Feeling a bit ... i don´t know, I spent some time with my parents tonight and I think my Mum´s depressed. I know she´s depressed. We´ve thought she has been for years now but we can never get her to do anything about it. She has all the symptoms and well, it´s just really obvious. We go through cycles of trying so hard to get her to get help and then we kind of lose energy and give up for a while and then we start again and it´s so draining. I know we can´t give up on her. well, my older sister kind of has, sadly i think she´s just decided that mum is kind of pathetic (i love my sis, I must add she feels like this because of some really bad behaviour on mum´s part) and my little sister just kind of cops out. My dad is really odd about the whole thing and won´t really admit she´s depressed either. My little sister actually is convinced mum is bipolar and I don´t know much about that but she does really weird things sometimes, it could just be the depression, it could just be her.
She´s been prescribed anti depressants in the past but never took them for very long. She went to therapy once, for one session but then found a million excuses not to go back. She´s overweight, she smokes, she drinks too much, she stays up really late (like until 4am, on her own, doing nothing, not watching tv, not reading, just nothing), she sleeps in late, she eats really badly, she has many many days when she doesn´t get showered or dressed all day. She makes a million plans of things she´s going to do that she never gets round to (which no doubt compound the general sense of failure she seems to feel about her life). And I don´t mean big plans, I mean like she´ll say she´ll go for a walk everyday but she never does. She will do anything to avoid leaving the house. She almost cried last time my sister was out here and we wouldn´t let up until she came for a walk with us. I could go on.
So I feel we´re about to start the whole cycle again of trying to speak to her (so hard because she can tell when I´m going to try to talk to her and will avoid even sitting down for a cuppa.) and then sometimes we talk and it feels like a breakthrough but then next time I see her it´s like nothing´s changed. Please tell me what I can do, how I can go about it. My sisters don´t live in the same country and I can more or less count my dad out so assume I´m on my own.. I really don´t want to give up on her but I´m at a loss.
Sorry this was so long and badly worded..