Hi. I am wondering is a contacting a social worker might help with my situation but I am afraid to get the county involved because the person I live with will just lie. I think I will probably get the blame for things she did since it would be mostly my word against hers.

It's hard to explain concisely, but I have been living with an adult that I believe has more than one mental illness. She lives in complete squalor, piling trash on the floor and kitchen counters to avoid walking a few feet to a waste basket. Her bedroom is piled with so many years worth of trash and dirty laundry that it is infested with mice and she hasn't been able to reach her closet for over a decade.

I do my best to keep the rest of the house clean, but it has gotten harder and harder to keep up because she just throws things on the floor after she has used them and they get soiled with all sorts of gross substances. When she gets packages, she throws the boxes on the floor and loses her temper every day while tripping over empty boxes. I know she has money anxiety disorder on top of it all because she gets into rages about money. She works on the computer while her trash and leftover food pile up around her. She refuses to do anything that can't be done from a computer other than getting food from the kitchen. After leaving a mess long enough, she becomes convinced that I made the mess and she calls me a liar/hypocrite/narcissist if I try to get her to pick it up.

Lately, the mice from her bedroom have been spreading to the kitchen and I have to spend so much time keeping the kitchen clean that I can't clean the parts of the house where I work. All my tools and work supplies are soiled by mice. No matter how many mice I kill, I can't exterminate the ones that hide in her bedroom and keep having babies in her inaccessible closet (I tossed some mouse poison in there a few days ago). I can't do my own job until I get my workspace clean, but if I pressure her to help clean the house or clean her room, she threatens to leave me to starve because she makes more money than I do right now.

One of the times she threatened me was when I tried to get her to pick up used sanitary napkins that she piled against the bathroom wall. I recently had to pick up another big pile of it myself. She will fill up a wastebasket and then start leaning the stuff against the wall because she thinks it counts as "in the trash" so long as the pile does not touch the floor. Then once it spills over to the floor, she stops trying to maintain the pile and just starts throwing the used stuff on the floor or making new trash piles around the bathroom. I can only persuade her to take out her feminine hygiene trash 1-2 times a year even though I remind her to do it nearly every week. She gets mad that I tell her to do it and leaves it deliberately to show me who's boss.

So I was wondering if contacting a social worker could force her to clean up after herself or force her to get a mental health assessment without the sordid details of our personal lives getting into public court records? I'm afraid my sister will just lie and say the mess in the house is my fault and no one will believe me.

My sister is good at acting like a nice person among friends and acquaintances, but in private she has a violent temper and yells and cusses while doing ordinary tasks. She followed our parents' example in telling people I am crazy and stupid so I don't have confidence that a social worker will believe me if my sister lies and says I made the house dirty. The only proof I have is that my bedroom is clean while hers is filled with mouse poop. The house is so dirty that I am now keeping my toothbrush in my room, even though I an actively cleaning the rest of it every day.

So what would happen if I tried to get a social worker to force my sister to get mental health evaluation and treatment? Will this matter remain confidential? I am afraid to get the county involved because I am so behind on housework and yardwork that I know there are things not up to code and no one will believe that I try to do it all by myself. I co-own the property and can't afford to live elsewhere. I believe what my sister has is ADHD because she has always been clumsy, reckless, and impulsive in addition to the issues with cleaning/hygiene and a very bad temper. Can someone explain if social workers handle this sort of proiblem and what would happen?