Hi All,

I am new and hopefully somebody can show some light to me. My sister has problems that she won't admit she is having it. My sister is an attractive and shy person, but I think she has a very low self-confidence and thinking everybody wants to take advantage or to hurt her. She was bullied at her previous work. She is a survivor of a race riot happening in our home country and I believe it's one of the roots to her problems.

My sister thinks that somebody is entering her house. It started 9 years ago and she thought the person was just being snoopy. It stopped when we lived together, even then she sometimes thought I stole her food. It started again after I moved out and it's getting worse.

She does not think the intruder come to steal her money or physically hurt her, but to eat, take a shower and mess up her house. She counts every food she eats, labels them. She becomes obsessive compulsive. She purposely not dusting the house to see if there is finger printing. She put her house for sale last year and it didn't go. She blamed the fail to the intruder who messed up her house before showing (but later clean after the showing). She put signs in the house for the intruder that he will go to hell, etc, etc.

She had doubt before about this thought but now she is convinced that somebody is in her house. She has been moving to 3 different places (not because of this) but come to believe that the same person keeps entering her house, even though she moved 20 miles away. We (me and my other sisters) confronted her, offered to set video camera, hire a detective, ask physic, you name it, but she doesn't want to do it. She lives in denial. She did put little video camera and nothing happened. Her excuse was the intruder knew where the camera was and avoided it. She has explanation/reason for every events, but no proof when we ask for it.

Now she is looking for a place even quieter, deeper and further from anything. She is a 42 yo single person and we want her to be socializing or at least have one or two friends and not all alone. We want her to go to a Psychologist, but she does not want it. I even offer to pay for the treatment. We all afraid if we don't do anything now, this thing will eat her slowly and damage her mental health completely.

How can we help her and make her to go? I am desperate for help. We don't know where to start. Any advise will greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Sounds like she is paranoid as well as obsessive compulsive. She may also be schizophrenic or something. Maybe tell her that YOU need the psych and ask her to go along with you to get her started. When she says her house got messed up have you ever seen it 'messed up'? Maybe try to find some way to prove what this messed up is a result of or if it is a figment of her imagination. Could she be messing it up and blacking out in remembering or something? Maybe set up a camera in her house and tell her it is to catch the intruder and then check it as much as possible to see what she is talking about.

Yes that does sound like schizophrenia, a false belief usually bizarre, that the person has, that can't be dispelled by reasoning