if you are worried about a person's mental health, is there anything you can do?

[Yorkiegirl]

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Mmmmmm, I (and family) are convinced that my mum has "problems". She hears God talking to her as if he was in the room. Very bad mood swings, violent to family, etc. But always manages to be fine infront of others. My dad went to their mutual GP as she refuses she has a problem. GP won't/can't do anything about it.

Not so sure that mentalhealth services are any good round here FIL is being shoved from pillar to post and they aren't helping him at all really. They were also useless with me when I was suffering from bad pnd. Not sure what to suggest as I found that the system is constantly letting our family down iyswim.

I think there may be two things at stake - your worry for your friend and any worries for her children. In the case of my friend, what made me most want to intervene was my worry for her children. They were of primary school age. I went to visit my friend for a weekend and from what they said to me, she said to me and from what I saw, I got the impression she had virtually stopped feeding them, as she was spending all her money on seeing an alternative therapist who was a truly nasty piece of work and seemed to be exploiting her for all she was worth.

I do not know how social services work exactly but if you feel that your friend's children are suffering through her being ill, this might prompt more action. I can't say if going to social services is the right thing for you to do or not as I never followed this through. I contacted my friend's sister instead. When she drove down to see her sister, one of the first things she did after setting up some medical help was to get the police to visit the therapist, who was given a strong warning about her actions and told to have no contact with my friend again.

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Yorkiegirl, how are things? I had another thought on this. One thing you can do is to check you have lots of contact details for your SIL - friends, relatives, neighbours, the name of her GP, the children's schoool, etc - so if there is any sort of crisis, you have the means of getting help quickly.

I don't know how you can go about this, but if possible, can you ring up some of her friends and neighbours who see her a lot, asking them to ring you if they are worried?

My friend changed her phone number on the advice of her therapist and stopped giving her new number to people as she slipped further and further into depression, cutting herself off, which made her depression and confusion even worse. I had to look through an old address book to find the phone number of her sister - lucky I had it.

If anyone is concerned for somebody's mental
state then a) talk to the person and let them know of your concerns. If this is not appropriate then talk to family members. Crisis teams take referrals from GP's (among others) but not directly from friends/family. Although it is frustrating, this is a good thing for us.

Nearest reltives can request a mental health act assessment but this is pretty serious.

If you suspect somebody is going to significantly harm themselves/commit suicide and this is an acute problem then it is a matter for the police.

Police have the power to detain someone in a public place on a sec 136 of the act.