please bear with me because this will be a long one.
my mum and dad have been married 26.5 years. everything was fine until the beginning of lockdown 2020 and my mums behaviour and attitude became increasingly difficult and irrational. despite her place of work being closed, she volunteered to work 12 hour shifts every Monday-Friday. she stopped eating and sleeping and had a habit of taking long walks every night and then counting her steps. she would sleep in the spare room every night without explanation and she didn’t have any conversations with either my brother or my dad (who she lived with).
she became more and more hostile towards my younger brother and dad, and then my dad started to worry about their marriage. at first, she was adamant that he’d done nothing wrong and there was no explanation for her feeling the way she did, but the narrative quickly changed and she began to blame him for controlling her through the course of their entire marriage.
this continued for the entirety of lockdown. my dad fell into deep depression and was medicated, and then my mum ended their marriage. my dad moved out of the family home and began renting his own place, whilst letting her keep whatever she wanted.
my mum fell off the radar for a while, and blamed it on her fear of catching coronavirus. we asked her over and over again to see a GP for a mental health assessment but she refused. she did not speak to me or my brother and told my dad to delete her number and never speak to her again.
eventually, she got help from a doctor who diagnosed her with anxiety and depression and arranged counselling and CBT sessions. despite this, she has continued to lose an unhealthy amount of weight and is still obsessively walking for 2-3 hours a day.
one of her colleagues has contacted me recently advising that she is extremely concerned about her welfare and state of mind. she cries all day at work, she weighs about 6-7stone, she constantly shakes and she eats one piece of toast a day. her colleague has forced her to contact her GP again, but my mum has refused.
none of us know what we can do. even before this new lockdown, she would still not let myself or my brother near the family home. she changed the locks so we cannot access it whilst she’s at work. now we’re in another national lockdown, she won’t even let us visit her in the garden. she won’t FaceTime or call, only texts. I’ve asked her to be honest with me and tell me how she feels but she just says she’s fine. she’s deteriorating so fast and there is literally nothing else we can physically do.
Is there anyway I can intervene more? is there any helplines I can speak to? I think she’s a danger to herself but I know that it’s unlikely that she will get sectioned.