REMEDIES OFFER AID TO THOSE WITH MENTAL PROBLEMS

She's in her early 60s, but appears much older. Her gray facade is haphazardly put together. She has the glazed eyes of someone who has spent the past 10 years searching for her life.

Until 10 years ago, none of the members of her extended family had an inkling anything might be wrong. She'd been a housewife who raised four children. A couple of them were handfuls, but the oldest two were out on their own by the time the rest of the family followed her husband's job to another state.

During a year there, the first crack in her shell appeared. The first thing the family back in Missouri heard, she'd checked herself into a hospital.

"She knew she was sick," says her sister.

But the woman's husband somehow got her released from the hospital, even though she wanted to stay. At least that's the story the extended family tells.

When her family moved back to Cape Girardeau, the problem became obvious. She stayed in bed for days at a time. When she did go out into society, her behavior was at times bizarre and continues to be.

When her mother leaves town, she goes to her house, takes all the photographs from the walls and hides them.

She doesn't believe her mother is her mother, and has made trips to her birthplace to discover who she really is. She calls her mother "aunt," her husband "uncle."

He quit his job, ostensibly to take care of her. Early on, he slept outside her bedroom door to prevent her from leaving, the woman's sister says.

Sometimes the woman unplugs all the appliances in her mother's house. A few weeks ago she cut one of her mother's telephone lines.

Store clerks who know the woman's sister call her from time to time to tell her that her sister's in their store acting strangely.

Sometimes she goes into their back rooms as if she works in the store.

Sometimes the police have been called.

Once the tires of her car became wedged in the railroad tracks that used to line Independence street. She got out of her car and walked away.

For awhile, she became very religious. But that faded away like her attempts at conversation.

One day she called her sister and said, "I want you to be a sister to me."

Her sister took her to see a psychiatrist, who said the woman's behavior was caused by a chemical imbalance that could be controlled with drugs.

But when the psychiatrist said he would need to talk to her husband, the woman began trying to push her sister out of the room and finally fled.

"When I got out to the car, it was as if it never happened," the sister said.

The sister and a brother have tried to get help for her, but when they talk to her husband about it he angrily threatens to sue them or have them arrested unless they butt out.

They think perhaps he hasn't gotten help for her because of the high cost of psychiatric treatment or institutionalization, or maybe because he can't stand the idea of putting her in an institution at all.

They are afraid he can do what he says, and don't know what else they can do to help her.

When one of her sons was asked to plead with his father to get help for her, he said: "It's too late."