. I don't know...