Dear Prudence,
My husband’s 79-year-old mother, “Elena,” moved in just over a year ago due to mobility issues, but it’s her psychological health that has me truly concerned. Elena has become increasingly paranoid, particularly because she believes people are sneaking into the garage every night to supposedly draw “faces” on the concrete. In reality, there are just stains built up over the years from living—I can even recall how a good number of them came to be.
We have a refrigerator in the garage as well, and last month, my MIL claimed that “they” are not only drawing faces on the garage floor, but poisoning the food in the refrigerator. She refuses to eat anything that has been left in there instead of being stored in the one in our kitchen. I pointed out to Elena that if the food were truly poisoned, my husband and I would have been dead long ago since we ate it. Her rationalization is that it doesn’t affect us because we are “young” (I don’t consider late 40s “young,” but I’ll take the compliment).
My attempts to get my husband to insist that his mother go in for a dementia screening have been dismissed. According to him, she’s always been a bit on the paranoid side. She’s really beginning to drive me crazy and is now insisting we call the police on a daily basis to have them “investigate.” Is there anything I can do here, or am I stuck suffering?
—Paranoid Mother-in-Law