My mum is mentally unwell.

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My mum abused alcohol for 17 years when I was a child. Now I am 25 but we are still in contact (despite her becoming so abusive I had to leave and go into supported housing).

She has been getting very paranoid, accusing me of things I've never done or intended to do.

She makes things up and believes them with absolute conviction.

She is very emotionally labile.

Her spelling and grammar used to be great, but now her text messages are filled with obvious errors.

She forgets things very easily, more so than ever before.

Her cognition is declining to the point that it took her 45 minutes to work out how to upload a file to Dropbox, and it took her 30 minutes to work out how to switch her phone off. I have to explain things to her in simple language, otherwise she starts getting into an emotional hissy fit and says "it's too complicated!" repeatedly. Before she gave birth to me, she attained a decent mark in a BSc Economics degree, so this decreasing cognitive reserve is unusal for her.

She gesticulates so much that it just looks bizarre. She was always very NT but this gesticulation is terrifying.

I looked up Wernicke Korsakoff syndrome but my mum does not have any of the physical manifestations.

I don't know if she is entering early dementia.

Can anyone advise me on what I can do about this? She still has Mental Capacity so I cannot do anything under the Mental Capacity Act or the Mental Health Act (such as request to the social services for her to have a Mental Health Act assessment). (I live in the UK so US laws don't apply here)

I often get feelings and symptoms similar to what your mom describes, particularly this idea that everything is just far too difficult.

My advice would be to simply show as much empathy as humanly possible and try to understand where she is coming from. I know I have really hurt people before when I have gotten paranoid or manic. So sometimes it is difficult to feel empathy. However, I can tell you with absolute certainty that criticizing her and judging her will only make things worse.

Paranoia can sometimes get to the point where it is intractable. I know this from experience. If it gets to the point where it's intractable, medication or hospitalization might be necessary.

Thinking about this more, those symptoms of taking 45 minutes to upload to a dropbox etc. sound very severe to me.

You will probably need to get some extra help. It will be virtually impossible to "fix" her on your own. Unfortunately, if she doesn't want help I don't know how you can force it on her. Maybe someone else here has ideas.

That does sound scary. If possible, see if you can get other family members or loved ones to help you.

I'm young(ish), and don't even know what dropbox is.

PS: Don't really care either...maybe if you don't care, 45mins is what ends up happening.
...and if you really don't care, you look for matches to light the computer.

PPS: I still don't have facebook.

Thanks. I'll be talking to my care coordinator about this soon.