I'm dealing with having to help my mom who I believe has always suffered from some sort of "undiagnosed" mental imbalance. Her mood swings are severe and erratic. Sometimes, she's fine and the next minute she will go off and start to have a very severe mood swing. I've had to physically restrain her at one point when she became so enraged that she swung on me.  To keep her from hitting me, I had to hold her arms.

Every day is a challenge with her, because she's very hard to communicate with, due to her inability to want to do for herself or to want to learn and also due to her severe and constant mood swings. This is not just her having a bad day or a bad moment. This has been ongoing since I was very young and I'm now nearly 40 years old. For as long as I could remember she would yell, argue or bicker to get her point across, and actually that is how her and my step dad would communicate by yelling, arguing and fighting.  She would have violent mood swings and sometimes when they argued, she'd break things.  I still remember when she threw a glass bowl of food at my chest or when she was a beligerant alcholic and tried to choke me in my sleep.  I mentioned these things to bring up exactly how violent and flawed her mental state is.

Today I had to go with her to handle a discrepancy on her phone bill. So we arrive and approach the customer service desk, I typically do all of the talking, because 1) she never wants to, and, 2) her English is bad. I explain to the representative the issues regarding my mom's bill and the lady wasn't helpful and basically shrugged off adjusting the bill or even contacting the repair department for the static and buzzing noises in the phone line.

So we proceed to leave and I'm trying to tell my mom what I can do next to get her bill fixed and before I could finish my first sentence, she proceeds to talk cut me off. Then she started to get louder and goes off on a tangent, saying she didn't want to hear me. I needed her to let me finish what I was saying, because I was helping her. The whole way back while she's yelling, I continued to be calm and talk in a calm manner, while she was yelling. It's almost like she's possessed by a demon, because her mood swings are so up and down and just occur out of nowhere.

I need help! I had a slight break down today after dealing with her. Her mood swings are constant and I absolutely hate being around her. I find myself wishing I wouldn't have to be around her, because I don't like subjecting myself to the stress. On a weekly basis I have to help her and I walk on egg shells not knowing which side I'm going to get when dealing with her.

I was going through her list of medication after her last prescribed medication: Clonazepam (Klonopin), which is for panic attacks and I found a prescription for Zoloft, which I didn't know what it was for, but when I looked it up online, I found out it was used for depression and anxiety disorders. She hasn't been taking either prescriptions and I asked her about them and she said that the doctor prescribed them, but she didn't want to take them.

What can I do to get her to get evaluated? She has a stigma when it comes to psychiatrists and talking about her mental health and she truly doesn't acknowledge that she has a problem. I'm at my wit's end dealing with her, because I'm afraid of doing or saying something in the fit of anger after dealing with her trying to subject me to deal with her severe mood swings.