My dad was sectioned today. How to cope?

Post date: 2021-01-25 21:33:16

I'm not sure how to take care of my own mental health during this time.

My dad has recently been stressed about bills which I offered to help him with initially but he declined. I stopped offering. We had one of many arguments (this time because he refused to wash his hands after leaving the house despite being vulnerable to COVID). During the argument he suggested he was not coping with the bills (I found out after that he is in debt but paying it off). I said I didn't know how to help him. His mental health has since deteriorated and I blame myself completely. I should have listened. I should have offered to help again. Instead we argued. I argued with an old man. Who does that? He has since deteriorated quite rapidly.

Recently he started losing his memory. He would misplace keys or his glasses then accuse me or my mother of stealing them. One day last week I went to the toilet in the middle of the night and he followed me with a hand weight/dumbbell. He stood there waiting for me. I told him if he attacks me that I would go to the police. It seemed to scare him into stopping as he did not follow me the next time I left my room.

He has always been paranoid and mistrusting and I feel we normalised that or got used to it as a family. He has recently started seeing people who aren't there and was convinced that there were three people in the corridor. Yesterday he didn't recognise me or my mother and said he was leaving the house to see his family. He actually went to the police to tell them that our neighbours were threatening him (they weren't). They brought him back. He left the house again at 11pm. I called the police who came but he returned on his own and it transpired that he forgot about the previous police incident that occurred only a few hours prior. The police told us to get him to a doctor but he refused "No! I'm not crazy".

This morning he was very confused and didn't know where he was. He said "I don't know what's going on. It's strange". I felt so sad for him and asked if he would allow me to call an ambulance and he said "they probably need to do examinations". It was the first time all week he admitted he needed help and I called the ambulance. They checked his pulse. It was irregular and slow. I mentioned the memory loss and they said he would get a full check up at the hospital which he did.

I received a call this afternoon saying his health was fine but that he was showing signs of paranoia and they wanted to check with us about the things he was saying. They also told us that if he agreed he could come back home and a nurse would visit each day to administer medicine. They called in a crisis team but he refused the idea of home treatment, said again that he wasn't crazy and so they have detained him.

I feel so awful. I feel 100% responsible for his demise. I should have paid the bills (we all live together). I should have paid his debt. I feel he developed dementia because he wanted to forget his troubles. He couldn't cope. I feel guilty for arguing with him. I forgot he's just an old man and instead gave into the parent-child dynamic I should have dropped as a teenager. We have never got along - he was a bully to my mother who I always jumped in to defend - and he told me everything was better before I was born. I now feel even more guilty because he has been sectioned. I can't stop imagining how scared he must be (he's in his early 80s). He's so alone. He just thought he was going for a check up at the hospital and he ends up being detained. He must feel so betrayed and frightened.

I can't wrap my head around this week's events. My head keeps moving back and forth between each recent event, other past events, fears for the future and guilt about everything. I often feel like I'm going to panic so I have to make myself take a deep breath which sort of works but I need more tools.

How do I deal with this? I can't settle my mind.

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