Elderly dad's obsession is RELENTLESS
Hello everyone,
I am seeking advice on what to do about my once gentle, loving, brilliant elderly (97) dad.
His personality has completely changed - but he exhibits little or NO memory loss - most likely he has frontotemporal dementia (FTD). He can remember dates, times, even reminds me that he needs his 3P pill.
However, for the past 3 years he exhibits almost daily raging and abusive rants - all centered a former aid who left our employ 1 1/2 years ago because of his behavior, which included berating her for working for other clients, claiming she was treating other clients better than him, things like things like that.
This former aid has become ALL he thinks and talks about, and he believes I "secretly" fired her due to my jealousy of their close relationship. This "relationship," he insists, is nothing romantic, that she is like a daughter to him, but he looks at her picture all day on his phone, and demands to see her every, single day from morning to night, no exaggeration, getting more and more angry when we say we can't do that (or we try to re-direct or ignore).
He has a neurologist and a psychiatrist. We have tried talk therapy and it really backfired. We tried all the different types of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds - they made the behavior worse. Now we're onto anti-psychotics (Abilify). It worked beautifully for one week(!), and then his raging came back worse than ever before. We've upped the dose (it's still very low, don't worry) but ... I've lost hope.
I realized how his behavior was affecting me when I actually got more than 4 hours of sleep last week for the first time in months, during the Abilify honeymoon. I simply do not know how to communicate with him in a way that doesn't trigger a rant that goes on for literally HOURS. I've tried re-directing, ignoring, being totally neutral, screaming, crying - all of it. If anyone has had a similar experience and can offer any advice or resources (like some brilliant geriatric psychiatrist to consult?), I would very much appreciate it. Thank you, sorry for such a long message.
PS "Abilify Honeymoon" title of my autobiography