I would really appreciate it anyone who has experience of similar has any advice! Sorry, it's incredibly long - I think I'm just trying to get my thoughts out properly.
My mum (in her mid 60s) is currently suffering with severe anxiety and depression. She says she started feeling 'off' around September/October last year, but put it down to a foot injury that was hampering her mobility and thus ability to go out and socialise easily.
By November/December she was feeling considerably worse - didn't want to talk to me on the phone so everything was relayed via my dad. I saw them over the new year and she was quite bad; didn't want to do anything, couldn't deal with 'loud' noises (i.e. moderately enthusiastic conversation), felt she didn't have any interest in anything. She was also having problems with sleep - sleeping 2 or 3 hours a night, waking up really early.
In February she started saying things like I can't go on any more, tell people I'm sorry, etc. Some sort of mental health team arranged by the GP came round a few times to visit her. She was also referred for counselling.
The counselling was a total waste of time; her counsellor was very brusque and gung-ho which just made her worry the whole week leading up to the sessions that the counsellor would shout at her, she wouldn't know what to say. She'd spend hours agonising over how to fill in a sheet with questions like 'something I did today that made me smile'.
At some point her depression seemed to be 'overtaken' by her anxiety - she doesn't want to go out of the house, shakes with nerves, doesn't even want to engage with her friends/family. She says she's forgotten how to do everyday tasks - she hasn't, if you don't help her with it, she can do it herself. Every conversation is about her anxiety, her depression. I was at home for a couple of weeks and she didn't ask me a single question about myself (not even 'how are you').
She's also dealing with a raft of physical symptoms that I assume are related to the anxiety - can't taste food, weird taste in mouth, thinks she's losing her memory (again, I really don't think she is - I think she worries that she's forgotten something if she doesn't remember it immediately, and that makes it harder for her to recall stuff quickly), thinks she's losing her hair, and has almost completely lost her appetite - I can't say for sure but I would guess she's lost about 3-4 stone since autumn last year. She's still sleeping really badly, although she says she's not actually tired. Blood tests all come back fine.
She has previously suffered from severe PND (over 20 years ago) and has had on-off relatively low-level depression occasionally since (she thought it was possibly SAD-related) and took paroxetine as needed.
Since she developed the sleeping problems around the new year she's been on metarzapine - the dr said it would help with the sleep; it doesn't seem to have made any difference. She's currently on 45mg per day. She was prescribed diazepam but is reluctant to take it because she doesn't want to develop a dependency - same fear with sleeping tablets. She was also prescribed propranolol and takes 2 per day which doesn't really seem to help.
I'm just at a loss as to where to go next. Her GP is doing a full review of her medication and they said something about being referred to a panel to get given more medication (sorry - really bad description, I've heard this all second hand from my dad). In one of her more 'lucid' moments, I asked her if there was anything at all she could think of that could have caused the depression/anxiety (in the sense of 'I was feeling sad about X', or 'Y thing happened), and she was absolutely adamant that there wasn't. I've wondered if it could be hormonal (given the history of severe PND, although she's said she didn't have a particularly difficult time during menopause).
Is there anything else I could ask the doctor to look into or that I could be pursuing? I haven't been able to have a real conversation with her in about six months, and the impact on my dad who is now essentially her carer is absolutely huge.
Thanks v much anyone who has read the whole thing!)