My[29F] father[56M] has lifelong depression, mental health has declined, I want to help him but unsure how

For context, I’m from the UK.

My father has had major depressive disorder for most of my life, certainly all of my adult life. As far as I can tell, his doctor is happy to let him have medication of various kinds (currently MAOI I believe, not certain, he’s had so many different ones) when he notices himself slipping into an episode. As far as I’m aware he’s never had therapy, or maybe had it a little when he was younger but it didn’t help.

He seems generally ‘happy’ most of the time, but is completely unable to have what I would call a ‘normal’ life. He is totally unmotivated. He can’t have a job (he’s been unemployed for about 10 years), can’t have a relationship, and can’t keep in regular touch with anyone. His sleeping pattern is completely erratic and he doesn’t look after his health or eat well. He quit smoking last year after 40 years which is great! But he seems to think that he’s now in good health which concerns me (he doesn’t look well) as he says that he’s not concerned about COVID for himself, though he takes good precautions for the sake of his mother who he takes food from the supermarket. His mother financially supports him, which is difficult for everyone. He spends all his time playing video games or watching tv I guess? He sleeps on the sofa and his clothes don’t looks clean. He seems unable to deal with the levels of responsibility that a usual life entails, for instance having a job and a family and friends etc etc. He can do probably just one of those things. He has told me that when me and my sister were young children, he felt under so much pressure that he considered killing us and our mother (his ex wife) as the only way out of the situation. My parents split up when I was 4 and my mother moved on and is happy, they are amicable.

Recently, my fathers mental health has really declined. I hadn’t seen him in a while (lockdown in the UK) but the other day my grandma (his mother) called to say she couldn’t get hold of him and was worried so I went to his house. It really shocked me as he had been living in filth and seemed a little unhinged. He was joking about it but it looked like he’d basically been lying on the sofa for a few months, eating random snacks and blowing his nose and throwing all the rubbish onto the floor behind the sofa and all over everywhere, and there was such a huge amount of build up of cat hair and dust and filth everywhere, I found it really disturbing. I filled a bin bag with some of the rubbish because I needed to do something. He said that he’s lost touch with everyone he usually talks to (by phone or online, I’m not sure?) and the days had been slipping past without him noticing and he’d started to feel insane. He also said he started to have a psychosomatic cough when he put his shoes on to go out, so an element of agoraphobia thrown in there for good measure.

I feel like something needs to change drastically because this situation has been steadily declining for years and the only end I see is him dying or going insane or ending up homeless or very sick. My sister [27F] feels that we just have to accept it and learn to live with it, but I really love my dad even though he’s a bit strange sometimes, he’s also intelligent and kind and generous and funny and has been successful in his youth so I feel inescapably sad that he is living like this, with apparently no way to get better? I plan to go to his house next month, to clean up and hopefully kick-start him feeling a bit better. I don’t know how to talk to him about it because he either just makes a joke or says that he had a brain chemistry imbalance and can’t recover (is this even a thing? I don’t believe a doctor would tell someone this)

I have had mental health issues in the past that I have recovered from with psychotherapy so maybe this is why I feel there must be some way for him to recover.

Any ideas of what I can do? I feel so, so sad and this is affecting my life, I don’t want to lose him.

Thank you, I know this is really long.

TL;DR dad has depression, has nosedived recently, I would like advice on how to achieve some kind of recovery.

Submitted January 24, 2021 at 03:52PM by jes_zeu https://ift.tt/3iGyplk