Does anything work?

My husband’s delusions come and go. He has phases in which he acts mostly normal. Then he will have a phase in which his delusions emerge and get worse. During these times, he believes my comments have other meanings than what I am actually saying. He reads so much criticism and negative meaning into what I say, and it’s not accurate. He had a severe episode about a year ago, in which he truly believed his ex-wife and her new boyfriend were stalking him. Even when I printed out her obituary, to show she was dead and couldn’t be stalking him, he didn’t believe it. I gave him a printout with the contact information for mental health with our insurance, and told him he should get this checked out. I told him his brain was playing tricks on him, and that he really should get it checked out.
Interesting, he never brought up the ex-wife again. I think he FINALLY started considering that something might be wrong with his brain.
Now, I think he has a lot of delusions, but doesn’t talk about them for fear I will thinK he’s nuts and leave him. I don’t think there’s a lot of effective help for this problem, but medication and therapy could possibly keep a lid on it.
You have my sympathies and best wishes.

In reply to the thought that maybe saying that you should both seek a mental health evaluation so they don’t feel they’re the only one that needs it: “I sort of wish I did go though because then he would have to consider that if my MH was OK and his Dr says his isn't, there might be some truth in it.”

For what it’s worth, I did that. A soon as the Dr. began to lean towards my husband being the one that needed to get help, my husband began to suspect that I had paid the Dr. to make that prognosis.
My patience was so low by then that I snapped back, “gee, what Dr. wouldn’t accept twenty bucks to make such a deep diagnosis?!?!” ... Then I got what I thought would be a brilliant idea. I said,”hey, why don’t you go and make an appointment with a psychiatrist on your own for a private evaluation? Even better go outside of our insurance network so that I have absolutely no way of knowing who it is and therefore totally unable to talk to them or try to bribe them into making a “false diagnosis”... Bingo! He did just that! A few weeks later he said that the Dr. said that I would have to accompany him to get the results. He seemed excited ... But not for long... once the Dr. started leaning toward the obvious diagnosis which was “delusional disorder- jealousy type” he became angry and said,” I don’t care what anyone says, I KNOW (inserted my name here) BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE... blah blah blah”. This was the beginning of the very end of our marriage. We have been divorced 14 years. Our 4 daughters are now all grown and I have been remarried for 7 years. We have a very cordial relationship, mostly because of our children and future grandchildren. Life is good, but I often think if I could have done more for him. He was the love of my life and that remains in your heart forever. Good luck and God bless. Beautiful Mind.