I think my mum is mentally ill, any advice please.

[izzy40]

Hi All,

I don't know what to do for the best about my mum. This is a long story so bear with me.

She has always been a very difficult woman, in the sense that she thinks she is always right and we should "respect" her in all aspects of life because she gave birth to my brothers and I. So as you can imagine we've had our ups and downs. She's never been a particularly loving person and could never show affection to us but thankfully we seem to have turned out reasonably OK.

Anyway, as my DS was getting little older, my mum is 74 by the way, and due to start school in January I thought I'd let her look after him one day per week instead of sending him to nursery. My one rule was that if she was going to take him out that she called me at work to let me know and she always took her mobile phone with her. Not an unreasonable request I felt! This was a great arrangement for a year or so but then just in the last few weeks she's started going out sneakily with him, hoping I wouldn't find out and lying about it. One particular day this happened and I was calling the house from work for 2 hours with no idea where they were, I was frantic something had happened. So I confronted her and told her this was not what we'd agreed and why was she doing it, to which she replied I'm his Nanny I can do what I want with him!!! Yes I know what you're thinking, so said if she couldn't respect my wishes then she wasn't to look after him anymore so she told me leave the house and stop being a bloody bitch and find someone else to look after him! So I left and sent him back to nursery. Since then she has "learnt" to text which she never could before but I get up to 6 messages per day, usually around midnight which are blank and then she will call the house in the middle of the night and hang up. Anyway, I confronted her and she said she hadn't realised she was doing it, so we made up and I decided to take her shopping etc. and then after we'd had lunch she started screaming at me that I was out of order that she couldn't take him out and was going to kill herself and all this in front of my DS who is 4. So I said that's it am not putting up with this and she has started telling my brothers that I've been saying terrible things about them and that they should hate me too!!! Of course my brothers have said they agree with me and now I get calls and texts all times of day and night, which I ahve ignored up until now but last night at midnight she texted HELP 7 times!! What the hell do I do??? Any suggestions would be appreciated, sorry for the long winded note!

I x

[unavailable]

Her behaviour does sound worrying. It may be the onset of an age related mental illness. Are there any other friends/family you could speak to about your concerns. If she is unlikely to take any advice from you about getting herself checked out by GP, could you enlist help from your brothers/ other family members?