Family Member Refuses Help

Hi @Levin,

Welcome to the Forums. My name is FloatingFeather and I am one of the peer support workers at SANE. Thank you for sharing your story with us. It sounds like you and your family member are going through some challenging times. They are lucky to have someone that is concerned about them. SANE is a good place to seek some advice or suggestions around this. We have many kind and understanding members with a range of lived experience.

I also want to say I am sorry for the loss of your parent - the loss of a parent is never easy, particularly if it is unexpected. I'm wondering if the unexpected loss of your parent is what may have triggered your sibling's behaviour.

I have a close family member that has a serious mental health issue (diagnosed about 20 years ago) and I am their emotional support person. They also have few people around them as they also have social phobia. What I have learnt on this journey is that unless someone puts their hand up for help there is unfortunately little anyone can do to help. If a person doesn't want and / or believe they need help it can be extremely challenging to help them. Whilst I know a person can be forced to seek help in extreme cases this is (from what I understand) extremely difficult to achieve and can (in some cases) cause further harm.

Are you able to have a private chat with their GP around your concerns? Perhaps then next time your sibling goes to see the GP the GP can gently question them around this (whilst keeping your confidence). Maybe the GP just initiating a conversation around their mental help might help your sibling open up?

I wish you and your sibling all the best - this is not an easy situation for either of you but please keep reaching out. Hopefully your sibling will feel comfortable seeking help soon.

Warm regards,

FloatingFeather

Thanks for the support.

Unfortunately they GP shop. As soon as a GP starts asking questions, they stop seeing them.

When they see a GP, they go to one of the big clinics and see a different GP every time so there is not personal relationship built with them.

It makes it very hard even to speak with the GP.

Thanks for the support.

Hey @Levin, welcome to the forums. I hope we can support you and your sibling ❤️

Firstly, it sounds like you have done so well given some really difficult circumstances. There have been times in my life where I felt really lost in how to support family members and I felt a lot of conflicting feels. Not sure if you're feeling similarly. But I'm wondering if you have much support for yourself at the moment?

As for supporting your sibling, it sounds like you might be thinking about involuntary hospital admissions, where you would try to get your sibling admitted against their consent. Is that right?

If so, it can be a pretty distressing occurrence for people and should only be done when absolutely necessary. I would recommend starting with this SANE page on involuntary treatment to get the context for your state.

I also thought I'd share some resources on supporting people who have different realities to others

• A guide on being a carer of someone who hears voices
• Mental Health First Aid on supporting people who experience psychosis
• This webpage has some resources for Family and Carers too

Not sure what you think of all of this?

Hi @Levin and welcome to the forum. I can relate completely to your situation with your sibling whereas in my case it is my daughter. Even the hitchhiking from state to state for many years running from her delusions of being watched, monitored and followed. We were absolutely helpless as she refused to believe it was her illness creating this fear. Eventually we had to have her admitted involuntarily to a mental health unit. This went on for many years and eventually she would admit herself as it was the one place she considered safe, due to medication no doubt. 11 years on and she is now more stable not having to be admitted for 6 months and is renting her own home with full NDIS support. Upon reflection, having her admitted was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do as a mother but we had no choice at the time as I feared for her safety and looking back now I know it was the right thing to do. I hope an answer to your siblings troubles presents. Take good care 🙏

Hey there @Levin

Thank you so much for sharing your perspective on this and for letting us in on the forums. I hope that you are getting the support and the advice that you need right now, I can already see that many of our lovely members have been contributing and I hope that you are finding this a safe space.

That does sound like a really challenging situation to navigate but the fact that you are reaching out for advice on this is really amazing of you. I can tell that you genuinely care about this person and want to help them better their life. It is really difficult when someone does not want to accept any help or does not think that there is anything wrong with how they are behaving or living at the moment.

I saw that you mentioned that they enjoyed gardening and a few other things that seemed to help them during this kind of similar situation before, is this something you could encourage them to do again, or help them to get involved with again? I see that they are not wanting to accept any counselling or help from a GP, so maybe finding coping mechanisms that would work best for them may be the most beneficial right now until they feel ready to communicate with someone one on one? Have you made their local GP aware of how you are feeling, or even a psychologist? Sometimes just letting someone professional know about how you are feeling and your worries could help to ease the load on your shoulders too, as well as bringing light to something they could focus on.

Sending you so much support,

Amber22