My mother has been in Assisted Living for a little over 2 months. She has frontal lobe dementia with a serious Delusional Disorder. She believes a man that scammed her out of $80,000 is in love with her and she is desperate to reconnect with him. Since being in the facility, she has no phone or internet access. She is begging me to have her phone back and wants her email book. Of course, I am not going to give them to her. I have started telling her things like, "I'll have look for the email book", "I'm still finding out about the phone". Of course, she will continue to ask me over and over whenever I visit or write letters demanding her phone back and her email book. She is very upset about being in the facility and wants to come home, but that will never happens as her home is about to go up for sale.
How do folks go about redirecting your loved ones, when they have these obsessions over things? Her long-term memory is still pretty good, but she is slowly starting to show some slow decline in short term memory. Her Social Worker told me to just continue to redirect her and she will eventually start to forget what she wants and why she is upset.
Thoughts?
The only thing that has changed his anxiety level and anger level is that he broke his hip a few months ago and had to have an operation. He was as angry as ever up until the operation (meaning even post-break, pre-operation). The operation itself seemed to change him. Or perhaps he is feeling is fear of physical repercussions of being too active (e.g. another broken hip). Anyway, that is the only thing that has dialed down his anxiety, obsessions and delusions. They are still there, they're just not as pronounced.
Pre-operation, he was involuntarily held twice at a geriatric psychiatric facility, and they tried a whole bunch of medications. They were of limited use. Seroquel was more useful for calming him than others, but often he would refuse to take it. Perhaps your mother's doctors could look at her medications to see if there is some change they could make vis-a-vis her anxiety. In my mind this constant anxiety they go through is a quality of life issue for them. It must be terrible to be so anxious and angry every hour of the day.
I'm wishing you good luck with your journey.
police would take him away. My mom never mentioned him again. It took a non-family member to convince her. Maybe something like that would work for you? It takes sincerity and imagination but it worked for me.