I tried to name change and I'm too thick to do it, so please if anyone recognises this situation don't out us, better still let me know and I'll ask for the thread to be deleted.
My friend is female, in her 30's. She's spent a large part of her adulthood in mental health wards as a result of abuse by her parents. I don't know the details, but I do know it was continuous and something both parents could have been prosecuted for. She lives about 2 hours away from where she was brought up (my home town) and this is where she's in hospital.
Hospital staff and her friends have encouraged my friend to break contact with her parents for some time now. Parents were forever pressurising her to come home and not recognising that she was ill or that they had anything to do with her illness. Her dad died last year and her mum hasn't let up - the opposite in fact.
It's taken a while but friend is at last starting to distance herself. She has a new phone no and doesn't take calls to the ward.
Her mum is threatening to come and visit. The staff know not to let her in but she's devious - and would wait til friend was on leave and pounce. Even the thought of her mum visiting is undoing all the good work she's been doing, building up her strength.
She's terrified of the fallout (it's a big family) but she's realising she may have to resort to legal means to keep her mum (and other family members) away. How does she go about this? Is there any support she can get?