Anyone else have a parent constantly on brink of full mental breakdown?

[Anonymous]

And what did you do?
My mother is like this and lives far away. No medication seems to help.

[Anonymous]

Yes. In our case medication helps, but she only stays on it until she feels good for a while and decides she is cured. She has the right to take herself off. In our case I am pretty sure this is the high anxiety/irritability/anger phase on the road to dementia. It goes that way in her family much as she denies that. She has always had these qualities, but not to this extreme.

If no medication seems to help than I might explore inpatient programs where they can keep her as they experiment with different meds?

Can you also either hire a trained aging professional to check in on her and see how she is functioning and coordinate care? If she cannot afford that, you can get adult protective services involved to check on her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. In our case medication helps, but she only stays on it until she feels good for a while and decides she is cured. She has the right to take herself off. In our case I am pretty sure this is the high anxiety/irritability/anger phase on the road to dementia. It goes that way in her family much as she denies that. She has always had these qualities, but not to this extreme.

If no medication seems to help than I might explore inpatient programs where they can keep her as they experiment with different meds?

Can you also either hire a trained aging professional to check in on her and see how she is functioning and coordinate care? If she cannot afford that, you can get adult protective services involved to check on her.

I should look into that - she is in Europe so not sure if that exists.
Inpatient could be possible too tho ssris take so long to work that feels like it would be looong

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. In our case medication helps, but she only stays on it until she feels good for a while and decides she is cured. She has the right to take herself off. In our case I am pretty sure this is the high anxiety/irritability/anger phase on the road to dementia. It goes that way in her family much as she denies that. She has always had these qualities, but not to this extreme.

If no medication seems to help than I might explore inpatient programs where they can keep her as they experiment with different meds?

Can you also either hire a trained aging professional to check in on her and see how she is functioning and coordinate care? If she cannot afford that, you can get adult protective services involved to check on her.

I should look into that - she is in Europe so not sure if that exists.
Inpatient could be possible too tho ssris take so long to work that feels like it would be looong

There are other classes of drugs besides SSRIs like SNRIs if SSRIs don't work.