Schizophrenic mother refuses to take medication

My mother was first diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 29 when she had a psychotic break due to my father. He physically and mentally abused her for years. Although, she has told me that she has felt "different" since she was a teenager. Well, being the youngest child I had not truly realized what was going on with her nor had anyone told me. That was until I walked in on her, I was about 9 at the time, As soon as she saw me standing there watching her, she burst into tears. She apoligized and said that she would never do it again. My second-to-oldest sister then argued with her for hours. Skip ahead almost a year, I am at the bowling alley with my league. I was going to hang out with my friends afterward but something strange happened. My grandparents had come to pick me up and said that we needed to leave immediately. They informed me that they would be taking care of us children for a while because "mom got really sick and had to go to the hospital". Around the age of 18, they finally told me that that specific hospital visit was because my mother was seeing people pacing back and forth outside of our home Luckily, they caught her before she did it. Jump forward three years (present day), and my mother has been off of her medication for almost a year now. She was managing but her sickness was always visible. Certain stressors make it much more apparent, so some days she seems like she's managing and other days she seems like she is not okay. She will lie to me and assure me that she is taking her medicine, which I no longer take her word for and usually mark it as a tell-tale sign that she is pretty sick. She has lots of tell-tale signs such as compulsive paranoid thoughts about family members talking to eachother/plotting against her, severe depression, insomnia, and refusal to eat food. My mother is now becoming unmanageable though. Super depressive to the point where I think she is suicidal, mania where she won't sleep for days and barely eats, and paranoid thoughts about family members "conspiring" against her. I do not know what to do. I was able to convince her to take her medication but that only lasted two days. A few days later she told me that she does not think that she is sick and that she does not actually need medication. What should I do?

I am beyond stressed out. I constantly worry about her. When she goes out she refuses to tell me where she is going and I fixate on the fact that she may never come back. When she locks herself in her room I can not stop thinking that she may be in there I sit in my room and cry because I will never have a "normal" relationship with my mom. She is a completely different person when she is sick. She is narcissistic and sarcastic to the point where she basically verbally abuses me. When I tell her that she hurt my feelings she somehow turns it around to it being my fault. She thinks that there is always an alterior motive with everyone she interacts with so she begins alienating everyone close to her. It just feels like my mom will choose to remain in denial until it destroys her. It may be selfish but sometimes I just want to cut off all ties with her because this is emotionally damaging me and has been my whole life. But then I would blame myself if anything ever happened to her. But is me being here for her doing anything anyway?

Hello, nousername101, and welcome to Psych Central! I'm so sorry your mother is not taking care of herself. I assume she doesn't like the side effects of her meds. It would concern me, too, that she says now that she's not sick and so doesn't need medicating.

Does she have a psychiatrist? I suggest you call this doctor and tell him/her what's happening. If your mom is suicidal, then she can be involuntarily committed to a hospital and get treatment. Could you handle that? (I know it would be hard, but it would be for her own good.)

Hi and thank you. Yes, it seems that way. She often complains of how tired they make her feel. Although, from the outside looking in, the benefits of the medication strongly outweigh the bad. She has never viewed it that way though. She always finds "logical" reasons as to why she should not take them. As far as she has told me, she has been seeing her psychiatrist but when she is like this she lies about things like that a lot. So, I am uncertain as to whether she actually is. My gut tells me that she has not based on the state of mind that she is in/the way that she has been acting but who knows. I also have no idea which psychiatrist she sees.She has been involuntarily committed many times before due to her being a threat to herself. I have been trying to convince her to take her medicine because I am not sure whether I truly have it in me to commit her. I also question where to draw the line because it is a very fine one. I feel like this is a never ending cycle though. My whole entire life has just been her refusing to medicate, wanting to harm herself, and then her being committed. She does well for a little and then one day just stops again. It is a vicious cycle and I just wish that things were different. I have never been able to have a close relationship with my mother because of this and my father was never in the picture.

I'm so sorry. How about calling a help line and talking to them about getting your mother committed? Who has done if before?