This is going to be long, as there is an important backstory to this. Please, if you’re willing to read this, I kindly ask you to read till the end. I will try to summarize it as well as I can:

My mother has been living alone for 4 years for the first time in her life. She is 44 now and has never lived alone before. She gave birth to my older sister at 16, to me at 22, so she basically cared for us all her life. She always only focused on us, never herself. For the past 4 years, she has increasingly been feeling like she‘s being watched and followed by the government, although there have never been any physical evidence of that (we've been talking about this with her for a very long time, we are quite sure that she is not actually being watched). She said she's been trying to get the public's attention to seek justice for whatever happened in the past (subjectively), which is why she started refusing food. She was already very depressed when we were children, but she never got medication nor went to therapy consistently. Of course, if you don't treat an illness, it just gets worse with time and unfortunately, she never had anyone to look out for her. She was never someone to be around people, she truly never had any friends or close relatives as me and my sister can remember, the only people she's been talking to for the past 20 years are us. It got much worse than we thought it ever could.

She started completely isolating herself around the beginning of 2020, but she would still go out to buy groceries, she made sure she had something to eat. She had her phone on flight mode for the past three years, so we could neither call nor text her. We went to her place everyday, hoping she would talk to us, but she wouldn't open or tell us to leave. However, I think it was fall 2020, my mother randomly left the country with no plan, no money, and in an extremely confused state. She bought a one-way train ticket to a neighboring country (all within Europe), with no place to stay. My sister and I found out three days later when she called us and was wandering aimlessly through the streets at night. My sister booked her an AirBnB so she stayed there for four more weeks to "be safe from the people following her". She had to come back eventually. She did not pay her electricity bill when she was gone, so of course they turned off her electricity. We told her multiple times we will pay the bill, she should simply give us the letter, but even that she's been refusing for months. So, she can't storage her food in the fridge, she can't cook, she has no lights, the heaters are not working and it's wintertime right now, so it's not exactly warm at her place right now. It's horrible, saddening and just unbearable to see she is doing that to herself and even though we try to help, she does not want to accept it.

So since she came back, she almost never eats. And I mean, she does NOT eat. She went on a hunger strike for five weeks, she didn't let my sister or me come to her place at all, both of us went there everyday with food and groceries, but she never opened. When I saw her once at that time, she was already so skinny you could see her bones through her clothes. I am not overexaggerating, it is at serious as it sounds. We tried anything we could think of, my sister called tons of therapists, doctors, counseling centers, and hospitals and explained them the entire situation, none of them could help or give us relevant advice. They only told us to call the police if our mother refuses to open the door, and that's the last thing we wanted to do, as this would scare her only more. It could have been too late anyday, though, so we really had to act. I don't know how long humans can last with no food at all, but she was beyond five weeks at this point, so we had to call the police. They got her committed into a mental hospital. It did not help her, it traumatized her even more, because she was forced to go although she did not want to (her life was at stake, though, so it was unfortunately necessary at that time). She stayed at a closed facility and we went there every single day, bringing her clothes, food and anything else she needed. We couldn't see her unfortunately due to Corona guidelines, but she was willing to talk to us on the phone again, she slowly started to trust us again. She was released after three weeks, as she started eating again, so she was out of life danger. Her doctor explained to my sister too how a mental hospital is not the right place for her, as she is completely clear and aware of what she is saying and doing.

So, she is home now, and it's slowly getting better, but it's still a very risky situation, she could die within a few days or weeks if no one looks out for her regularly. My sister sent an application of legal guardianship to become the legal guardian of our mother, e.g. if she then has a key to the house, we can always bring our mother food and we can make sure she always eats. Or we can then finally pay her electricity bill, so she can live normally again and cook and have the lights on when it's dark outside. My sister will probably get the legal guardian ID by the end of this week.
We have been going to our mother's place for the past eight days, every single day, and she did not open the door until today. She hasn't eaten anything again for at least 10 days. I have never seen a human being in a physical and mental state like this, and it is heart-wrenching to see my mother like this. She has always been like an angel for my sister and me, and seeing her suffer like this makes us mad at everything and the world. You know how people who suffer from starvation or famine have extremely sunken cheeks? Not just in the “skinny“ type way, but you can see this person has been lacking fundamental resources for quite a while!!! I have been researching the whole internet this entire evening for similar cases, or just to find pictures to find something similar to her, but there is literally nothing. Her state of being keeps me up at night, and even if we got her to eat today and got her enough food for the next 2-3 days (we'll be there everyday, anyway, hoping she'll open the door again), we need to come up with a long-term solution for her, she deserves to finally feel free and live a healthy and good life. Once the legal guardianship is through, we'll be able to help her with anything physical, however, we have severe difficulties fully understanding her viewpoint and communicating basically anything to her, as she does not accept anything that does not match her opinion or perceiption. So, talking only helps if one is really calm and collected, and if one ignores most of what she says so she doesn't enter a spiral of these thought patterns. And keeping a calm and collected manner as two daughters, in a situation like this, for hours straight, is quite challenging, and, as I've realized today, it's a heavy f***ing mental burden for my sister. No matter who, no one could stand their ground against someone who is not willing to communicate or compromise. So, if anyone has any idea or even a thought of an idea what approach could help so our mother regains trust, or if there are any things we can do to help her. It is a really urgent situation, and besides a lawyer, we don't have any support tbh, so any kind of advice is so much appreciated. Thank you truly if you made it through all of this. I appreciate your time and attention. Have a good rest of the day/night.