Advice for mum's mental health
Hi all,
My mum's mental health has been on a gradual decline for quite a while now. We've had multiple interventions with her for her to seek proper help but to little avail. She did go to the GP who only upped her medication but that's not had much of an impact.
A bit of history. She was with her partner, my step-dad, for a god 20 years. Around 5 years ago, she had an addiction to codeine and it came to the point where she was hospitalised with Encephalitis and nearly died. She continued with this addiction for quite a bit afterwards, drinking alcohol as well, just completely neglecting her needs or seeking help. As you can imagine, during this time, she has fractured a lot of her relationships with her kids, her brother and her mum.
Late last year, it came about that my mum was talking to other men. My step-dad tried to make it work, but I don't think my mum stopped, and ultimately he moved out and they split up. All of her kids don't live with her either, and she is living completely alone. She's racked up lots of debt, where a couple of months ago, she missed a rent payment. She is on the brink of losing her job which she worked hard for because she has been sent on sick and is being assessed whether she is fit for work.
I'm worried as well that there might be some form of psychosis in play too. The past few weeks, she has been off work, has not seen anyone, has not been out of the house. All she does is talk to her 'boyfriend' who lives in Nigeria (that's another long story which I won't go into, but essentially he is no good for her). She spoke about having hallucinations when she wakes up, saying that one time she physically saw people by her window and it took her a minute to realise they weren't actually there. She's been sleep walking and bumped her head quite hard, and just generally been having really bad nightmares to the point she is afraid to sleep.
She has resulted in self-harm too, as she said that she bit her arm really hard and left a bruise. She posted a tiktok love where she allowed people on the internet to basically insult her, laugh at her and make fun of her. She continues to drink regularly. She's swimming in debt. She's pushed all of us away, and when we do meet her, she's quite self-deprecating and doesn't really acknowledge how it affects us (though I know this would be hard with the struggle she has right now).
We're at a bit of a loss on what to do to support her. Is this to the extreme that she needs a mental health assessment? She would absolutely refuse this I believe and say she is okay, when really she's not. She's just so low, making lots of bad decisions, and seems to be spiralling further. Please can anyone offer any advice on what we can do to help her in this situation?