Need Advice - Elderly Mother with Crippling Anxiety
I honestly am at a loss for what to do to help my mother. She is 76 years old, and has been suffering from extreme anxiety and depression for over two years. It kind of came out of nowhere. It has gotten to the point where she is basically homebound. She only leaves the house to go to doctor appointments. When she is home, she is pretty much in bed all day.
She has tried so many different medications and nothing has helped. She was diagnosed as being bipolar. Her anxiety is through the roof and she has terrible panic attacks. She also has a lot of tremors in her hands.
Her current psychiatrist is awful so I am trying to find her another one. Many do not take her insurance (Medicaid) and/or won't accept her as a patient due to her age.
She is not sick enough to be in inpatient care but she really needs some serious help. If things continue on the path she is on, she is going to die.
She is currently weaning off of generic Lexapro as it didn't seem to be helping and she was having some unpleasant side effects.
She previously tried cymbalta and that seemed to help, so she is starting that again. But I am worried that this won't help her anxiety.
Her doctor prescribed her 1/2 tab of Valium to use up to three times a day as needed. She usually only takes the one before bed but sometimes her anxiety gets so bad in the afternoon that she needs a pill then too. I am very concerned about her being on Valium, especially due to her age.
She also takes trazedone to help sleep, but her stupid psychiatrist (who prescribed her both of these) just told her this past week that those are not safe to take together.
So we are hoping to wean her off of the valium once she is stable on the cymbalta.
I am of the mind that she might just be better off weaning off of everything right now (like not even starting cymbalta) and just let her body recalibrate. She has had so many different medications prescribed to her and has had a ton of paradoxical reactions. Her side effects seem worse than the condition alone.
I am just worried that it will get so bad that she will need to be hospitalized again, and the inpatient options in Buffalo are awful. They just give her benzos and then release her. They literally left her in the parking lot by herself last time in the cold. My dad was on the way to get her.
I guess I am just asking for any advice anyone might have. I hate seeing my mom suffer like this. If things continue on this path, I know she will not live much longer.
Her current psychiatrist thinks that her anxiety may be due to the beginning of memory loss, but she honestly wasn't showing memory loss until she took the benzos give to her at inpatient care. Ever since then, her memory has been bad. We are going to go back to the neurologist to see if there might be something else going on. Her previous neurologist did not think she had any memory issues going on.
I am tempted to tell my dad to take her to the mental health hospital in Boston as it's supposed to be the best in the country.
Any other ideas? Suggestions?
Thank you for reading this and actually caring about my Mom. I feel that our healthcare system has failed her so terribly and no one seems to care.
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I am so sorry to hear this. I think my Mom’s initial issues with anxiety stemmed from her thyroid levels being off. The doctor totally missed this and instead just gave her benzos.
Now she dealing with delusions (she thinks the senior care facility where she is living is going to shut down and nothing we say can change her mind). The doctor thinks that her anxiety now is due to her delusions. We just had a cognitive assessment done and she scored very low for executive functioning so then we had a PET scan to see if anything can be found. I am hoping we get results soon.
It is so heartbreaking to see our Moms suffering like this. Please just keep pushing for answers from the doctors. I would definitely recommend going to a neurologist to see if they can do some tests to see what might be going on.
The doctor who did my Mom’s cognitive assessment recommended consulting with a Geriatric Psychiatry and Memory Care at a nearby hospital so my Dad is working on that.
My Mom got worse and worse the more time she spent alone at home and almost became agoraphobic. So I would recommend trying to get her out of the house as much as possible and maybe having people come visit.
A counselor also recommended TMS back when we thought we were just dealing with anxiety. So that might be worth talking to her doctors about.
Random question. Has your Mom recently had Covid? My Mom got Covid in 2022 (around March) and then she started really struggling with issues later that year, so we often wonder if long Covid was part of the issue.
Also, my mom had a test done where they took a swab of her mouth and with her saliva they were able to find which medicines work well with her body chemistry and which don't. I would highly recommend doing this as well because we found out that some of the medicines she had been on for a long time were really not good for her body chemistry. I wish we had done that much sooner.
I am thinking of you, your Mom and your family, and I hope the doctors can figure out what is going on with your Mom.
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1 Reaction@limpyloo
I truly know how your mom is feeling. Although I’m only 67, my severe anxiety came out of nowhere too in Sept 2025. All of a sudden, I started getting horrible anxiety waves first thing upon waking or walking me up. The anxiety lasts all day. It’s debilitating…I feel generally unwell, weak, tremor and tingling hands and feet. In desperation I started on a benzo (clonazepam) and an SNRI (venlafaxine). I’ve only been on the SNRI for 4 weeks because I’m terrified of the future withdrawal. I still take the Benzo as needed once or twice day. Life is very difficult.
In my case I suspected hormone changes and am now seeing an ND who specializes in menopause/post menopsuse and have started HRT . I pray to God this is the source and will resolve my problem.
As for your mom, could it also be a hormone change? No one talks about hormone changes as we grow old. Those who have never experienced severe anxiety will NEVER understand. They think you just have to take a deep breath and get counseling…