it's painful for me to write this because i have been going through a similar (if not as severe) situation for the last several months. it started a few months ago with my father telling me that my mother was being paranoid about people at work. my father is an unreliable source though. he is incredibly manipulative and has emotional problems. he has been telling us children that mother is "crazy" ever since i can remember. so i didn't take this latest bit very seriously. unfortunately i live many states away and cannot verify anything that goes on in that house.

about a month ago the situation became more serious. my mother lost her job. she never wants to talk about it but my father claims that she lost it because she was acting too suspicious about her coworkers and boss. in another situation she apparently called 911 because she thought someone had broken into the house. when the cops came, they found all the doors and windows secure. the cop then gave my father his professional opinion that my mother was crazy. great. cop as psychologist.

since then they've changed all the locks on the doors several times because she keeps thinking that people are coming into the house and messing with things. she never wants to speak with me over the phone about it and i recently found out why - she told me that her cell phone is tapped. she apparently also wants to install security cameras in the entire house. my father claims that every time a light bulb goes out or one of her necklaces gets tangled in the jewelry box, she blames it on the people who are coming into the house and trying to hurt her.

the remarkable thing is that most of the time she is perfectly normal. she came to visit my husband and i soon after she lost her job and was perfectly happy and normal (meaning her usual energized "let's clean your entire apartment!" self). when i brought up this discrepancy to my father a couple weeks ago he predictably flipped out and said that i was calling him a liar. i just said i didn't know what to believe. during that phone call i also realized that he has been complaining about this to all of his friends and yet he hasn't spoken to either of my two brothers about it. i am not close with one of my brothers, but i immediately called the other one about it. he sounded confident that this was just more of my father attempting to make my mother sound crazy and put me in the middle of it (this is actually one of my father's favorite tactics). for a while i believed him but now that my mother herself has admitted that she wants to install security cameras i don't know what to do...

i live 6 states away... i found out last week that my department at work is being closed and i have 2 months until i'm out of a job. i don't want to call my mother "crazy" because whenever i've gently said that some of the things she says sound hard to believe, she immediately shuts off. i want to remain in her "circle of trust" because she doesn't have anyone else. my distant brother shuns her and my other brother lives even farther away than i do. my father has been emotionally abusive toward her for a long time. he has driven off all of her friends (to the point of calling them at home and telling them to never call again). he controls all the finances. whenever she asks him to teach her how to pay the mortgage etc, he says "what, do you think i'm going to die sometime soon?" and now that she has no job, she's entirely dependent on him. he has also taken away her atm card because she spent thousands of dollars on new age tricksters who promise to protect her from the malevolent forces while milking her for all she's got.

i just don't know what to do. she's in a terrible situation with no way out. she doesn't trust mental health practitioners because she is afraid that they will just put her on meds. she claims that she's been depressed since losing her job, but firmly believes that the people coming into the house are real. i just don't know what to do...i've looked on all the schizophrenia forums and aside from emotional support, they don't offer any practical tips. what would be ideal would be for my mother to get out of that house or get away from my dad who is now calling me every other day claiming to be at the end of his rope and about to leave her...nevermind that he's been claiming this for over ten years now. i just don't know what to do...

i'd also like to add that she never exhibited any signs of this before this year and she's now 57. i firmly believe that the combination of the new age crap she's bought into combined with a final breakdown after years of emotional abuse have caused this whole disaster...