My mom’s first treatment tomorrow. How can I help with her anxiety?
For some background, my mom is 66 years old and has been dealing with bipolar depression for the last 3 years. She went off her meds in 2023 and became hypomanic - spent a lot of money at casinos, lavish trips, bought a fancy car etc. She developed bipolar depression several months later which landed her in IP for suicidal ideation and severe anxiety. Did a partial inpatient after that and was seeing a NP for continued management but never really got better.
She had a major suicide attempt in March 2025. She developed some hypomanic signs shortly after that when they switched up her meds, then fell back into depression. She moved in with me and we’ve been seeing a psychiatrist that I am paying for out of pocket because I was largely unhappy with the previous care she had received.
Since then, we’ve tried a whole host of meds: lamotrigine, seroquel, abilify, Latuda, Caplyta, Klonopin, concurrently with fluoxetine. Nothing is helping.
My mom is very risk averse when she is in her depression. We had to convince her to try ketamine because those are our last options at this point. Ketamine, TMS, or ECT.
We had to abort the last treatment of ketamine because her blood pressure was too high from anxiety. She saw her PCP and they prescribed her losartan. We are trying again tomorrow but she is so nervous. I feel so bad for her. Is there anything I can do to help her feel safe? To encourage her that this is trying to help her? Any advice is welcome.
I just want my mom back. I want her to be able to live her life again. I feel so sad for her and to see her constantly suffering.
Thank you in advance for your advice.
EDIT: just for clarification, we were on the path to trialing lithium and her kidney values were at the high end of normal and she had slightly decreased GFR so her doctor was worried about trialing that. She outright will not do ECT and I will support whatever decisions she makes in this regard. We are not “forcing” her to do ketamine. She did agree to it but I did coax her a bit because of her anxiety. My mom has not so much has tried marijuana so this is a lot for her.