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Fellow caregiver here, a few pointers

1. join r/psychosis
   
   
2. join https://www.nami.org/Find-Support and show up at family support groups
   
   
3. read https://www.amazon.com/dp/0967718937/
   
   
4. determine if she has or doesn’t have insight (knows she’s sick). If she doesn’t, you’ll have to go the long way around
   
   
5. everything revolves around sleep. If she gets more, she will get better. If she gets less, she will get worse.
   
   
6. don’t focus on information, what she says doesn’t matter, except how it tells you her mood. What you say doesn’t matter except how it affects her mood. If her mood improves, she’s more likely to sleep.
   
   
7. laws vary by state. In most states, if you can’t get someone without insight more sleep, they will get worse until they go homeless.
   
   
8. without insight she can’t see her brain is the reason so she explains pain as the result of actions of other people - you. This is why she hates you. To get her trust, apologize for everything. She needs hope that things will get better, that you’ll stop trying to interfere.
   
   
9. once you have trust, focus on calm. Take away surprises including people who won’t learn above. Once she has trust and calm she can sleep and once she can sleep she can heal.
   
   
10. the only drugs that can help psychosis are anti psychotics and/or something to induce sleep. It may not be possible to get her them without commitment and it may not be possible to commit her (see 7). If you get them and she won’t take them, go back to trust and sleep.
    
    
11. her fear is an energy machine. Find ways to release that energy. Listening without contradicting helps. So does exercise. Any activity she enjoyed before is a good place to start.

While they do treat the symptoms of certain PDs, medications do not treat the causes in any manner whatsoever. If you want to treat the causes -- as well as save yourself from the side-effects of long-term use of meds, please see the following:

I am a recovering borderline. I was severely abused as a small child and grew up with a nasty case of C-PTSD pretty much like every other borderline I have ever run into (which is now over 100). And what I learned from that (continuing) experience is that borderlinism is a compendium of personality disorders polarized along a basic schism of fear of abuse (and needing to push others away) vs. fear of being alone and helpless.

I am not responsible for my disease, but I am responsible for my recovery. This is how I did it:

1. Medications, but only if really needed to get one stabilized enough to do the next six things on this list: After wasting a lot of time with people who didn't know what they were doing, I found a board certified psychopharmacologist in my area by using the clinician locator on the Psychology Today website. I learned the hard way that getting psych meds from a GP or primary care doc can be useless or even risky. Psych diagnoses, meds and med interactions are just too complex now for most GPs and primary care docs.
   
   
2. Support Groups: I got into AA, MA and/or NA because I was using intoxicants to try to cope with my emotional pain; and ACA, EA and CoDA... where I found others in similar boats who had found explanations, answers and solutions.
   
   
3. Books and academic, professional websites including Mayo Clinic, WebMD, NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health), NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), and even Wikipedia (when everything asserted is solidly documented with citations). Strongly recommended because they all understand the upshots of having been stressed for too long, including complex PTSD which is pretty likely what you have: Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Patricia Ogden, Bruce McEwen, Sonya Lupien and Robert Sapolsky. I would also get a copy of Alex Chapman & Kim Gratz's excellent book. Accurate information is power.
   
   
4. Psychotherapy: I still use Ogden's SP4T as the interoceptive 9th of the 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing to manage any "time bombs" that turn up, but had good results over the years with several of the CBTs including REBT, collegiate critical thinking, CPT, and schema therapy, as well as DBT, MBCT, ACT, MBBT, MBSR, EMDR, HBCT, SEPt, and NARM.
   
   To find the clinicians who know how to use these psychotherapies, I looked here, and here, and here, and (for DBT specialists in particular) here. If you dig a little on each page, you will be able to see which therapies they use. Then interview them as though they were applying for a job with your company. Most MD / psychiatrists, btw, are not therapists themselves (they are medication specialists), but can refer you to those who are, and are often -- though not always -- excellent sources of referral.
   
   
5. Mindfulness Meditation: After trying several methods, I found the Vipassana-style. (For a lot of people with anxiety, this stuff handles anxiety chop chop. Not sure about depression. Many of the modern psychotherapies for anxiety are actually based on it now.)
   
   
6. Therapy Workbooks: I got a lot of lift-off by using inexpensive workbooks like these, and these, and these, and these.
   
   
7. Moderate exercise: Because it is the single healthiest of the distractions one can use to yank oneself out of the paradigm for a while... and it can help to "massage" the brain so that it responds more quickly to psychotherapy.

http://cogbtherapy.com/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-exercises

https://psycheducation.org/treatment/psychotherapy-for-bipolar-disorder/free-online-computerized-cbtcognitive-behavioral-therapy-for-depression/

This last link is for a CBT workbook with pretty good reviews https://www.amazon.com/dp/1936128306/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_dVgBDbSNRMDNW

I hope you find something that works for you <3

I read this book and it gives you a great holistic understanding of bipolar https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1421412063/ref=mp_s_a_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1485316697&sr=8-9&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=bipolar

Also, the depression bipolar support alliance website has some helpful info as well. http://www.dbsalliance.org/site/PageServer?pagename=help_family_center