Problems with a Room Mate

[ConcernedRoomie]

I have a room mate that I belived to have undiagnoised mental health issues.

She moved in 3 years ago after her job came to an end I have slowly ended up becoming her carrer.

She comes from Hong Kong orginally so does not have much in the way of family in Austarlia.  The 2 adult sons she does have to not communicate with her :-(. The younger one has issues with depression unfortunatley and seems to have dropped out of contact with his brother and mother. Life has been tuff for her in Australia in terms of menial jobs and unemployment.

She also battles with a pokie (gambling) problem. She does not have any real friends that she communicates with and she seems to have ceased talking with her family members in Hong Kong.

Over the last 6 months she has hardly left the house.  She spends most of her time doom scrolling and obsessing about the cleanlness of the house and yard ( I think she suffers from OCD) or belittling me. She also has other health issues which she refuses to speak to doctors about.

Twice over the last 6 months I have had to call ambulance and police after she lost it and started throwing things arround the place at me.  The last incident last weekend resulted in the police taking out an AVO.  I explained that I thought some mental health help would be a better outcome but obviously the police have a process to follow which is this AVO!

She has spent the last week obcessing about the AVO and has not spoken to legal aid instead chosing to Google legal facts and talk about sending the police and me to jail!

The AVO hearing is on Wednesday. I am out of state for work next week and I worried she will not show up and end up in all sorts of trouble.  

I effectively pay for everything (food, electricity, gas, rego and upkeep on her car) I have even treated her to a couple of interstate holidays.  I do all her Centrelink paperwork.

I am concerned that if the police get an AVO in place she will be forced to move out and become homeless and spiral out of control. 

Everytime I bring up that she may have mental health issues and that it would be good to speak to a GP she sugests I am the person with the mental health issue.

Her problems occupy a trendmendous amount of my thoughts and I have less and less contact with family and freinds as I don't want to expose them to her.

What do I do to help her?

[Jynx]

Hey @ConcernedRoomie welcome to the forums! Glad to have you with us 😊

Goodness that is a LOT. I am really hearing how much effort and time is being taken up by caring for this person. 

I am wondering, when do you have time to care for yourself? Sometimes, no matter what we do, people aren't going to make changes until they are ready. We can't force them. If this person is not even willing to consider that they may have mental health issues, then it is unlikely that things will change any time soon. It is not your responsibility, nor is it typically sustainable for us to continue making sacrifices when there is this much resistance. 

Do you have much in the way of mental health support for yourself? We cannot pour from an empty cup, and you deserve care and support too! 

If you are needing some extra info around managing times of crisis, you can check out some of these factsheets for managing crisis. Essentially, unless this person is a danger to themself (i.e. suicidal intent) or others, mental health services will not intervene without their consent. 

You could potentially encourage her to look into our Guided Recovery program - free counselling or peer work sessions may be more appealing to her than seeing a gp about her mental health. You are also welcome to access this service of course - caring for folks with complex mental health needs can be really difficult, and you don't deserve to go through it alone. 

It sounds like this situation has become incredibly stressful, and whilst we can plant seeds of hope/show folks the door, they have to make that choice to go through it, and seek support.