We live in America and I want to tell you about our experience here with getting a psychotic person help. By the way, everything was free because of my son's insurance plan.
My daughter-in-law started acting weird after the birth of her baby. At first, we thought it was anxiety and tried to assure her that she and the baby were doing fine and all that. She had two months of increasing anxiety, which included taking the baby to the ER (A&E) for no real reason, and calling ambulances for herself because she thought she was having heart attacks. Suddenly, over 3 days her behavior became very bizarre and we became very worried about the baby. She told my son an old boyfriend was stalking her and showed my son 'evidence' that this ex was hiding inside their house. She was even seeing him disguised as other people driving past the house. (She and this ex were together 10 years earlier and he lives 3,000 miles away).
We had to separate her from the baby when she pulled out her pocket knife, while holding the baby, opened it and said she was going to defend our family from this creepy ex-boyfriend. Just before that at my house, she tried to run into a snow blizzard to hide the baby from this ex - because she thought he was getting into both our houses.
That night my son took his (breastfed) baby to his house and I kept her at ours. By this time she had forgot all about her baby. She never knew she lived in another house or had a baby. All that night and into the early morning, I saw things that no mother-in-law should ever see. It was horrific. She had completely lost her mind. I didn't know it was even possible in a young woman. 7am next morning my son phoned me and I told him what had been going on. He drove her over 90 miles, through snow, to a hospital which had a large psychiatric unit. She had stopped screaming for the drive there because she thought it was Christmas and was in awe of the deep snow. On the drive, she said she needed to pee, but my son told me later, he'd rather she went on his pick-up seats than to take her into a public place.
My son told the receptionist his wife was a danger to herself and others. Immediately security was called. Two burly security men showed up, frisked her and removed her pocket knife and baling twine from her pockets. (We farm and having knives and a bit of twine in your work jacket is not uncommon). She was taken to the 'family waiting' room. They told everyone in there to leave. The guards waited with her until people from the psychiatric department came to get her. She did try to make a run for it at one point, which lightened the mood a bit because she can't run very fast.
Once in the psych unit, she was put into a small cell to wait for one of the department's psychiatrists. Her psychosis was very severe, nothing they gave her could stop it. 6 weeks later, she believed one of the security guards was her new husband and her old husband, my son, was a potted plant. The potted plant was artificial, which added insult to injury. She refused to keep her clothes on, and so the psychiatrists never talked to her alone. They couldn't understand why the usual meds weren't working on her. She would only sleep for half an hour tops. At first everyone thought she had postpartum psychosis because we were led to believe she'd never had an episode of psychosis before. Her baby was two months old btw.
While informing her family of her situation, my son was informed she had been like this before. She'd been on various mental health meds since she was 14. I think her brain must have been used to the strongest meds available, which she had taken for years, but stopped when she met my son. Nobody in her family thought to tell my son, not even when she was pregnant. Her own mother had postpartum psychosis and tried to hide her baby at one point. They should have warned us, but I think they were just glad to be rid of her. We live 3,000 miles from them.
It took a dozen rounds of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to restore her brain to factory settings. All in all, she spent two months in the psychiatric hospital and then about 16 months in a group home. The group home was in fact a large park like area of nice apartments, with a cafeteria, library, gym. Lots of fun outings and activities. Their meds were supervised and she couldn't leave overnight without being signed out. She loved it there. She even found herself a boyfriend who has schizophrenia.
Because of her dishonesty, and much, much more, my son divorced her when she was in the group home. He worked with the team at the group home, to help her through the divorce. By the way, she did come home for 3 days after the psych unit and before the group home, but didn't want to be around her baby and had suicidal ideation. Being near her baby triggered anxiety, even though she was now heavily medicated. It turned out she never wanted children. She told me later, she got pregnant as my son wanted children and she wanted him to marry her.
That's our American experience with mental health, and how I became a mother again in my 70's.