I
Isle_of_Avalon
Guest
Please forgive me for the length of this posting. But I need some serious guidance on what to do with my present situation which is becoming increasingly intolerable. I’m hoping that someone here can shed some light for me and give me some possible solutions or point me to the direction on how to handle or who to speak to about this issue.
It concerns my 51 year old sister (I’m 3 years older) who has had to deal for most of her life with severe depression, OCD, phobias of insects (especially spiders) and panic attacks in the few occasions when she has to go outside. She has become a hermit in our one bedroom apartment that we both share in central New Jersey, she refuses to go outside anymore. I’ve ended up having to do all her food shopping and running errands for her when she needs it. She has been living for the past three years with me, we’re both single and have no children.
She has been occupying the living room as her bedroom and using the kitchen as her bathroom/eating area. I have my one bedroom that has a door and I use the one bathroom in the apartment. My sister refuses to use the real bathroom because of her OCD. I can’t use the kitchen at all to prepare food so I mostly eat my meals outside or order in food to eat on my bedroom tray. Her personal hygiene habits are very poor, she hasn’t showered and washed/combed her hair in over a year, she doesn’t brush her teeth. She wears the same loose smock dress every day which hasn’t been washed in a while. And, forgive me for being graphic here, but the worse thing is her awful toilet habit in which she uses plastic garbage bags instead of using the bathroom toilet. It is absolutely disgusting and I’ve complained to her numerous times about this horrible habit but she doesn’t change.
She has stopped going to psychiatrists/therapists since early last year, she no longer believes they can do anything for her and she has developed a deep mistrust for all mental health professionals. She has been on most of the known psychiatric medications available over the years, currently she is not taking any meds. Her mental and behavioral problems are long standing over most of her life, she has led a mostly troubled and sad life because of her many problems. Now as she has gotten older she is so set in her ways and her bad habits that she sees no way out on how she can change for the better.
I’ve been growing increasingly helpless and despairing on what to do for her over these three years that I’ve taken her in to live with me. Before she moved in she had been living at home with our parents in New York until she was into her thirties, then she was in group homes in NY and for a short while she had lived independently in a subsidized apartment for the mentally challenged until that came to an end three years ago when she attempted suicide. She was also an (name removed by moderator)atient and outpatient in various hospital psych wards and clinics over the years as well as tried ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) in NJ. Nothing seems to have worked for her. My sister has only Medicaid and receives monthly SSI disability checks.
She is not an easy person to live with and there are good and bad days but she is a good person. But it’s getting to the point now that after three years with no improvement I will have to insist that she goes back into therapy whether she wants to or not and I want her to go into a group home setting with support staff to get her back into some kind of discipline and structure in her daily life. Daily she does little but watch TV all day and much of the night, eats and sleeps for a few hours. That’s it. I have a full time job during the day. Except for her SSI disability checks in which she gives me some money each month to pay the cable TV bill, she doesn’t help me with any of the other bills.
I don’t know what to do at this point. I admit that I don’t pray as often as I know I should, my faith and prayer life is weak. At least I do go to church every Sunday and I occasionally try to say the rosary at night but I fall asleep while doing it. I know I also should be reading the Bible but I’ve never developed the habit. I’m growing increasingly resentful over this whole situation and I want to have my apartment back for myself again since I like to live alone as I had been doing before all this began. But I also want to get some good help for my sister and not have her stuck in a bad place or with bad or unhelpful people.
I don’t know if there could be good Catholic therapists/group homes in New Jersey, I think it would be great if my sister could get good help from the Church from faithful Catholic mental health providers, but I don’t know if they exist. I would much prefer that because my sister has already tried years of secular psychiatric programs and doctors and we don’t trust them anymore, all the psychiatrists do is prescribe her psych medications and spend less than 45 minutes with her asking her the same stock questions about whether she is still suicidal or not. She’s just sick of it all and so am I. My sister doesn’t pray though and is highly critical of the Catholic Church, she was baptized when she was a baby and went to Catholic school for some years but she now doesn’t trust the Church or Catholic priests anymore. I don’t share her negative feelings against the Church, my thoughts and feelings are positive towards the Catholic faith. I hope someone can point me to some kind of direction on what I should do. Thank you for reading this far and God Bless!
It concerns my 51 year old sister (I’m 3 years older) who has had to deal for most of her life with severe depression, OCD, phobias of insects (especially spiders) and panic attacks in the few occasions when she has to go outside. She has become a hermit in our one bedroom apartment that we both share in central New Jersey, she refuses to go outside anymore. I’ve ended up having to do all her food shopping and running errands for her when she needs it. She has been living for the past three years with me, we’re both single and have no children.
She has been occupying the living room as her bedroom and using the kitchen as her bathroom/eating area. I have my one bedroom that has a door and I use the one bathroom in the apartment. My sister refuses to use the real bathroom because of her OCD. I can’t use the kitchen at all to prepare food so I mostly eat my meals outside or order in food to eat on my bedroom tray. Her personal hygiene habits are very poor, she hasn’t showered and washed/combed her hair in over a year, she doesn’t brush her teeth. She wears the same loose smock dress every day which hasn’t been washed in a while. And, forgive me for being graphic here, but the worse thing is her awful toilet habit in which she uses plastic garbage bags instead of using the bathroom toilet. It is absolutely disgusting and I’ve complained to her numerous times about this horrible habit but she doesn’t change.
She has stopped going to psychiatrists/therapists since early last year, she no longer believes they can do anything for her and she has developed a deep mistrust for all mental health professionals. She has been on most of the known psychiatric medications available over the years, currently she is not taking any meds. Her mental and behavioral problems are long standing over most of her life, she has led a mostly troubled and sad life because of her many problems. Now as she has gotten older she is so set in her ways and her bad habits that she sees no way out on how she can change for the better.
I’ve been growing increasingly helpless and despairing on what to do for her over these three years that I’ve taken her in to live with me. Before she moved in she had been living at home with our parents in New York until she was into her thirties, then she was in group homes in NY and for a short while she had lived independently in a subsidized apartment for the mentally challenged until that came to an end three years ago when she attempted suicide. She was also an (name removed by moderator)atient and outpatient in various hospital psych wards and clinics over the years as well as tried ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) in NJ. Nothing seems to have worked for her. My sister has only Medicaid and receives monthly SSI disability checks.
She is not an easy person to live with and there are good and bad days but she is a good person. But it’s getting to the point now that after three years with no improvement I will have to insist that she goes back into therapy whether she wants to or not and I want her to go into a group home setting with support staff to get her back into some kind of discipline and structure in her daily life. Daily she does little but watch TV all day and much of the night, eats and sleeps for a few hours. That’s it. I have a full time job during the day. Except for her SSI disability checks in which she gives me some money each month to pay the cable TV bill, she doesn’t help me with any of the other bills.
I don’t know what to do at this point. I admit that I don’t pray as often as I know I should, my faith and prayer life is weak. At least I do go to church every Sunday and I occasionally try to say the rosary at night but I fall asleep while doing it. I know I also should be reading the Bible but I’ve never developed the habit. I’m growing increasingly resentful over this whole situation and I want to have my apartment back for myself again since I like to live alone as I had been doing before all this began. But I also want to get some good help for my sister and not have her stuck in a bad place or with bad or unhelpful people.
I don’t know if there could be good Catholic therapists/group homes in New Jersey, I think it would be great if my sister could get good help from the Church from faithful Catholic mental health providers, but I don’t know if they exist. I would much prefer that because my sister has already tried years of secular psychiatric programs and doctors and we don’t trust them anymore, all the psychiatrists do is prescribe her psych medications and spend less than 45 minutes with her asking her the same stock questions about whether she is still suicidal or not. She’s just sick of it all and so am I. My sister doesn’t pray though and is highly critical of the Catholic Church, she was baptized when she was a baby and went to Catholic school for some years but she now doesn’t trust the Church or Catholic priests anymore. I don’t share her negative feelings against the Church, my thoughts and feelings are positive towards the Catholic faith. I hope someone can point me to some kind of direction on what I should do. Thank you for reading this far and God Bless!
