Host with possible mental health issues

[Roshni5]

Hi all, my mom and I stayed with a 78 year old elderly person who lives by herself for 2 nights in Santa Fe. At first she seemed very eager and overly friendly in her style of hospitality but we went along and engaged with the host in her stories and questions. She gave us a tour of her beautiful house, talked about her art and her travels and appreciated her intention to make us feel comfortable and welcome in her house. we were friendly with her and chatted in the morning and evening for a few minutes. We were to leave this morning and she comes upto me at 7:20 am and says why are you mad at me and why is your mom mad at me. We tried to reassure her that nothing was amiss, we had enjoyed the 2 night stay and shocked where she got that impression from. We tried to clarify what had exactly happened from her perspective and she said my mom had woken up in the morning to yell at her in her room. My mom and I were sleeping up until 10 minutes before the incident and my mom had just showered and I was getting ready to go in to the bathroom to get ready. We tried to explain to her that we really appreciated her efforts to take care of us and my mom admired her for all the art and hosting on Airbnb and working so hard considering she said she had survived cancer and she found it hard to live by herself as her only son is abroad. In our conversations she had mentioned she slept poorly and sometimes forgot things. I work very closely as a nurse with older adults and have great compassion for the travails of aging and illness. But, to experience it while being a guest and being accused of something we didn’t do is deeply disturbing. I don’t want her to lose her business on Airbnb as that would greatly add stress to her situation, but I also want to be honest, compassionate and transparent so other guests don’t find themselves in this situation or something worse. I reached out to Airbnb help by email, haven’t heard anything, but any suggestion on how I navigate this would be welcome. My heart breaks for our host, she is trying so hard to make a go and she does work really hard to make her home comfortable for guests, but this type of behavior where we couldn’t really rationally reason with her and instead we are blamed for is also unsettling.

[Letti0]

@Roshni5  Boy this is a tough one to help with. She obviously needs the money, but it's not fair to guests to be placed in the situation you were. Maybe you could place a call to the non emergency local Police Dept explaining the situation and ask them to do a Well Check Visit and they can see if she has family to step up to help her, she should not be living alone any longer it's not safe for her. This is about all I've got for you now. I will keep thinking about this sad situation though to see if I can come up with any other thoughts. Hopefully AirBnB maybe able to help, but I doubt it.

[Lisa723]

That is a tough one. I'm not sure what I would do, but reporting her to airbnb is probably appropriate.

[Christine615]

Early signs of Alzheimber's? I have a friend going through this right now. Beautiful home, but having anger and confusion issues that come out of the blue. Turns out to be a problem with the dosing on her medications. But in other cases it could be early signs of dementia which comes and goes in the beginning and isn't always apparent.

Does she have other reviews? I would flag for Airbnb but worry there might be something long term going on at her age.

[David4322]

I just chose to cancel my booking with a host who sent me some very strange (almost childlike) inappropriate messages after she agreed to change my dates. I used to teach people with mental health challenges and this seems like some kind of personality disorder.

Trying to decide if I should flag her.

[Ana1136]

@David4322 If you worked with people with mental health challenges you should know that you can't diagnose someone of having them just because of one or a few messages. Even doctors need proper assessment and tests that are conducted through many conversations with the patient. So I think it is inappropriate to flag her just because you THINK she has some mental illness. 

[David4322]

You misunderstood my post. Everyone who sends abusive messages should be flagged. I was considering having more patience for the host and NOT flagging them because I believe in being more patient with people struggling with mental health problems.