Delusions and Paranoia

My mother is in her late 50s and all her life she has been intelligent and very sane. When I was little, it was said that my mother had MS (but has never really been proven). I only know for a fact that she used to take lots of naps and complain about numbness in her limbs but never had any serious problems. When my parents divorced she fell into a deep depression never taking care of it. Remarrying brought her out of it. Over the years there were never any problems, her life was full of happiness, she claimed her "MS" went into full remission and she had an everyday routine. Up until 5 years ago. She had problems with a man at her work and had a hard time dealing with the company to take care of the problems. Months after that she was picked as a juror for a big, stressful trial. During that trial she started saying some small paranoid things that were going on, not a big deal to us. When she came home from the trial,in just a snap of a finger she completely lost it.  She started having anxiety and panic attacks. She then became fully delusional and paranoid. She complained of seeing, hearing and smelling things that was not OUR reality. We were all evil to her, not who we said we were. She had outrageous stories. Being drugged,followed,spied on,even bodies buried in the yard and blood on an ax in the shed and so on. We were all in shock and did'nt know what was going on ourselves. Finally we got her help and after four months of hell she was coming back to us as we knew her. That was from Sept.to Jan. All was well, we thought this was a one time thing until the next sept.  She had quit her meds without us knowing and we were thrown into round two. It was like playing the exact same movie over again. Everything happened exactly the same way, almost nothing was different from the first time. The THIRD time around (again in the fall) we knew enough to get a court order for her meds but it expired in a year and round four actually came in the early spring which was a first.
Unfortunatly I am the only one who decided to get help thru NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill). My mother and her husband just want to get on with their lives and don't feel a need to educate or learn to cope with this. They believe they have an understanding about taking the meds but mom has made promises every other time also so I see no difference with this one. She has never taken drugs or even drank. Her husband copes with this by drinking so mom has now started drinking also. She takes a med for her thyroid and 50 mg of seroquel. She is unwilling to take more because the side effects are too much for her. She knows that if she goes to the hospital again they will give her Haldol (they have also tried Risperdol). I have absolutely no rights to get info from her doctors and mom doesn't feel a need to go any further. I have been searching for answers to what is exactly wrong. Can you tell me what kind of illness she might have or lead me in the right direction?

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Yes, it is clear that your mother suffers from paranoid delusions and displays a psychotic disorder. Such a condition will never reach remission without medication - the condition is a product of brain chemistry, it is a biologically-based mental disorder. If family members are in agreement, as you know, it is possible to approach the court and obtain an order for treatment. The patient has to be in  state of psychosis, in which it is clear that the person is unable to manage their affairs. An alternative is for a mental health professional to have her admitted involuntarily to a psychiatric facility, if it is clear she is in a state of psychosis. The rules that govern such involuntary hospitalization vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.