Apologies in advance, this is a novel, so kudos if you read till the end. I guess just writing this down is cathartic.
My dad is 78, my mum is 12 years younger and very much still in her prime.
My dad is mentally ill. He has always had mental health problems, but in the last 5 years or so it has spiralled. Depression.
He hasn't worked for about 35 years (his therapist signed him off work 34 years ago, and that was that.) He was a stay at home dad and looked after me and my sister, but since then he has mostly just stayed in the house (where possible). He used to have some things that he would do in the week (mostly going out to buy stuff he 'collects' ie. hoards) but that all stopped in the last 8 year or so. Literally all he does is sit at home and worries about things.
He has always been quite controlling. He has always been very accomplished at making sure no one does things he doesn't want them to do. He was incredibly strict with me and my sister when we were teenagers, and also very controlling with my mum. He would dictate many things like what we were allowed to do, what kind of holidays we went on (despite not financially contributing to them), that people weren't allowed to come over to our house for playdates... I remember things like him getting moody and cross if my mum went to the gym too often. What it basically boils down to is that he wants to be at home, and he wants everyone else to be at home, too. If you counter the behaviour (which obviously as a rebellious teenager you do), he sulks and goes into a depressive episode and basically just makes everything miserable for everyone.
Unsurprisingly I left home at 18 and eventually moved to another country (the UK), where I still live with my own family.
My mum still works 4 days a week and loves her job, but increasingly it seems like my dad is ramping up his behaviour to find ways to get her to stay at home with him, instead. In recent years he has become a hypochondriac, and has various obsessions with his health. He'll insist on tests at the GP for all sorts thinking that he has cancer, etc. At the moment he is refusing (mostly) to eat and drink, saying that he feels 'too full' when he does, and has had various tests including an ultrasound, all of which come up clear.
He refuses to go to any health related appointments alone, so of course my mum needs to stay home from work to go with him. If there's no appointment, he'll have a panic attack and call her to come home. He'll wake her up in the middle of the night with panic attacks, and basically just go on an on about his health at her.
She facilitates getting him health appointments and the like, and I feel like she enables his behaviour by engaging with it, but she is getting to a crisis point with it herself now. Today my sister asked them to come into town to see her and her baby; and my dad refused to go anywhere, and then also forbids my mother from going by herself. She called my sister crying; and then quickly hangs up when my dad appears. She'll talk to us about it via whatsapp, but only when pushed.
My mum is so brainwashed with it all - I understand that this is a form of coercive control. Ironically he is financially dependent on her - she is very financially secure and could literally buy a flat tomorrow to get away from him - but she doesn't. He guilt trips her a lot - "if it was me, I'd never leave you, I can't believe you don't even care about how badly I'm doing, if you leave I'll kill myself". They've been together for almost 45 years, I understand it's not easy.
I genuinely don't know how to help my mum. It doesn't help that my dad truly cannot cope on his own.
Me and my sister have now insisted that my mom makes an appointment with the GP herself and insist that something needs to happen because she can't cope anymore. I am also considering calling the equivalent of adult social care where they live to see what can be done. Other than that, I have no idea. It just seems like a problem with no solution, and has done for years.