My brother-in-law was recently diagnosed as bi-polar and has been in a severe depression for almost a year since his girlfriend left him last February. My husband and I live next door, so by default we’ve been heavily involved with supporting him emotionally and just hosting him for dinner, bringing him with us when we go shopping, etc. He was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts in the summer, and he doesn’t seem to be getting any better, according to him, despite the fact that he’s been on the highest possible dose of lithium they will allow.
We usually go to their mom’s house over Christmas, which is about 2 hours away, and spend a few nights. last year, he brought his girlfriend and that was the last “good time” they had I guess, before she left. Now he associates Christmas at his mom’s with the memory of her, and he is refusing to go to Christmas this year. Knowing what I know about the rise in suicides over the holidays, and the fact that he is suicidal, nobody thinks he should be alone during this time. But he is refusing to go. Any ideas what we should do, aside from cancelling Christmas for ourselves and staying here with him? Or we could knock him over the head with something heavy and drag him there. LOL Ideas?
That’s really sad. Are you up to hosting Christmas at your place? Between your house and his house, is there enough room for the in-laws to stay?
Aside from Pai’s excellent solution:
Live your life - do not let his problem completely cripple you. At some time, you will need to cut your BIL loose.
Great idea, if only we didn’t live in an apartment, plus most of the family wouldn’t want to travel 2 hours to get here, especially without having a place to stay. Most everyone is up there.
Increased incidence of suicides during the holidays is a myth.
I doubt that knowing this will make your decision any easier, but I thought I’d throw that out there.
Hope everything works out for the best.
mmm
you could call the hospital he was at and see what they think you should do .
This is a tough one , would your BIL call a suicide hotline if he needed to ?
You could leave a number for him to call and hope he’ll use it. Of have a trusted friend check up on him . What does your husband want to do ?
I doubt they would talk to crazytooth615 about it. The HIPAA laws would probably prohibit it.
Maybe you could talk to a social worker to see what resources are available for situations like yours. There might be some sort of outpatient group he could stay with while you’re away.
Oh, I didn’t know that, but it does make me feel better.
These are great ideas. Yes, we could send someone over to check on him and/or call. The best we can do is to give him the phone numbers and hope for the best.
Yes, thank you. This year has been really hard on me especially, because it’s like I can “feel” his negative energy seeping out whenever he is around, and it affects me a lot more than it does my husband. When he leaves, it’s like someone just opened up all of the windows and curtains on a sunny day and I can finally relax. I hate to say that about someone in my family, but it is true. Probably not very healthy for me, and it has certainly caused strain on my relationship with my husband. We had a huge fight about it back in the spring when the BIL was spending almost every night on our couch (neglecting his two cats next door), never picking up after himself, laying there like a sloth doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for MONTHS! He has a seasonal job and doesn’t work from November - April every year. He keeps saying he wants to join a volunteer organization, but he never takes the steps to do anything unless WE are involved too. We paid way too much money to take a yoga workshop with him, hoping to get him into something, but since the workshop ended, he hasn’t stepped foot inside a yoga studio again. I was going to sign up to become a volunteer just so he would attend the volunteer workshop with me, but I think I may be giving too much of myself. After all, if he doesn’t take the steps to help himself, no amount of us helping him will do any good.