Hello, my mother who is 91 had a nervous breakdown because she could not deal with my medical issues. I am 66. After seven months of treatment, including a hospital stay and intensive outpatient treatment, drugs and still in therapy, she is not any better. Because I was blamed for her breakdown (she is worried about my health issues), they would not allow me to speak to her for two months and now our relationship barely exists. We were very close and I am her sole financial support for her living in a large home which is not fit for a 91 year old. I have not been included in her care, and have not seen her since her breakdown.
I want an independent eldercare manager to assess her and her living conditions but without her consent, it can't be done. I am her power of attorney, her health care advocate and feel she still needs help and the therapist she sees will not really share anything with me. I am at a loss what to do to ensure she gets better or additional help and my mom keeps telling me she can't see me until she fells like herself again. Given they blame her worrying about me as the reason for her breakdown, I feel like I am between a rock and hard place and do not know how to find out what is really going on with my mom and what if any rights I have as her daughter and POA. She can't make any decisions regarding her living situation, won't see me, is not feeling any less anxious, and yet the therapist tells me she is not incompetent. When I ask the therapist to please advocate for my mom to meet an elder care manager to make sure she is safe and provide options for her care, the therapist just says I WILL MENTION IT TO HER. I am at a loss how to find out how she really is and what to do to. I do not know if I have any legal rights since the therapist says she is not incompetent. I love my mom and want to help her get better
Her therapist cannot disclose anything to you. It’s private. It’s confidential. Legally the therapist cannot disclose information about your mother to you. All you can do is tell her your concerns and ask her to pass them on.
If your mother cannot cope with your health issues, living separately is probably a good idea. If she cannot cope even when living separately then there must be some other factor limiting her capacity - mental or physical - hopefully the therapist can explain this after you have HIPPA clearance. I moved out of the family home just after college when I woke to find my mother watching me sleep in the middle of the night, concerned that I wasn't breathing well. I was having a difficult time with my severe asthma while working in a smoking office but Mom didn't need to deal with the fear of finding me dead in her home or watching me sleep so she could make sure I would find the rescue inhaler when I woke in the middle of a full blown asthma attack. As an adult I shielded my mother from the worst of my asthma battles; perhaps you could do something similar for your mother?
Why would you do that?
Quite literally, the ONLY symptom that sent my mom from living at home into an Indepedent Living facility was anxiety. According to her long time internest, she was "fine".
Except she wasn't. She was a fragile, weeping mess who melted down every time a light bulb burned out or if there was a storm prediction
It only took her new geriatric doc one visit to realize that the anxiety was the primary issue. The psychiatrist he recommended got mom on a low but regular dose of an anti anxiety med and insisted she have neuropsych testing.
The MRI (part of that testing) showed a stroke, previously undetected. Cognitive testing showed loss of reasoning ability and cognitive functioning.
You might want to get a good workup of these issues.
The more times I read your post, the more questions I have.
1. How did you end up supporting her? HER resources should be paying for her upkeep. Unless you are fabulously wealth, su]porting yourself and her is not sustainable.
2. From whence comes the information ation that you are blamed for her breakdown? From mom? Or from her docs?
If it's her docs telling you this, I'd get new docs.
3. You have HIPAA and POA. What does the POA specify? Does it require that mom be incompetent?
4. Are you enabling her to maintain false independence by supporting her financially? If you truly control the purse strings, you can tell her you are no longer paying. She can then make her own bad decisions. But I wouldn't pay another penny to keep her in an unsafe home environment.
Des she see a geriatrics doctor for regular health monitoring? Can her doctor order home health to come out and evaluate her living situation, medication adherence, safety?
There exist unfortunately, very unscrupulous therapists, who indulge their clients
fears, hatred, neurosis, fill in the blank, to gain control over the client and thus have
the guaranteed income. The people on the other end of the equation: children, spouses, relatives, are left in the dark and unable to bring their side of the story to bear. But they suffer lasting damage due to the drastic changes being demanded by the "client" and also therapist who has assumed the role of advocate as well.
You'll probably need to play hardball about dealing with this unfair situation of being accused of causing her breakdown (which seems an enormous stretch) and yet expected to continue supporting her financially. While she and her therapist refuse to communicate with you. A responsible therapist would have wanted to bring you in to hear your side of things, and also to help her find common ground again.
Something's just not right. I really hope you can get to the bottom of this. Best of luck.