Hi
I wonder if anyone can suggest anything I can do to help my mother with anxiety?
She’s 82, and was recently hospitalised for a month. She came home last week with no package of care in place because she refused everything she was offered.
The OT service thought her discharge would fail due to her anxiety, but as she has mental capacity, her wishes to go home were followed.
When I visited (I live 35 miles away) I realised my mother was in mental health crisis. I ended up calling 111, getting the hospital at home team to come out, and getting an urgent referral to the elderly adult mental health team .
I also re-requested all the support services my mother had declined.
When I visit my mother, I see her holding it together when others are there, and spiralling out of control for just me.
She sounded better on the phone today, but hadn’t eaten or washed for two days. She’s dressed, but those are clothes from Sunday she has been sleeping in 
She refused the medication she has been prescribed
My worry is that her non compliant behaviour will mean professionals stop offering help, and all the pressure will be on me.
Why was mum in hospital for a month? That’s a long time. It sounds like mum is living in the past, forgetting that she needs more support because there are now things she struggles with. My mum was the same.
After a month of nursing staff being on hand mum has undoubtedly made her more reliant on help, not less!
Have You asked Social Services for a Carers Assessment?
Alison, I can see a copy of the message which I wrote to you, but cannot see any reply from you?
I am not sure what happened to my message.
She was in for a rapid decline in mobility.
She came home refusing a package of care, which I arranged and she cancelled three times. Now she’s lurched from crisis to crisis, showing erratic behaviour, confusion and fixation. She had two 999 calls made for her last week, and is back in hospital. She won’t be discharged until there is a new package of care in place.
It’s very hard as she refuses all medication and help, which puts extreme pressure on me, and her lovely 89 yr old cousin.
I feel she must accept help this time, or she won’t be able to stay in her home.
In that case, then look up “Best Interest Meetings”.
It seems that she doesn’t understand the CONSEQUENCES of her decisions.
Before a best interests meeting can take place, there has to be a Mental Capacity Assessment. There are four stages to making a decision and consequences fits into the third - the bit where people take all the facts into consideration and weigh up the pros and cons.
Here’s the thing: you only lack capacity if you don’t go through this process. If you go through the process and recognise that bad things can happen as a result of the decision, and still decide to go ahead - that is fine. Because we all have the right to make a “bad” decision. A lot of people don’t understand this. When my sister tried to discharge herself back to her flat some years ago, I had to show that she didn’t consider any downsides to that decision or the hospital would have let her go. Fortunately she acted as predicted and made it clear that she’d ignored any possible problems.
But had she agreed that there was a danger of tripping but she was willing to take the risk, she’d have been able to go home.