Hi all,

Thanks for welcoming me to the community.

I really need some advice. I live in South Africa with my fiance (proposed on Tuesday - hoorah! ). We're having a bit of a problem. His mom has come to visit us from another country and she's just not right.

He warned me before that his mom has bipolar but didn't go into too much detail. For the first few days while here she was fine, we sat up late chatting, danced in the lounge and just got on like a house on fire. It was wonderful! About five days in, however, things began to change. It started with her not wanting to drink anything but sterilised water and no one else could open her water. That evening (the Friday) she woke us up in the night needing to make a phonecall. She phoned them while in our room and had an ordinary, 2 minute conversation and wondered out again. A few hours later she burst in again saying she couldnt sleep in her room and wanted to sleep on the floor of ours. She slept facedown without a mattress on the carpet.

The next day she was worse. She danced in the lounge for about an hour, staring out the window, changing all the lyrics of the beach boys to religious words ('Help me God, help me get these things out of my head'). We took her to a wine farm and she brought odd things out of the house (like a towel) even though she didnt need it, and was confused about it later.

At the wine farm she kept getting frustrated if things didnt go her way (like she couldnt have the wine she wanted) and on the drive there and back she moaned constantly at my fiance for driving so fast (when he was driving so incredibly slowly) and made us listen to the same CD over and over. At one point she threatened to jump out the car and then cried for a while. Then suddenly was fine again.

I can see in her face she is not herself. On Sunday we took her to the waterfront but before that she had to write a list of everything she had done since being in SA (my fiance's sister believes this is because she thinks she is being poisoned as it went into great detail about food and drink and who had managed it - apparently the being poisoned fear is a common one with her). At the Waterfront she got quite mean, telling her daughter that she could see up her dress and it was disgusting and that her and I were going to get wrinkles cos we smile too much and that her daughter walks funny etc. Eventually she completely freaked out and shouted at us all to get away from her. You could see she was actually petrified of us.

In the car on the way home she eventually told me and my fiance that we sound just like his father and his new wife (who she doesnt like) and he got very irritated and we went home.

Apparently she has been diagnosed as bipolar and has medication, but she refuses to take it, saying it's not her, it's her kids.

I want to know, does this sound like bipolar behaviour to you? Or is it more? Also, if someone won't take their meds, how should we be behaving towards her and also, when she does go back, do you think it is safe for her to fly?