Let me tell you something from personal experience. My Mother was a typical Jewish mother. She was naggy, she complained, at times she made our lives miserable with her negative attitude.
All who know me knew that when it came down to it, I would have my Father live with me if it was needed, but I couldn't bear to live with my Mother. It would just be too difficult for everyone involved.
In October of 1999 my Mother fell and broke her hip and my Father was diagnosed with Cancer. THEY BOTH MOVED IN WITH ME. I had to quit my job. Fortunately I have the best husband on Earth and I don't have children, or else we wouldn't be talking about this.
Anyway, we started treatment with my Dad while my Mother was recuperating from her fall. As always, she was negative and demanding, but I was too busy concentrating on my Father to think of anything else.
Dad passed away February 7th of 2000. THAT DAY I put my mother on anti-depressant medication and I cry with joy that these medications exist. She became the woman I knew she could be. She laughs and she NEVER complains. Five years later she still lives with us and we have no problems. I actually have a better relationship with her than I ever did.
She has home health workers come and they tell me horror stories of women my age who take care of their mothers and their mothers are still the naggy bitches they had always been.
So I've destroyed her brain, huh? Because of these pills she has had probably the best five years of her life. She has people who actually come and see her because the WANT TO , not because the HAVE TO. I am so passionate about this subject because of the way it has effected all our lives.
If I thought like you, my mother would be living in a nursing home, with strangers changing her diapers. Today, she thanks me and tells me she loves me.
I wish I had insisted she take this medication while my Dad was alive. I think his last years would have been alot better too.
I think you are overreacting, because of your personal experience.
I think it's all a matter of degree. I can see how some people are helped by tranquilizers, anti-depressants, etc.
But I have also seen people so overmedicated, that they literraly lost their memory and were just sitting around as zombies, pretty much not even knowing what is going around them. I can even see, how this state may even be preferable for someone who is in some excruciating pain.
But as I said, some people do abuse it, and medicate people, who could spend some peaceful months or years, but instead, they even take that away from them, for the convenience of the caretakers, who are very happy to inherit a million dollar home, but not very interested in looking after the person, from whom they are getting their inheritance.
I hope your mother continues to do well, and I have to admit, your post made me cry as I could relate your mom's experience so well to my own experience. After years of increasingly debilitating mood swings, 11 years ago I was diagnosed bipolar and started on lithium. Within a month of starting it, I sat down and had a good cry wondering where this drug had been all my life, and why I - and my family - had to suffer for so many years with my moods. Lithium freed me to be the person I have always been, and I thank God I found it.
I know how many people feel about drugs like these and about people like me - my own sister didn't speak to me for 5 years after my diagnosis, and the stigma is always there. But I'm past all that as I just have to do what is best for me and ignore all the garbage that goes along with this diagnosis and the treatment. And I know the risks involved in taking lithium - I know it is a poison - but it has saved my life many times over and if I were to die of its side effects tomorrow, I would have no regrets for taking it as the years of stability it has given me have been priceless.
Hildy, I am passionate about this subject too, as I know the difference it has made in my life as it has saved my life - I have seen too many in my family suffer with depression and manic depression, some dying of suicide. I am so very happy you were able to get your mother the help she needed, and I wish you and her many more happy years together.
No, no, don't try using the truth as a defense. We all know you're evil and wicked for drugging up your mom. Just try to live with it. /sarcasm