Schizophrenia Experiences and Suggestions?

Jagercola asks: "My sister was recently diagnosed with Schizophrenia. It's a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease that we don't know a lot about. The movie, A Beautiful Mind, paints an accurate picture of how the disease affects someone in a best case scenario. I would like the vast audience here to help me understand the disease through experiences and that it might help me aid my sister. If you know someone how has the disease, how has it affected your and their life? How have you been able to cope with it? What are the long term implications for quality of life?"

A friend of mine was scizofrenic

He got gradually worse, to the extent that we didn't really notice. First of all he was wierd to begin with. Second, he was a horny fucker, no doubt. We used to say that he would fuck anything (not anyone). Third, we were partying a lot. Not to mention that we smoked weed on a quite so daily basis.

All in all, we were used to weirdness from his this guy. It took some time until we figured.

So when he started saying that "he could see that those girls wanted him", from hundred meters distance or so, nothing less , he wasn't mental in our eyes, he was just horny and weird.

In the end his mother realized he needed help, and he agreed.

When he got committed, he was pretty much in his own delusional world. From his point of view, and he loves talking about this, so this is not speculation, he were held captive by agents trying to manipulate him. I am not kidding.

And he believed that he were part of a big syndicate smugling heroin, so he really couldn't talk to these agents. Which ofcourse were the people attending him at section 8.

He also believed he had raped, extremely brutaly, a not so little amount of young girls. He believed these agents were trying to tag this onto him, but he did not want to get caught. So he shut up as much as he could.

He also was manicly trying to control his own thoughts. Believe it or not, he thought that others could see what he was thinking, and he wouldn't want to embaress himself in front of others. After all he was quite a perv.

When I called him at the instituition, he talked to me somewhat refusingly. He believed I was in on the agent plot... You get the picture.

But with time and medication, he is returning more to his old self. It has taken a couple of years, but now we can hang out and have fun.

But recovery takes time. Just a few months ago when talking to us, he realized for the first time that people actually cannot see his thoughts.

And he still isn't entirely customed to "being sane" as he himself put it, so it happens he makes a few bloopers. But all in all he is recovering quite well now.

If I hadn't known that he had been committed, and hadn't seen him since he was, I wouldn't see the difference.

If you are lucky and get good treatment, all you need is patience.

Hope this helps in some ways. Feel free to ask any other things if you like.

Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic

My roommate and best friend became schizophrenic a few years ago. Yes, that first period is very strange. It's so easy to ignore warning signs because you don't want to accept that your friend is seriously mentally ill.

If your friend says something very odd, instead of letting it go with a "whatever", ask him a question about it. When they answer the question "So how are the neighbors watching you?" with the response "With reflections." (which happened to me) Then it's time to get some help.

-B

Re:Interesting related question.

First of all, I am not a psychologist.

This is a tough situation for a lot of reasons. You obviously don't want to impose on him or his rights, which I respect. However, If he is not capable of making rational decisions about what is real and what is not, I think the internet would be a bad place for him if unsupervised. There is too much false information out there, and the internet requires people to understand that some of what is on it is not real. My inclination would be to have him surf the web with someone he trusts completely, and will be able to help him understand what's real and what isn't. Obviously, this depends a lot on the seriousness of his mental illness as well.

It sucks because removal from the "real world" could have ill effects on him as well, but sometimes a judging the lesser of two evils is needed.

Again, this post is all opinion based

I wish you and your friend the best of luck.

commonly seen

People who are diagnosed as schizophrenic are often characterized as a bit "different," even before diagnosis. Granted, it's always easy to say that in retrospect, but there are often subtle signs before the first actual psychotic "break."

It also sounds like your friend was in the right age group... Schizophrenia usually pops up in the late teens/early twenties in most men (and women get it a few years later than that, but usually before age 40). New-onset psychosis in an elderly person should prompt a search for a medical reason... drugs, infection, intracranial bleed...

Your friend had some very classic signs of schizophrenia, probably paranoid subtype. He was delusional and paranoid. He also exhibited "Thought Broadcasting," which is when the patient thinks others can read their thoughts.

Curiously, your friend also exhibited some signs of mania... a component of Bipolar Disorder. In fact, his psychosis and other symptoms (hypersexuality, racing thoughts) are also consistent with a Bipolar patient in the manic phase (manics are the most dangerous of all psychiatric patients).

Truthfully, he could easily have been given either diagnosis... but these are the cases where you need a trained psychiatrist to better-delineate the nature of the disorder.

You also make an important point: medications usually help, and these are life-long disorders. The most common reason I get schizophrenic patients in my ER is because they're off their meds. If you hang out with your buddy enough, and witness a few exacerbations of his condition, you may learn to recognize behavioral cues that will tip you off that he's "off his meds."

Good luck... and encourage him to keep taking his anti-psychotics.

Re:commonly seen

You're right the description given sounds just as likely to be mania (with the associated paranoia) then skizophrenia. Before I went around encouraging someone to take their anti-psychotics I would make sure they had tried lithium and the other medicines used to treat mania.

While anti-psychotics are the only choice for those truly far gone unfortunatly they have very unplesant effects. They cause permenent brain damage (the new atypical anti-psychotics aren't as bad) can cause permanent facial ticks and other issues. Also they often cause extreme depression and those taking them find marijuanna is the only thing which makes them content.

I find it disturbing that people are happy to tell individuals they have never met that they need to be taking their anti-psychotics. This reveals one of my basic disagreements with most of the psychiatric community. Most psychiatrists (conciously or uncouncisly) seem to put as their first priority the normalcy of their patient. Perhaps they believe normalcy is equivalent to good but this simply isn't always true.

Having had both depressive and psychotic episodes myself I would rather be commited and psychotic then sane and sufficently depressed. To be fair this would have to be a fairly extreme depression but this really is a choice each person needs to make for themselves. If an individual decides he doesn't want to take his anti-psychotics anymore that should be his choice (although he should alert care providers).

fair enough

though my exhortation to keep taking his medication is based on the empirical observation that they appear to have worked for him... ala the poster's description of his clinical improvement.

Your description of feeling better off your medication is common... and dangerous. Bipolar patients often feel better off their medication, particularly when they're entering a manic phase. They feel GREAT... I've had them tell me they feel like God. They're often grandiose (obviously), don't need to eat or sleep, and can be very hypersexual (I've seen some of these patients masturbate continuously for hours and hours). Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there... some manics will continue to progress to the point of raving, psychotic madness. Some develop so much psychomotor agitation that they require intubation and IV sedation to prevent rhabdomyolysis.

Like meth/crack abusers/ODs, manics have been known to successfully fight a half-dozen police officers... then drop dead in the back of a patrol car (the human body is capable of a lot more than most people realize... manics are capable of tremendous exertion, and will fight, fight, fight. Exert yourself long enough, and you can dig yourself into a very deep metabolic hole... sometimes so deep that you die as a result).

You can stop your medication... but untreated schizophrenics and bipolars commit suicide, get arrested, etc at a very high rate. It's your choice, but that's a cold comfort to your family visiting you in prison or a funeral home. Choose wisely... somebody out there probably loves you, and would miss you if you were gone.

Re:fair enough

A quick summary of my point would be this. We need to be carefull what we mean when we say a medication is working for a particular individual. My point is simply that 'working' should reflect bettering the patients overall quality of life and not just making them a functioning member of society. Since anti-psychotics have so many detrimental effects even if they fix the symptoms they should only be used if every other medication has been tried and failed.

So what if a person masturbates for hours or does other crazy things. So long as they are commited and under medical supervision so they aren't causing problems to other people. I wasn't advocating that individuals behave irresponsibly and simply willy nilly stop taking their medicines. I was suggesting that patients should make the informed choice of whether life on or off the medications (with all the consequences or being commited then if they are a danger to others) is better for them.

MOD PARENT DOWN

Approaching medication for the mentally ill as "optional" is a terrible, terrible idea. I am not advocating legally requiring anyone to take their medication. However, any therapeutic regime or medical advice that takes the point of view that this medication is optional or need only be taken intermittently is horribly irresponsible.

I speak from experience. A member of my family suffered episodes of bipolar disorder requiring several hospitalizations. A period of a few painful years and she stopped taking her medication but seemed okay. She was occasionally difficult to live with, but functional.

Flash forward ten years or so. A sudden, weeklong descent into mania was capped with psychotic delusions. Under delusions that the devil was after her, she ended up stabbing a family member in the chest with a kitchen knife while they slept (no permanent injury resulted, miraculously). This all happened so quickly... there simply wasn't time to get help. She'd seen a doctor already and begun taking an antipsychotic, but there wasn't nearly enough time for it to take effect.

Consequently, several years of her life were wasted in institutions even though, with medication, she almost immediately returned to the most functional I've ever seen her in. If you say you'd rather live in one of them than be depressed outside of them, I seriously question whether you've ever visited an institution. They are not nice places. I've been in them a lot in order to support my relative.

The meds might make you feel different. You may feel "off". Work with your doctor. Find one that works for you. You will get better acclimated to it. Frequently bipolars mistake the absence of mania for feeling "dulled". The thing to remember is: you are not the best judge of whether you need to take your meds or not. Your doctor is.

To the original poster: I'm sorry you and your sister will have to go through this. Some people respond very well to the medications; those medicines are getting better all the time. Hopefully your sister is one of those people. I would strongly suggest getting some counseling for yourself and the rest of your family, particularly if your sister turns out to not be one of the lucky ones. You will need it in order to be able to supply the support your sister deserves.

Re:commonly seen

Psychologists suck as evidenced by quotes from this article in The Sun (Baltimore, Maryland, page 7A) (21-May-2004)

HELD 6 YEARS WITHOUT CHARGES

"Nobody told us", official says.

A 45-year-old man remains locked up in a state hospital even though the charges against him were dropped six years ago.
When [he] protested and insisted that he should be released from his locked ward because the charges no longer existed, state mental health officials concluded he was delusional. The proof of his insanity, they said, was his repeated insistence that the charges had been dropped.
[Attorneys] with the Disability Law Center said they discovered [the man's] plight when they were doing a review of other cases. Noting that he had been confined for a long period, they began to look into the details of his case.
"When I heard about it, I though well, I'll just go and check it out," [the attorney] said, but when she got to the facility a cocial worker called her aside and offered a friendly warning.
"You shouldn't listen to him," the social worker told [the attorney]. "He's delusional."
In fact, [the attorney] said, every single thing that [the man] told her turned out to be true.
"He was telling the truth the whole time," said [the attorney],"But no one believed him." Though he has slurred speech because of [previous head injuries], [the attorney] said [the man] was "perfectly lucid."

-----

Just goes to show. Once the head-shrinks get their hands on you, for any reason, claiming to be normal is proof of your insanity and reason for them to hang on.

Re:what are some good books on the topic?

On Google Answers there was once a guy who asked a question that alarmed many of us researchers...

It started off innocently enough; a question on how to block radio waves in his home. An odd request, sure, but... Faraday cages and such were being talked about, and someone asked in passing if there was some particular frequency he wanted to stop...

He basically stated that there was a group near him that was using some sort of broadcasting equipment to play thoughts in his head in an attempt to brainwash him. He didn't know what the frequency was, so he needed to block everything.

In addition he stated that he had been recommended to various psychologists, but since they were a part of the group doing the broadcasting he could not accept their diagnoses. I think the final answer to that question was a detailed explanation of radio physics, faraday cages, and also a caution suggestion that radio broadcasts can't be received by the human brain directly. I hope that guy, whoever he is, found some help...

Re:commonly seen

"Schizophrenia usually pops up in the late teens/early twenties in most men (and women get it a few years later than that, but usually before age 40)..."

Hmm....that explains most of the women I've been seeing lately....

Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic

Schizophrenia is thought to be exacerbated by isolation and social separation. There is an early stage where the person will start having "odd" thoughts and beliefs, and they will feel apart from others, and become increasingly exclusively involved in their own affairs.

And it goes downhill from there.

A big issue is making sure that your sister, your friend feels like they can trust you, talk to you. It will keep them from feeling so lonely.

When I had a bad episode several years ago, it wasn't until after I was on anti-psychotics that I realized how little I was talking to anyone else. Much of the destabilization was at night, alone in my apartment with the voices and thoughts. Things start to make sense that really shouldn't.

A major component of schizophrenia is belief. The person is unable to not believe what they believe. Watch The Caveman's Valentine which is a fabulous movie anyways. The schizophrenia in that movie is pretty accurate in that in spite of all evidence to the contrary, he continued to believe his crazy thoughts. Tried to tone it down sometimes because he knew it didn't look good, but nevertheless believed.

Having someone to talk to can help provide a focus point, and keep some of the beliefs from cementing.

Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic

This sound very similar to what happened to me. During my wild and reckless youth, I "partied" all the time and it eventually lead to my demise of going insane. During this time, I believed that I was an android that was malfunctioning. I lived with my parents at the time and they lived in a nice housing development. To me, this housing development was an "experiment" and that men in lab coats monitored the activity behind the scenes.

The time when the sh!t hit the fan, I was working on my Commodore 64 (yeah, I still used a commie in 1991) and I was loading a game from a disk (load"*",8,1...or if you had and Epyx Fastload cartrige like me, c= key+runstop). While this was loading, lyrics to the Doors, "Light My Fire" was scrolling across the screen horizontaly and then would drop down when it got to the middle of the screen. I thought I was getting hacked or something.

Well, it was kinda freaking me out so I looked outside the window. There was a Chemlawn truck and a cable TV van parked on the street. There were men in lab coats in these trucks. I "knew" that they had hacked my C=64 and was broadcasting my thoughts on the screen. That's when I freaked out, and ran outside screaming my head off.

My parents took me to the hospital (they were part of the conspiracy) where the men in lab coats were there to fix my defective android self. I saw them cut me open and expose my internal wiring.

Eventually, I got sent to the psych ward where I got treated. 6 months, inpatient. I got slapped with the label of "Paranoid Schizophrenic." During this time, I was stoic, couldn't express myself. Couldn't talk, almost catatonic. I couldn't trust the men in labcoats and the way they were broadcasting my thoughts over the TV, radio, and hospital intercom(thought broadcasting). Of course they could do these things because they worked with the cable company.

Anyhow, moving forward...I eventually got better through treatment and medication. For the first three years after I was released, I was still paranoid and hallucinating. It's been a long and difficult road to trudge but today I am well and it's been great for the past several years.

Today, I still take medication and still see a doctor about once a year. The men in lab coats went away about 9 years ago as well, as the halluciniations. Today I live a normal life. I was admitted when I was 17 and today I am 30. I work a full time job in the IT industry (I've been at this job for over a year now...my previous job was during the dot com days and there was a time of unemployment because of the bubble/911...but that's a different story.), I'm married, I just had a baby boy a little over 2 months ago...

So yeah, I live a normal functional life. I could not be any happier! Yeah, there are times where I don't feel so well but those time are so much easier to cope with these days because of the treatment and experience I've gone through.

Hopefully this can help someone out.

deli-x

Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic

My mother was diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder when I was very young. With the right prescriptions and the regular intake, one can lead a relatively normal life. The impact that it had on myself and my siblings is that one really has to have check up and make sure that the medication is being taken at regular intervals.

The biggest impact, is now that everyone's up and moved out, someone from family must always stay in town to keep an eye on her. That also means being prepared to drop everything you're doing for about 24 hours during a breakdown. The legal system is a reactive entity. That means that one has a choice of either spending quite a bit of time attempting to get someone submitted based upon symptoms the legal system won't necessarily view as insanity or waiting for that person to hurt themselves or someone else. There's no clean method for dealing with someone who's stopping take their meds and is on that slippery slope to mental breakdown.

Oh, yea. In my experience, schizos are pretty crafty about hiding their lack of medicine intake.

Beautiful Mind Rather InAccurate

USA Today has an interesting article on the inaccuracies of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" [usatoday.com]. The film has been been noted for its praise of anti-psychotic drugs, and winds up being very much at odds with the actual facts of Professor Nash's life.

The brilliant mathematician stopped taking anti-psychotic drugs in 1970, and then slowly recovered over two decades. This is much more the rule rather than the exception. In ''undeveloped'' countries, nearly two-thirds of schizophrenia patients are doing fairly well five years after initial diagnosis; about 40% have basically recovered. But in the USA and other developed countries, most patients become chronically ill.

The outcome differences are so marked that WHO concluded that living in a developed country is a ''strong predictor'' that a patient never will fully recover."

Hollywood is known to never let facts get in the road of a good story. Or would the lack of drugs be a better story? It is also worth while to check out Psych Watch [blogspot.com] for various items about psychiatry going down the tubes, etc.

Excuse me

but there are several physicians (including myself) that post here regularly, and under our own accounts.

That said, you'd be wise to be wary of medical info from some of the ACs aroud here.

What would be really ironic

is if Slashdot posts this again tomorrow. :P

Just Remember...

Too many people confuse Schizophrenia with Multiple Personality Disorder. The two are related, but are not the same thing.

Re:Just Remember...

Actually, they are not related. Multiple Personality Disorder (more accurately known as Dissociative Identity Disorder) is a dissociative mental disorder. Schizophrenia is a very seperate classification of mental disorders. What cause schizophrenia and dissociative disorders is very different and the symptoms are very different.

Not only are the two not the same thing, they are COMPLETELY unrelated.

Re:Just Remember...

Shizophrenia means split personality, meaning a split between afect or expressed emtion and cognition or thought. So a person with Schizophrenia cannot connect emotion with thought. Not a good thing for a human being.

In fact there is no such thing as multipule personality disorder. They have never found a case study where the subject had no prioir knowdge of the movie "Two Faces of Eve."

Its the "3 Faces of Eve", and you can't forget Syble either. MPD exists as much as any other personality disorder does. Scizophrenia is an axis 1 criteria according to the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual) [amazon.com]. MPD is an axis 2 disorder. Schiz is a medical problem, mpd is a personal problem.

Schizophrenia is what people often think about when someone says that someone else is "crazy".

Re:Just Remember...

Homosexuality was in the DSM as a treatable psychological disorder up till 1973.

This is indicative of the trustworthiness of such things. Please...

Medicalizing everything is a specialty of psychology in general. Astrology has more hard fact in it than psychology does. At least we can look up and see the constellations and planets. Most of psychology rests upon a few semi-understood brain chemicals and the ethereal realm of consciousness which no one can define, but lots of people are manufacturing lucrative careers pretending to understand.

I sat in on an undergrad psych presentation at Lehigh a few years back and was amazed to hear one of the presenters talking about the 'blood/brain barrier'. It was the most logical, scientific thing i'd ever heard anyone say in a psych forum. Fluff is the norm.

If psychology is so effective, why do women go to shrinks and get drugs rather than undergo Freudian psychoanalysis? I've sat in on several sessions for an agoraphobic individual - with multiple shrinks, mind you - and saw no actual psychoanalysis attempted. The shrinks are drug dispensers, basically. Moreover, in many cases the drugs dispensed are inappropriate. Agoraphobia has no known treatment. So, therefore they load the patient up with stuff to zonk them out and not give two shits about the world or anyone living on it, like Xanax.

Read a few testimonial books on conquering agoraphobia in particular and you find that they basically tell people to 'overcome their fears, and just do what you are afraid to do'. Well, doh. I never would have figured that out. The amazing part is that this actually works...i've witnessed an agoraphobic become productive by being forced by circumstances to go out and get a job and function like a real mother.

Imagine that.

Ponder also, when was the last time you heard of someone being let out of a mental institution without being on semipermanent drug therapy?

The pro-shrink defense squad can go get stuffed, the truth is the truth.

Re:Just Remember...

Homosexuality was in the DSM as a treatable psychological disorder up till 1973.

I knew someone would bring that up. Also remember that women and minorities had specific laws against them in the US up until the 60s, so I guess we can pick and choose which laws are real and which are not (I do anyway:).

Medicalizing everything is a specialty of psychology in general.

Wrong. psychology is the study of behaviour, psychiatry is a medical field.

Re:Just Remember...

Homosexuality was in the DSM as a treatable psychological disorder up till 1973. I knew someone would bring that up. Also remember that women and minorities had specific laws against them in the US up until the 60s, so I guess we can pick and choose which laws are real and which are not (I do anyway:).

Your metaphor escaped you there.

To render it a bit more accurate: There have been laws until recently against minorities and women, so you can't really say "it's against the law, so it's wrong" as an absolute. And guess what... you can't. Ok, now back to the topic: the best resource is probably going to be support groups for families dealing with mental illness. I suspect your local hospital's mental health department will have such a group or at least a pointer on where to find one.

Re:Just Remember...

The sucess rate for so called "talking cures" is ~30% the sucess rate for drugs is ~60%.
I call bullshit - I'm pretty positive you're making those numbers up on the spot. This is an article [apa.org] about the efficacy of drugs versus therapy. What's more useful is the two therapies (drugs and psychotherapy) combined.

Also "talking cures can take years to reach that sucess rate, most drugs take weeks. Also "talking cures" are billed at $100 per hour, drugs, even expense ones are far far cheaper.

That might be true, about the drugs having an effect sooner - however, most psychotherapy is time-limited. Drugs often are prescribed for a lifetime. 24 weeks of psychotherapy once a week for an hour at $100 an hour begins to sound like a bargain in comparison to a lifetime of drugs. And more importantly, drugs have significant side effects.

Do you post linux questions on WebMD?

no, you don't.

Re:Do you post linux questions on WebMD?

I send them linux questions.

They don't post them.

Scary

Linux on the pacemaker - gives "kill -9" a whole new context

Re:Remind yourself and your family

A very nihilistic perspective.

What you are suggesting the submitter do is just accept that their lives are insignificant and forget about it. If everyone had that view, we would never have built any beautiful cities, there would have been no great art, and humans would be nothing animals, driven by base desire to satify their urge to eat, deficate, urinate, and procreate.

Further, this has NOTHING to do with schizophrenia which is the result of too much dopamine in the brain. There is superficially no difference between someone diagnosed with schizophrenia and someone who has taken too much cocaine or amphetamine. The first thing a doctor checks for when he meets someone who he believes to suffer from schizophrenia is whether or not they have used any stimulants or hallucinagens recently.

It has nothing to do with depression or sadness, this is a disorder that fundamentally affects how you perceive the world and how you think.

k5

Go to Kuro5hin. [kuro5hin.org] There's a number of fascinating, lengthy, relevant articles on the subject there.

Find out more

You should certainly read more about it (sorry I have no books to recommend). My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was a kid; he eventually committed suicide when the doctor decided to reduce his medication (a little too quickly apparently). Also since there is a genetic component to schizophrenia, you might want to investigate early symptoms and keep an eye on your kids. This website [narsad.org] would probably be worth taking a look at too.

Yes, find out more

Wow, who would have thought I'd see this on slashdot? It makes little sense to post this question here, but yet, it was posted. And I am reading it. Which is ... interesting, since my brother too was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a little over two years ago now. This thread shouts out to me to say something about it, but I find now that it is harder than it seems.

He's my twin brother, not identical, but still very much a kindred spirit of mine. We got along very well in our youths, and were each other's best friend for many years. But then, slowly, almost unnoticably, we began to grow apart. While I, in my own geekish, unassuming way, started to mature into at least a semblance of adulthood, he seemed to resist it, opting instead to retreat further and further into his own internal world.

His is truly a Beautiful Mind; he is brilliant in many fields, not least language and lingustics. But more often than not, his mind was incorrecly applied, with sad results. For instance, one long period of his life was mostly spent lamenting the fact that the world does not share a single language. It seemed a little funny to others, including me, of course, but to him it was no joke. He would truly suffer emotionally as a result of this and other obsessions.

When the 'crash' came, he had deteriorated quite badly. Although he never did drugs or alchohol of any sort, as is common with schizophrenics, he might as well have. He was unemployed and not in school, moping around the house (our parents' house, where the both of us still lived at the time). He would seldom go outside, and would sit inside his room listening to esoteric music and writing furiously on any scrap of paper he could find. This had been a long-time habit of his, and he was (and is) a brilliant writer, but we would soon find out that these latest writings of his were of a rather sinister nature. It was typical schizophrenic musings; his imagined conversations with a supernatural being who was leading him through some sorts of rites of power, through which he would realize his true spiritual potential. If only that had been true.

Like I said, it has been 2 years now, and the situation isn't much better than it was in the beginning. My brother is still in and out of institutions, heavily medicated, and inactive. He is, frankly, a shell of what he used to be, and we can only hope this will change ... someday. Yes, the film 'A Beautiful Mind' was truly a best-case scenario. Although my brother is probably not a worst-case scenario, he is pretty far from the almost-happy ideal portrayed in the film. He cannot control his fits in any rational manner.

Schizophrenia is not just seeing imaginary people. More often than not, that doesn't happen at all. Extreme, debilitating bouts of irrational, uncomfortable ideas, thoughts and feelings are more common, often followed by hallucinations of many sorts. Most of the time, it is things you cannot simply block out just by concentrating. The disease is hopelessly irrational, and it hijacks the brain completely. In fact, it becomes your brain, in a manner of speaking. How can you use your brain to supress something when it's your brain itself that needs to be supressed?

I know this isn't very comforting, but it is the truth. And, perhaps I myself will feel a little better after having shared this with the world.

God be with you

I'm sorry to hear of your trouble. I offer prayers for you and your sister.

Re:God be with you

I'm getting this second hand from my wife's oncologist, but there's a lot of evidence that positive thought by the patient has a significant effect on the treatment of cancer. A big contributor to positive thought is the knowledge that your friends and loved ones care. So when someone told my wife they were praying for her, even though I'm a stone cold athiest, I shut the fuck up. The last thing she needed to hear was "Prayer? That's superstitious crap. If they cared, they'd have brought you some cobalt-60". As far as I'm concerned, as long as you aren't foregoing proper medical care for some kind of faith healing, prayer can't hurt and almost certainly helps in some non-mystical way.

I don't know if it would help with schizophrenia or not. I don't know enough about how the body's healing mechanisms deal with mental illness. Still, food for thought.
-aiabx

Re:God be with you

I am a firm agnostic. As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to religion, I start by assuming everyone's wrong (even me).

With that in mind, they are starting to be scientific studies that show the power of prayer and how it helps. People who set out to disprove it, end up getting data that actually supports it.

I guess the bottom line is: Why degrade any form of positive support?

A Beautiful Mind...

That was an excellent movie, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it an "accurate picture". I also read the book and I don't know if I'd describe Nash's experience as a "best case scenario" - maybe it is, for that particular disease, but it didn't sound too good to me.

Re:A Beautiful Mind...

A Beautiful Mind is less accurate then Perfect Blue [imdb.com] or Paranoia Agent [animenewsnetwork.com]. Dont know why but Susumu Hirasawa does a very good (if some what chilling) depiction of schizophrenia.

Look to your local organizations

Try www.nami.org to start. It is an orginaztion for both family, friends and consumers. Also your local state office of Mental Illness can help get you resources. Mental Illnes is nothing to be embarressed about, it is a physical disease like any other disease.

Take the medication

A friend of mine in college was schizophrenic. He was fine as long as he took his meds and in fact I knew him about 6 months before I even knew he had the disease. Two problems. First, he occasionally liked to smoke pot and that seemed to interfere with his medication. Second, one of his symptoms was paranoia so if he missed a couple of doses (or smoked too much) he would start thinking the medicine was just there to control his mind, and he'd quit taking it - then would begin a weeks-long slide that would end with him becoming homeless and getting arrested for assault or vandalism. He would get violent so they would institutionalize him for a while and he would recover in a few weeks and get released, able to function normally again. If only I could have got him to quit smoking pot he could have held down a job and finished college. Last I heard he had moved back in with his parents and was doing fine because they made sure he took his meds.

TAKE YOUR MEDS, TAKE YOUR MEDS

The poster above CAN NOT overemphasize the rule: TAKE YOUR MEDS!

Schitzophrenics especially have a BAD habit of going off of their meds -- they'll take their meds, and because they feel better, they'll think they're cured. Then they'll stop taking their meds. Then they'll go batshit insane.

YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WILL HAVE TO HELP MONITOR THE MEDS. You will almost certainly not be able to trust your sister to stay on them, not for at least TEN years of her taking them, with the associated slides of her going off the meds.

I have an acquaintance who could not be trusted not to go off of the meds for literally 20 years after starting them.

Let me repeat: TAKE THE MEDS. DO NOT LET HER SELF-MONITOR. CHECK UP ON HER. TAKE THE MEDS. TAKE THE MEDS. TAKE THE MEDS.

I do not usually use caps this much, but it is that important. TAKE THE MEDS. MONITOR. TAKE THE MEDS TAKE THE MEDS TAKE THE MEDS.

Besides that, often times, the illness combined with the medication make it impossible to work. DO NOT EVER MAKE THE MISTAKE OF ASSUMING THIS CAN BE CURED. I know a couple who spent literally millions of dollars trying to avoid their kid having the stigma of having "schitzophrenic" on the record, and they refused to have her put on social security disability, etc. DO NOT PERMIT YOUR PARENTS TO MAKE THAT MISTAKE. If it looks like she's not going to be able to work, IMMEDIATELY start working on getting her on social security disability. It will pay a stipend and medical, which is one less thing your family will have to cover.

But most important, TAKE THE MEDS.

MAY YOUR PSYCHOTROPIC MEDS BURN IN HELL

The advice to "take your meds, take your meds," is utter and complete garbage. The only time I began to become better was when I stopped believing in meds and thrust my salvation and deliverance into the hands of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Re:MAY YOUR PSYCHOTROPIC MEDS BURN IN HELL

The only time I began to become better was when I stopped believing in meds and thrust my salvation and deliverance into the hands of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I just checked, my HMO doesn't cover prescriptions for that, even as a co-pay.

Close family member had it

He thought everyone was out to get him. In the end he was diagnosed with cancer and refused all treatment because he thought it was a plot against him. He sued several government agencies because he thought they were after him.

Best treatment is drugs which seemed to help somewhat. As far as coping watch what you say around the person.

Kuro5hin

There have been many stories on Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] by people with mental disorders. Take a look at Living With Schizophrenia [kuro5hin.org]. More recent, but not very relevant to the question is Living with Asperger's Syndrome [kuro5hin.org], also a fascinating read.

Meds, Meds, Meds.

All this depends on the severity and type of schizophrenia she has, and this advice only comes second hand, but:

It may take a long time for your sister's doctors to find the right combination of drugs and dosages to best manage her symptoms, but there is hope that eventually she can live a reasonably normal life.

However, it is very dangerous and sadly common that once her therapy starts working she'll feel so much better she may stop taking her meds, relapse, get remedicated, feel better, stop taking the meds, relapse and so on.

Good luck to both of you,

-dameron

My mother has schizophrenia; Advice

My mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was 3. She took her meds until I was 5, when she decided she felt so good and symptom free that she didn't need the meds any more, and stopped taking them. Permanently.

She was an intensive care nurse, she should have known better.

This began her slide into increasing insanity as the years went by. My father stuck around, knowing that if he left her she'd take me and ruin my life forever, and waited. When I was 12 I figured out she was completely out of control, and told my father "Mom's crazy, I'm leaving so she won't hurt me, are you coming?" and he left with me and divorced her. Getting a legal separation from her ruined my father, and myself, financially. She took him for all he was worth, and took my entire college fund along with it. There are many other lasting problems in our lives that she caused, like that she didn't let me have friends as a child so I still have difficulty socializing, that she destroyed most of the family photos, so my father has practically no pictures of me as a child, or that 20 years later I still have nightmares about her regularly, or that 20 years later I can tell my father still misses the beautiful and loving woman he married, who just disappeared into insanity.

Over the next 6 years she made at least three, and possibly four attempts to kill me. It's hard to say what to think about the fourth, because while it was unquestionably a murder attempt, she was so delusional by that point that she was trying to kill my father and couldn't tell I wasn't him.

When I was 18, I moved 350 miles away from her and didn't tell her where I'd gone. My aunts and uncles, not realizing the severity of her illness, told her anyway, and she showed up on my doorstep. I eventually had to move several times, change my phone number several times, and stop telling my family where I lived in order to escape from her. I have not seen her in about 15 years, and pray that I will never see her again.

When I was 20 or so, she murdered my uncle, and has been institutionalized since.

I have two bits of advice for people dealing with a loved one with schizophrenia. Firstly, dameron is right, MEDS MEDS MEDS. If they get on their meds early after developing symptoms and take them regularly FOREVER, they can live a relatively normal life. Unfortunately, schizophrenics are notorious for going off their meds. My father took me to several mental health professionals who advised me on how to deal with my mother, and what they all told me was that schizophrenia is cumulative: the meds prevent it from getting worse and reduce the immediate symptoms, but the longer it goes untreated the worse it gets and it will never get better. So, after 17 years of no treatment, my mother was incurably insane, and all meds could do was stop her from getting even worse and make her more controllable.

The second piece of advice I give you is, if the person goes off their meds and doesn't get on again almost immediately, push them out of your life, get them as far away from you and your family as you can, and if you have to, pack up and move to get away from them. Once they get really bad, nothing will stop them from trying to come interfere with your life. Nothing. Not court orders, not police, they won't care about those things. (Or, if they're paranoid, those things may just agitate them into worse behavior. My mother's reaction to a restraining order was to show up at my house and try to beat down the door in a blind rage.) You'll never be safe again. Escape while you still can. This is what the doctors advised my father, it's why he divorced my mother, and it's why he and I are alive today. Even if they're not violent, they'll just keep showing up and making a severe nuisance of themselves and disrupting your life until they make it into a living hell.

My God

what a story... there you have it, folks... straight from the horse's mouth. Tom, my heart goes out to your family; talk about living a nightmare.

While schizophrenics are often characterized as violent and dangerous (and some definitely are), they are usually more dangerous to themselves... about 10% end up committing suicide. Paranoid schizophrenics can commit violence against those around them, particularly if those people are included as a part of their delusions of persecution.

I'll never forget an older grandmother that a middle-aged daughter brought into my ER... that older family member was schizophrenic, lived with them, and had made dinner for the whole house (BIG family). Thank God the daughter caught the mother as she was stirring the rat poison into the food... a lot of it. (she was convinced the family was trying to kill her, and was going to do them in first).

It happens, folks... and schizophrenia is a life-long illness. One of relatives has an 20-years-past ex-wife that he STILL gets called about every time she gets arrested or institutionalized. Why? She always gives them my uncle's address and phone number as her "husband." Incidently, she always seems to have his current contact info, despite being unlisted/unpublished, despite moving multiple times, and despite the fact that they haven't spoken in 15 years. Yeah... think about that in the wee hours of the morning...

It's already been said, but mental illness is sometimes just as hard on the family as it is on the patient.

Support in taking meds

I used to volunteer on at a schizophrenia ward at a psychiatric hospital when I studied psychology. People would be admitted, get put on meds, stay for awhile until the meds took effect, and then go back out on their own. Once on their own many would think they were 'cured' and stop taking their meds. Then they would have another episode and end up back at the hospital. So my advice is to support her in taking meds. The right type and dose of medication is crucial to a good quality of life. It may take awhile for the doctors to get that right, and it is important to support her while they try.

Re:Support in taking meds

The problem is balancing helping take medication with harassing her into taking her medicine.

When I was first diagnosed, my family would bug me all the time "did you take your medication", "it's time for your medication", "what do you mean you forgot? You take it every day!"

Whenever I had a bad day, or was just thinking about something, it was a "sign that I hadn't been taking the medication."

After a while, you wonder whom the medication is for? Maybe a sedative for the folks would work out in everyone's best interest.

With alcoholics, after they sober up for a little while they start having family problems. Of course, they've always had them. The alcoholic's problem enabled the family to ignore their own, concentrating on his/hers. When that problem is no longer there, there is a noted tendency for the family to constantly harp on the problem as a tool in every family fight. After a while, the alcoholic starts wondering that, as long as he's getting blamed for it still, he might as well have a drink now and then....

If there've been troubles due to a mental disorder, there's usually some of that there. Don't be fooled by how concerned/relieved people seem by the diagnosis. Watch to make sure that they don't use the diagnosis as an excuse. With daughters it's often an excuse to remove their freedom of choice. I've seen it happen more than a few times.

These are all reasons why people stop taking the medication. Also, they just stop feeling like themselves. Bipolars, such as myself, are well known for getting off medication because they "just don't feel right."

In addition, don't let the doctors bullshit you: some of the medications have side effects. Most of them do. Besides the physical ones, there's the mental ones. Every bipolar I know of has complained about the medication reducing their creativity, and whether or not it's in their head it does seem to be an effect.

Many of the anti-psychotic agents these days are far more gentle than before (the older medications were bad shit), but they're still known to change people a bit.

What I'm saying is that people have very good reasons for mistrusting or disliking the medication. It is important to take it, but don't let the medication be your reasons for interacting. Don't let it be a sword hanging over your relationship.

Re:Support in taking meds

I agree 100%... my wife has had a mental illness for over 20 years, and she's the "sanest crazy person I know". She's been certified, sometimes institutionalized, but overall, she's incredibly smart and got her shit together.

Over the years, she's learned that she seems to know more about what is going on with her than the doctors do, as they seem to be guessing half the time and usually try to treat her through more of a trial and error routine than accurate diagnosis. Part of the problem is that she isn't 100% bi-polar, or 100% schitsophrenic... she's got some symptoms of each.

At the end of the day, however, her current Dr. of about 3 years has let her pretty well self-medicate, and it seems to be going very, very well. She's had only one 2-day bout of depression where she had to be institutionalized in that time, and it seemed to have been brought on by an improper filling of the prescription. She's very lucky, though, in that she knows when she has to go to the hospital, and she initiated the institutionalization process.

More than anything, though, I've learned that she has some days where things don't go well, and she just needs her space, and I don't take her "bad attitude" personally if/when it happens.

One thing I have found to be incredibly reassuring, however, is that she has a natural ability with helping other people with mental illness deal with their issues... people seek her out for her advice. We were even in the local Chapters book store the other day, and she saw someone checking out "surviving schitsophrenia", and she talked to him for a bit, only to find that his brother had just committed suicide 2 days earlier, and he himself was starting to show the early warning signs of the disease, and was scared. She told me to go grab a Starbuck's and come back in an hour, and she proceeded to talk to the guy for an hour. When I came back, he was no longer the emotional wreck he started out as, and seemed much more confident and way less scared than he'd started out.

My family has a history of mild schizophrenia

My uncle particularly managed to live with it quite well. He went to special schools when he was growing up. I don't know what they did, but apparantly they have special teaching techniques that could give him employable skills. I remember my psychology professor talking about how experiments have been done like teaching autistic children to perform fairly complex tasks through repetitive conditioning, rather than traditional teaching. It could be something like that. He certainly didn't get a full education (no science or history, minimal math, basically enough English to read the newspaper)

Between medicine and education, he's managed to make a decent living as an electrician. They recently put him on a new set of medications, and he seems perfectly normal to talk to now.

Ok, let me relay what I currently deal with

I've had a good friend up here who recently turned 21 and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He really is not the same person I knew even a short 2 years ago, and I don't really miss the old person so much as wish I could know the new person better. He is secretive about his hallucinations until he gets messed up on speed or really really drunk than he goes haywire and his parents have had to call the police 2 times to remove him. They changed the locks recently too, because he would come in and just sit there in the middle of the night on the couch while everyone else was asleep listening for the boogie men. He really loves his family and thinks he is protecting himself and them from unseen forces, but in reality he is just freaking everyone out. The amount of speed this poor boy did in his life time has increased the likliehood of schizophrenia and since he is an addict and does not take his psych meds in a regular manner the periods of normalacy in his life are becoming grim caricutures of himself. Like he is reanimating a dead person when he speaks of himself without the diseaese. He does not believe he will ever be well again.

I drive this cat around town about once to twice a week to the doctor or to pick up his SSI check. Since he has been living on his own in a little rent control apartment he has been doing moderately better, but I think it would be best if he would also go back to college and finish his psychology degree (only has a year left). He knows better than anyone amongst his family and friends what the disease is but still thinks he is special that his demons are real, it is very sad. I wish they could cure things like this, but barring a wholesale revolution in the way we treat mental diseases that will not happen.

Steel Yourself for Responses Here

My sympathies for your sisters condition. About the only thing I can think of saying is treasure the best times more than the bad times. Remember that even in outbursts you hate or cant understand she is suffering too.

I would take any response you get here with a grain of salt and a suit of armor. Some of it will be geeky resentment at the topic not mentioning an operating system and some will be complete lack of empathy or experience.

Find a newsgroup or a circle of people confronting this illness. Its not well uderstood so its even harder to explain.

There is a schizophrenia.com that looks to have a bunch of stuff to start.

http://www.schizophrenia.com/

ls

serious response

First of all, anybody with moderating experience, please remove any of the attempts to be funny I've just observed in the comments above here. Schizophrenia is not to be taken lightly. My closest friend was diagnosed with it about 8 years ago. It comes in many different forms of varying severity. For me as his friend and closest support outside his family (who didn't help, they had a similar aversion to the disease as displayed by the FOOLS who have commented above) it was traumatic. Someone who I felt I knew because someone who I didn't feel I knew, even though it was the same person. It did, in the short term, destroy his life. Heavy drugs and intensive therapy (etc) were the run of the mill for a good deal of time, and an element of that remains with him today. His life never returned quite to normal. I don't want to fill you with gloom, like I say every case is different. What I will say is they'll need you every step of the way, and if you hang in there, you will be rewarded - and by that I mean the person you cared about before will still be there and show through, and they won't go away completely - it can feel like that. My sister was diagnosed with a different form of mental illness, and so I fully sympathise with your position. If I can be of any help as a third party in sharing your concerns, feel free to email me at [e-mail]. ps to the purveyors of the foolish comments above, you're ignorant, and if I had you here in person, you'd get a smack in the mouth.

Medical facts

Reading the original post and the above posts makes it very obvious that schizophrenia is one of the most misunderstood diseases. Schizophrenia is actually quite well studied, and there are some great medicines to help treat it. The problem is that schizophrenics are not well-prepared (gross generalization here) to take their medicine consistently, and sometimes need help with that.

Also (and this is a big pet peeve of everyone who actually knows anything about the disease), schizophrenia does NOT mean you have multiple personalities. That is multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenia literally means "split mind" if you look at the roots of the word, but that means that their mind is split from reality and that they live in their own internally-created world, not that their mind is split into two or more pieces.

To answer your question, though, it's something that you need to take seriously, and you've done that by asking the right question (although frankly from the wrong people). There are probably a lot of online groups where you could learn more facts about the disease (i.e. schizophrenia.com [schizophrenia.com] seems legit). Educate yourself as much as you can.

Dating a schizophrenic

My ex-girlfriend is a schizophrenic. When I met her, I could tell she was a very unique person, but I'd honestly never have guessed that she was so seriously ill. When properly medicated (antipsychotics, antianxieties, antidepressants), she was for the most part a normal person.

For the most part. 6 months couldn't go by without some sort of psychotic lapse. She could always feel it coming on days or weeks prior, and could voice her anxiety about it, but was terrified because she couldn't do anything about it. Doctors would up her doses of medication, but it wouldn't help. Before I knew it, little episodes would become more common...we'd be in the middle of a conversation and she'd be staring off into space, her voice would lower to almost mumbling, and I'd not be able to get her attention for up to a minute or two. She'd have no recollection of it, deny that it happened. She'd spin around to catch people that she 'saw' in the mirror behind her. These were the signs that a real lapse was coming.

The real psychotic lapses were the dangerous ones. Self mutilation, overdoses on massive amounts of pills, or worse...finding her screaming, clawing at her skin, not able to recognize anyone (myself included) from whatever horrible visions she was in the midst of. I got used to visiting the "behavioral medicine" department at all the general hospitals in the area, as well as the full-blown mental hospitals.

She turned out to be generally terrible with long-term personal relationships (surprise.), whether with a friend or a boyfriend, and I stuck around much longer than I should have. It's very difficult to fall in love with someone so internally tortured.

Oh, and the medication they use to dull a schizophrenic's brain with have some horrible side effects. She slept 12 - 15 hours a day, and couldn't enjoy sex because the antipsychotics prevented her from ever having an orgasm.

Hrmph, posting anonymously for the first time ever because this post actually chokes me up.

My friend

A friend of mine went undiagnosed as a schizophrenic, then attacked someone completely at random one day when he was around 19 or 20, got a couple years in the pokey, got diagnosed in there, did pretty well on meds until he got out, then while on probation, did something, cops came to the door, he freaked out and thought they were coming for him, so he grabbed a shotgun, ran out the back door, jumped a couple yard fences into someone else's backyard, then as they started to close in on him, he put the shotgun up under his chin and took his own head off. Apparently, no one checked to see that he was taking his meds, and he started saying "the voices are telling me to kill you, but I know they're not real, so don't worry, I won't listen to them."

NAMI

• The DSM IV (diagnostic and statistical manual) [psychologynet.org]
• National Alliance for the Mentally Ill [nami.org] (find your local chapter and get as much support for the rest of the family as for her)
• schizophrenia.com [schizophrenia.com] (get literate and read like crazy [oops], and eventually get a sense of humor rather than just crying)
• Voices by Dream Theater [sing365.com], part of A Mind Beside Itself

Get literate and highly community active, and double check all your mental health professionals. You may still have time to contain or reverse the most severe symptoms.

Don't confuse schizophrenia vs. manic depression with paranoid delusions or other personality disorders. As I understand it, the distinction is that schizophrenics hallucinate (have false senses in realtime, as if something is really seen or heard) whereas that type of manic depressives do not (they may confabulate memories of having seen or heard something).

Had some cousins...

that had it. I can only sumarize my advice in a few words:

stay on the meds stay on the meds stay on the meds stay on the fucking meds.

Problem is, the patients do not like them, and quite often get emotional or physical rushes from not being on the meds. They have to have a good support structure to keep them on the meds.

It's hard to keep up with it, but if your sister avoids things like self-mutilation and so on it's worthwhile.

Schematic

I did a bit of research about schizophrenia a few years ago, and one thing that I read stands out in my memory more than anything else. One very common symptom of schizophrenia is hallucination, and I was a bit surprised (although I immediately realized that I shouldn't have been) when I read that hallucinations can involve any of the five senses, or combinations of them. Tactile hallucinations are quite common.

Anyway, the thing that stands out in my memory was a schematic diagram of the brain that had two boxes, each with arrows pointing to a third box in the center. The two boxes were labeled "SENSATION" and "THOUGHT" and the third box in the center was labeled "INTEGRATION". The narrative on the opposite page explained that you can think of the brain as an integrator of thoughts and sensations, and that hallucination represents a "crossed wire" in the integration center so that the brain perceives a thought as a sensation. For example, a person may think of spiders crawling on their skin, but the brain interprets that thought as the actual sensation.

This simplified schematic model made good sense to me, and helped me to understand the phenomenon in a more analytical way, rather than just being scared of the unknown.

I've never seen the movie, but I have seen a PBS documentary about John Nash called A Beautiful Madness [biomedcentral.com]. It was quite interesting and talked about his condition in some depth.

Also, check out the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on the disease. (There's probably a good article about John Nash as well, while you're at it.)

It's been my experience (I've just been accepted to medical school) that medical conditions or procedures that are initially "scary", "disturbing" or "gross" become easier to cope with after a bit of education. Science can do wonders to calm the soul, if the condition is one that is well understood. You're correct that our current understanding of schizophrenia is relatively incomplete, but it is much better than it was in Nash's day. Where the answers are not available (or are not satisfying), you can always find comfort in some good, old-fashioned prayer or meditation.

Advice from someone that has Schizophrenia

As a diagnosed schizophrenic, I can offer some slices of what's in store, and a little more info:

• Medication: A lot of the quality of life is going to depend upon her medication. Stelazine, for instance, made me completely numb to life. While it stops the audial/visual hallucenations, it also blocks creativity, sex drive, and emotion. Unfortunately, those are very common side effects to many anti-psychotic medications. I can't tell you the medical reason why, only that it heavily depends upon the individual's brain chemistry. She may end up going through 5-10 different meds before she finds a balance between supression of the illness, and supression of one's emotional life.
• Paranoia: This is probably the worst effect she will have to deal with. It can be mild (ie. "Did you hear something?") to extreme (ie. "You're trying to poison my food!"), and it can bounce between the two based on stimulus. Two bits of advice. NEVER lie to her. Once you have, you get categorized as someone who has lied. It doesn't matter about the reason. Even if the truth hurts, and she screams that she hates you, as long as you maintain her trust, you have a chance to be her confidant. Secondly, don't dismiss her paranoia. Sometimes, in the throws of "everyone is out to get me", a schizophrenic just needs to vent. Instead of saying "You're just being paranoid", give them rational fact against their feats, and accept the fact that it might do nothing to dissuade them. Illogical fear is simply a fact of Schizophrenia.
• Nymphomania/Frigidity: Without medication, she might either become a roaring slut, or a frigid ice queen. Or neither, but most likely, expect some sexual tendancies that are deviant from the norm.
• Hallucinations: There will most likely be audial and/or visual hallucinations. The frequency and intensity will largely depend again on her chemistry, medication, and how severe the illness is. I fortunately have a very light case, and mine have usually been limited to something as mild as a woman leaning against a wall, and whisperings. As long as she can keep aware of what logically should and should not be there, she can dismiss these as "background noise". Sometimes she won't be able to ignore these, and it will cause sleepless nights and agitated working conditions. In this case, I recommend a soporific. With sleep, the symptoms will often die down. However, thanks to paranoia, you might have trouble getting her to take them. Seriously, though, a doctor's opinion is vital on this aspect. She might have them so bad she cannot drive.
• Severe Mood Swings: Schizophrenics are often ruled by their emotional state. I call my bad days "Black Moods". You would probably do best to steer clear of her on these days, unless she actually seeks you out. Then be there for her, but don't try to be "proactive" in solving whatever sparked the emotional problem. This will usually pass, followed by remorse and apology. Try to be understanding.
• Barriers: Set barriers as well. If her case is light enough that she can more or less live a normal life on her own, she needs to know what barriers there are going to be, up front. As with many other mental illnesses, there are certain individuals who latch onto someone, much in the way a drowning victim does, and won't let them go, effectively ruining their life. Don't let this happen to you. Fortunately, I've always been of the isolationist variety. It's others that must respect -my- barriers. This might also happen to her. If it does, then respect her wishes as much as is reasonable.

I hope this helps. If you want to know more detailed information, I would recommend first having her fully diagnosed, and find out the degree and specific symptoms. You can ask me whatever questions you like, and I will try to answer, but the truth is, schizophrenia is different for each person who has it. The best person to ask "what's it like" is her. -TheTXLibra
"You've got no kids, no wife, no job, and you're not

Mathematics and personality

At UIUC a while ago in the math department there was an Egyptian guy that was kind of odd. Saying someone in a math department is kind of odd is like saying Slashdot readers kind of don't like software patents; everyone knows it, and no matter how you say it you radically underestimate the true situation. Anyway, this guy fit right in and people saw him around for a year and didn't think much of it. Depending on who he talked to, he either claimed to be a new professor, a new postdoc, or just a grad student. We all figured he was a slightly older grad student with image issues.

Occassionally people saw him brushing his teeth in the bathroom, but no-one thought that was weird. I think some people knew he spent the night at the department sometimes, but even that is not too weird. Heck, I've done it myself when I had a final exam due at 8am the next morning. But somehow, someone finally checked his ID carefully against official documents and discovered that he was neither a student nor a postdoc, nor a professor. It turns out he was an escaped mental patient that was living in the department, carrying around math books.

So the point is, if an escaped mental patient can live in a big math department for a YEAR before being found out, that tells you something about how close real mathematicians are to mental patients, and how tolerant they are of mental "quirks" in their colleagues. It's no accident that John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind) was a mathematician.

My advice to all schizophrenics: become mathematicians (or artists).

Nash was a mathemetician first and then went crazy

Unlike how it was implied in the movie "A Beautiful Mind", John Nash was a successful mathemetician, without illness, for quite a number of years.

He graduated with PhD from Princeton at a very young age (given his talent), and had at least 10 years of a very promising career until his illness hit. It was apparently atypically late for schizophrenics which also may account for his later ability to control it.

Once his illness struck he was useless professionally.

Many years later with his discipline and partial remission he can now function in society but he can't produce research mathematics any more.

Here is the scoop

First and foremost, I am sorry to hear about your sister. Be prepared for everyone to mix up schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. Until a handful of years ago, they were thought to be the same thing. We now know they are not. Much IS known about the disorder, so spend some time googling around.

To be 100% clear, the disorder is MUCH harder on the family than it is on the afflicted. Since family members freak out and do not know how to cope, most people with the disorder live in isolation which agrrevates the problem.

"how has it affected your and their life?"
If you truly love your sister, this should have NO impact on your life. She is still a person and still your sister. She may act differently than the rest of the world at times. Who cares what a world full of idiots think anyway?

"How have you been able to cope with it?"
You cope by coming to terms with it. Don't "freak out" by abnormal behavior.

What are the long term implications for quality of life?
For whom? You or her. If you are asking about yourself, then all is lost. I assume you are asking about her. In this case, it depends on the severity of the illness and the reaction to medication. In mild forms and/or with medication people with this disorder can lead normal regular lives (YMMV). As I stated before, the worst thing that can happen is all of her family and friends abondon her - that, is the tragedy of the disorder.

Good luck. Post any other questions under this thread. I have a ton of information.

Living with Schizoaffective Disorder

Last year Michael Crawford, a talented programmer, wrote a three part series about his experiences with schizophrenia. Great and scary stuff.

Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part I) [kuro5hin.org]

Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part II) [kuro5hin.org]

Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part III) [kuro5hin.org]

It's tough

My best friend and roommate became schizophrenic while I lived with him. I left the medical stuff to the doctors and just tried to calm him down so he could sleep (which is a big problem when you hear voices). Don't try to argue with them, just make them feel better.
I learned that the mental health care system in this country sucks. Unless someone is an imminent danger to themselves or others nobody will see you for several weeks. I made dozens of phone calls saying "my friend is hearing voices". Half of the people were like "suuuure...your friend".
The new medications they have are better than the old stuff. The problem with all mental health medications are that people feel "fine" and decide they don't need the medicine anymore. With schizophrenia, that can have disastrous results (my uncle's friend killed his gf that way). This is sad, but don't expect the person to have the same personality that you remember. They're going to be different and you have to deal with that.

I know it's a goofy Ask Slashdot. But considering that Schizophrenia mostly affects males 18-30, I'm sure several Slashdotters out there are dealing with something similar in some way.

-B

Schizophrenia

I want to start by agreeing with many other slashdot posters - You came to the wrong place in general to ask questions about medical health and/or mental health.

That said, I am a not a doctor, yet. (I'm finishing my PhD in Clinical Psychology) I've worked on a locked inpatient unit with people who have had schizophrenia, and in an outpatient community clinic with a variety of people. So here is my starting advice: You may want to investigate The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill [nami.org], for further information [iseekhealth.com] regarding support groups for mental illness, and make sure that you get supported [mentalwellness.com] while you go through this process of learning and working with family and relatives who have a serious mental illness.

The bad news is: There is not a cure for schizophrenia. The good news is: It's a chronic illness that can be treated using medication (Some people understand better if they draw comparisons to diabetes, or other chronic physical illnesses). The bad news again is: Medications are still in need of improvement, because a lot of side effects (weight gain, lowered energy and libido) can certainly drive a person away from treatment. The best things that you can do are to provide a stable and caring environment for your relative, encourage them to stay on their medication (even when they're doing well).

For others of you interested, the "usual" symptoms of schizophrenia are hallucinations (a person sees or hears things that other people do not, usually hearing voices, but it can be anything), delusions (a person believes something illogical or bizarre, like they are under surveillance of the police), and disorganized thinking or behavior. Medications help mostly with the hallucinations, and sometimes with a persons mood; new medications can also help clear their thinking. Psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients can really range, from simple problem-solving and health management (which could cover taking medication or even just taking a shower), to learning how to interpret the emotions and gestures of other people so they get along better with family and friends.

Again, schizophrenia is a chronic illness, but it is treatable. When a person recieves proper treatment, a person can lead a happy and fulfilling life.

Medications for schizophrenia

I think one of the most important issues in dealing with schizophrenia is medication. I'll be totally honest in that I don't trust doctors much when it comes to medication. All too often, doctors act like automatons when it comes to prescribing medication. They prescribe the medication, declare they have done their job, and go home.

In reality, particularly when it comes to mental disorders, finding the right medication or combination of medications should be a long-term exercise in trial-and-error. Some drugs are partially effective, completely ineffective, or have intolerable side-effects. It's almost completely specific to the individual in question.

For example, I used to suffer from panic attacks and still suffer from some generalized anxiety. Typical treatment is a seratonin-specific reuptake inhibitor (or SSRI, a family of antidepressent). But every drug in this family is slightly different, and while one may work for one person, it may not work for someone else. In my case, Paxil was 100% effective for panic but completely ineffective for generalized anxiety. And don't even get me started on the 3 month withdrawal I went through (while withdrawal from Paxil isn't all that uncommon, 3 months of it is). I was tried other drugs in the SSRI family as well as other anti-depressants in other families.

The same issues apply to medication for treating schizophrenia. Often you'll want to go through various different medications until you find the one(s) with a combination of efficacy and tolerable or no side-effects. Some of the drugs take weeks to a few months to determine if it works or not, so you really have to hang in there and just ride it out. It can take a long time to find the right medication. Be patient.

The only other piece of advice I'd give, and it seems like you're already following it (though Slashdot probably isn't the best source), is educate yourself about the condition.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are peer support web sites around for this. I would try to locate them and get involved. In the case of panic and anxiety, I found the online peer support groups to be a much better source of knowledge than doctors. Largely because, unless the doctor has suffered from the condition, they don't really understand it. Somone who has lived with a schizophrenic relative for 10 years is going to be able to give you a lot more sound advice than a doctor who's only exposure to schizophrenics has been in his office. He hasn't had to manage their lives.

There's no doubt you're in for a really rough ride. Schizophrenia is a really difficult condition to deal with both for the person who suffers from it and those around them. I wish you the best of luck.

My Story

I had a family friend whose college buddies/boyfriend where in a tragic car reck and they all died. It was a horrible horrible experience for her...

She started saying that her friends were talking to her and kept telling her that they were coming for her. She also called up her dad (divorced parents) and asked him why he never told her about her other siblings (besides the one she knew about). It was really weird. They diagnosed her with schiz. and she started to get help.

She was doing a lot better. It was about a year later. A man was driving down a country road looking out into the field for deer. He wasn't paying attention and he hit her head on. She died. She died a year later in the same way as her friends who she claimed were coming to get here from the other side. It's a true story, but you got to ask yourself, was it delussion or a super natural awareness?

Different Sort of Experience

Sorry, I don't have contact with schizophrenia in my personal life. All mine is in the lab. I do basic perceptual and cognitive psychology experiments on all sorts of people to figure out how the brain works, and fails to work. Schizophrenics is one group I work with.

Understand that a diagnosis is not the same as a disease. Schizophrenia is a result. It probably has many different causes. The fact that there are several successful yet different lines of research supports that. Hence, any advice may not help, because it may help someone with a different condition that's resulting in schizophrenia, or it may help someone who's trying to cope with someone who has a different cause/kind.

Outcomes and quality of life are extremely variable. I've done experiments with people I didn't realize were schizophrenic until I read their charts afterward.

How someone has coped in a position such as yours may or may not help you, but the fact that they did certainly can. Take it as it comes, knowing it might not be easy, but it's possible.

Family Ties That B[l]ind

I mean this in all seriousness and without trying to slam mud on the people you love, but

very often mental illness like schizophrenia is not an individual illness, something that some unlucky person just gets like the clap.

Rather, it can be the product of years of upbringing in a particular family environment. And, if you've grown up in a particular family, no matter how out-of-norm the behavior patters happen to be, you will be likely to see yourself and your family as "not too far away from normal".

More than a few case studies have shown how much the family environment has to do with various mental illness.

My advice?

Find a competent family counselor and make some appointments with them so you can start to see the bigger picture, where you might be harboring some misconceptions, ways of thinking that might be doing harm both to your sister and to yourself.

It takes a little courage, but it's worthwhile and you and your sister will feel a lot better in the future.

If you don't seek help, then you condemn yourself to living in the same old behavior patterns that make you and the ones around you sick.

I can sympathise - and some advice, and some hope

My sister was diagnosed as schitzo-affective, a combination of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder (manic depression), about ten years ago.

At the time she was diagnosed I was about 16-17, doing exams, growing up, and being a general teenage boy; she was in the middle of a PhD in physics so was at the other end of the country most of the time. As a result, I only saw here at holidays, and even then I was busy revising and stuff, but I still realised that something wasn't right (I knew she was i'll, but she had also been diagnosed as epileptic around the same time so everything kind of blurred). The most striking thing is that the personality can change quite dramatically, there were times when she seemed like a genuinly different person. This can be as a result of the medication, and the disease.

I personally found this quite hard to deal with, it is very strange seeing someone you thought you knew turn into someone else. I'm not trying to scare you, but it is something that you may need to be prepared for.

As pointed out by another poster, it will take a long time for the doctors to figure out medication levels; mental illness of all kinds is very person specific, there are no drugs or treatments that work for everyone. Electric shock treatment is considered barbaric and horrific by some, while others report that it worked miracles. There are a wide array of anti-psychotics out there, and even the anti-side-effect meds can have a big effect. It is all about finding the balance, and that takes time.

The most important thing that you, and the rest of your family can do is be honest and open. My family are not that close, we don't really talk about personal stuff much, and that caused problems, not just for my sister, but also for me. Remember, mental illness in the family can be quite stressfull, and can affect you. You can only help your sister if you look after yourself. Be open and honest, talk to each other. It is important that you create a supportive environment where there is no stigma, and no secrets about what is going on.

You will need to find a balance between providing support for your sister, and smothering her. She will have to live with her mental illness for the rest of her life, and the best you can do is help her adapt to that reality, and provide support and help when and where she needs it. While medication will help, ultimatly it is down to the individual.

To give you some hope, my sister is now married, has just had a baby, and is starting a part-time course in medical physics. Up untill last year she had held down a high stress job and performed brilliantly, unfortunatly the firm laid off a large proportion of its workforce, closing down her division in the process. She is stable and living life to the full because she took control of her illness, became pro-active in dealing with the doctors (being a born scientist helps :-> ) and took an active role in monitoring and controlling her condition. Doctors can prescribe her drugs, but she is the only one who can tell them if they are working.

So, don't dispair, keep it real, keep it normal (when she is stable she needs to be in the real world), and keep supporting her. Most importantly, be prepared to just be there and be someone to talk to, or go to when she needs help. Feel free to e-mail me if you need someone to let off steam. Sorry for rambling, I don't have time to make it more concise. Paul

Sympathy and advice

I worked for a long time with people diagnosed as schizophrenics and still have many friends with the diagnosis (and I've had psychotic episodes myself so I may well be 'schizophrenic' although, thankfully, I've never been diagnosed with that label). And that experience has left me with very mixed feelings about the psychiatric services offered to people who have the diagnosis.

Be aware that the anti-psychotic drugs given to control schizophrenia, while they do help to keep the more peculiar symptoms under control, are highly toxic in themselves and cause spacticity and brain damage. When you see someone twitching and drooling in the street, they aren't twitching and drooling because they've got schizophrenia, they're twitching and drooling because they're taking drugs to control schizophrenia. Some people who have the diagnosis 'schizophrenia' also have problems sustaining relationships, but again I think this is related to medication. And finally at least some of the medication offered for schizophrenia causes progressive and permanent brain damage.

Don't worry about the popular perception that schizophrenics are 'dangerous', 'violent', or 'out of control'. It just isn't true. A very tiny group of people who have very severe paranoia are dangerous, but on the whole people of the type who get diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' are quiet and gentle and are dangerous only to themselves.

Most of the time, for most people who have schizophrenia, schizophrenia isn't a problem. Occasionally it will be a problem. They will experience things the people around them don't experience, and consequently there's a severe dissonance between reality as they experience it and reality as the people around them experience it. And this is very distressing - for everyone, but most of all for the person who is out of step. It is possible for people diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' to live successfully in the community without medication, but this requires a good deal of committment from the people around them to support them and stay with them through the difficult times. Schizophrenic episodes seem in my experience to be at least partly related to stress, so trying to keep stress levels low is a good strategy. Finally, with the best will in the world, if you are dealing with someone who has severe psychotic episodes there will be times when you can't cope and may have to call in the psychiatric services.

But do bear in mind that however concerned and professional they are the psychiatric profession really do not know what schizophrenia is. They don't know your sister as a person, only as a 'case'; and they don't love her. Their committment to her is is professional, not personal. If you and your family are prepared to put the committment in to supporting her through the difficult patches, there's no reason why your sister shouldn't live a mostly normal life, hold down a job provided it isn't too stressful, and form her own relationships.

Delusions

I have a neighbor who gets delusional. It is always an odd experience talking to her in that state. One thing I've often wondered is whether its better to go along or to try and talk her out of the delusions.

If I start down the path of "I don't think that's true" she will immediately incorporate me into some paranoid belief about them-vs.-her. But if I go along with her delusion, it seems like a cop-out. What do other people do?

Schizo-effective Spectrum

There is an entire spectrum of Schizo-effective disorders. Being at either extreme is never good, but it is important to consider that virtually everyone is on the spectrum somewhere.

Personal experience

Don't be afraid to speak out when you think the person is losing touch, they often appreciate the reality check themselves, but be compassionate. There's a lot of fear based reasoning to contend with but it's a rollercoaster ride that doen't always leave them incapable of seeing themselves, or you, as constants. Be a constant and may you have many pleasant days with your sister.

It's a terrifying experience

I have some Schizophrenic Writings [silentchaos.com] you can look at. They're were written when I was having schizophrenic episodes back in college. From my own experience, schizophrenia is both bizarre and terrifying. From thinking that I was a knight of Satan to thinking my own doctor was conspiring against me to believing that I was SKYNET wanting humans dead, I've had some off the wall experiences. I've gotten better at catching delusions before they've amounted to much. I just have to make sure that I avoid excessive stress, don't do drugs and get enough sleep. Otherwise, the voices, delusions and hallucinations start.

My son has had it for 10 years

He was first diagnosed at 15 and he has gone downhill from there. We have had him hospitalized twice and both times he did better as long as he was on his meds. Once he was released he quit taking them and he detiroiated and was back to "normal" (his normal or what we call baseline) in 6 months. We could force him to take meds till he was 18 and now we have to get a court order. Since he is not a danger to himself or others the liberal courts want to protect his rights. Well this is how he expresses his rights. He steps out in front of cars becasue he cannot be hurt or killed. He eats jars of peanut butter for breakfast. lunch and dinner. He stays up for 80 hours at a time and then sleeps for 4 hours and does another 48 hours before catching another nap. He lives with my wife and and has his own room. We used to give him things like clothes and Walkman's because he loves music. But he cuts up the clothers and gives away his stereo, TV, computer and everything else. Now he uses the family computer and gets angry when he asks why he can't have his own and I tell him becasue he gives them away. Some advice. Go to NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) meetings to meet others that have relatives in the same boat. Lower your expectations. Your sister will not recover and will not be successful in the normal sense of the word. Having lower expectations will not put you in a position of being dissappointed. If she does better than you expect you will be surprised rather than dissappointed. Don't be ashamed of her. Mental illness strikes lots of people in every socioeconomic group. While there are some of those that will look down on you by association they are small people with small minds. Not being ashamed will show the world that mental illness is real and needs attention. My wife just told me that her favorite Schizophrenia book is Surviving Schizophrenia by Fuller E Torry. She manages the mental health phone room in a major city and is well respected by her peers. I am a Paramedic and also know how to deal with mental illness in my patients. One comment that my son said when he first got sick was very telling. He told me that if my wife or I wanted a quite time we just turned off the stereo and went into the bedroom. For him the voices were always there and no matter what he did they kept talking to him. He gets no rest. My heart goes out to you. It is a life long struggle but eventually you will get comfortable with it. Realize there is little you can do for her except love her and supprt her. If you try to struggle against it you will only wear yourself down and then you won't be any good at supporting her. Chuck

Two things.

I did an undergrad paper on shamanism and schizophrenia .. not much of a great work, but you might want to look into practices of shamanism that train the illness to help provide orthagonal solutions to problems... I would recommend exploring her spirituality as a means of channeling her new challenges. I've heard B6 (vitamin) has been used in treatment. Alternately, more for your own sake, you may also want to go on a good 'shroom or acid bender once in your life to get a good idea of what psychosis is like. Sounds stupid, but it will give you a good handle on how altered your perspective can be, and yet you'll still accept it as truth, even as a better/more reliable truth (at the time) than everyday sobriety. And maybe, if its frightening enough, might give you a little more compassion when times get rough.

Get a second opinion!

I think "schizophrenia" is a catch-all for misunderstood mental problems. For example multiple-personality disorder and autism have been called schizophrenia in the past, until they figured out more specifically the nature of these cases. So have this person examined by somebody who's up with the latest research. Probably in a century or so that word will sound as quaint as "consumption" because they will have figured out a lot more about the real causes of such behavior; and in the meantime it is sad they are treating it with blunt methods with bad side-effects, like certain drugs, and the behavioral "treatment" one receives in an asylum. In general the closer such a person's life can be to "normal" the better off he or she is, IMO, even if it's inconvenient or looks unconventional to everyone else. Like with the guy in Beautiful Mind, his own denial was actually the cure - in contrast to most other situations in which "being in denial" is considered a bad thing. But, some people are mentally stronger than others; some are stubborn and self-correcting, like that guy, while others feel sorry for themselves and act as if they are just looking for some uncontrollable force to which to succumb (like all those self-committed inmates in _One Flew From the Cuckoo's Nest_). I believe strongly that many conditions, both mental and physical, can be cured with love, encouragement, humor, complete honesty, and mental fortitude; but the medical establishment doesn't recognize this enough.

My dad's second wife had MPD, and she is cured now, because her therapist was not so old-fashioned, and knew that what she needed was to merge the fractured parts of her psyche, as opposed to drugs, restraints and denial (even though in other cases some of those things might be more effective). I just hope that whatever your sister has, that somebody can be so insightful for her as well.

Schiller's The Quiet Room, atypical antipsychotics

I'm the Michael Crawford referred to in this comment [slashdot.org]. I have schizoaffective disorder, which is like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time.

At times I experience depression, mania, visual hallucinations and paranoia. Less commonly I've heard voices and experienced dissociation, which is a sort of disconnection between reality and one's experience. Life seemed to be like a movie I was watching but not participating in. I also get anxiety at times - so bad I want to climb out of my own skin. I've had disturbed sleep for my entire life. One time I slept for twenty-nine hours, on another occasion I was awake for about a week, which made me hallucinate so heavily I could hardly see where I was going.

I've been in psychiatric hospitals five times, for periods ranging from overnight to six weeks.

I was first inspired to discuss my experiences with mental illnesses online when I read Lori Schiller's book The Quiet Room [twbookmark.com]. Schiller was also diagnosed schizoaffective. She had it much worse than me, but managed to recover and had the courage to write a book about it.

Schizoaffective disorder is a spectrum of conditions. It's not completely clear whether it's a unique disorder or that one is unfortunate enough to have gotten both illnesses at once. I'm much more manic depressive than I am schizophrenic, with depression being my most prevalent symptom. Lori Schiller is much more towards the schizophrenic end, having hallucinated so badly at times she was hardly connected to the real world. I'm the bipolar type of schizoaffective, there is also a depressive type, where one does not experience mania.

Lori Schiller spent years in a number of mental hospitals. Hers was a very difficult case, and I think she, her family and her doctors had despaired of ever finding a treatment. What saved her was a new kind of medicine, the atypical antipsychotic clozapine [clozapine.com].

The "classic antipsychotics" like haldol and thorazine work by reducing the levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. The atypical antipsychotics do that too but also act on one of the variants of the neurotransmitter serotonin.

The classic antipsychotics were troublesome in that they didn't work all that well and had a lot of bad side affects like deep sedation, hand tremors, muscle cramps and a motion disorder called tardive dyskinesia [nih.gov] that is a form of incurable brain damage, that causes repetetive, involuntary movements and can even put you in a wheelchair. If you see a mentally ill person who appears to be in a stupour, it's quite likely that it's caused by his medication rather than his illness.

One time I was in the hospital, profoundly manic and hallucinating, and was being given enough haldol to stun a horse. It caused a sort of seizure, where my jaws locked up so I couldn't speak, and all of my limbs curled up so I couldn't walk. I was carried to my room and injected in the butt with a large dose of cogentin [psyweb.com], which is usually prescribed in a lower-dose tablet form to treat the motion disorder side effects of antipsychotics.

(As I lay on my bed slowly uncurling, with the cogentin causing this odd thing with the focus of my eyes, the nurse who injected me said: "You worry too much. You should go to Hawaii and get laid.")

Classic antipsychotics didn't help Schiller much, which is why she was entered in the drug trials for clozapine. Besides haldol, I've also taken prolixin and stellazine, and never found any of them particularly helpful.

Clozapine is more effective, but it has its own problems with side affects. It can kill you by damaging your blood, so you have to have regular blood tests. It is also very expensive, with treatment

Re:I understand... but WHY on slashdot?

Because, in addition to being legal experts and marketing geniuses, we're all also highly qualified psychologists and medical doctors.

Re:I understand... but WHY on slashdot?

I'm not a marketing genius.

Re:I understand... but WHY on slashdot?

> I'm not a marketing genius.

The classic ploy of undermarketing yourself to make people curious. You ARE a marketing genius!!!

Re:I understand... but WHY on slashdot?

Because the people who keep chasing him threatened his life if he didn't get something posted on Slashdot.

Re:Schizophrenia

Well....let me think of it this way. I was diagnosed schizoprhenic about 6 years ago....I am a hallucinatory schizophrenic, which means on top of hearing things, I see things. Makes life a bit difficult. Things people take for granted, I find a challenge. Imagine, if you will, driving down the street, and not knowig if the people you see walking in the street are real or not. I haven't been on meds for quite some time, due to lack of health coverage, and the fact that those things can get expensive. If you have any questions, my email is open for anyone who wants it.

Re:I understand... but WHY on slashdot?

However, I have to ask: Why on Earth would you ask this question on slashdot? Go post do a search on groups.google.com and POST IN A NEWSGROUP OVER THERE.


OK, I guess we should expect this kind of statement from Slashdot (particularly from an Anonymous Coward), but there are folks with M.D.'s and Ph.D.'s here on Slashdot (like me) and some of these folks work in areas like this. Slashdot is news for nerds and stuff that matters.....right? Well, you might be interested to know what the incidence of schitzophrenia is? I'll give you a hint: It's more common than you thought and it affects a great number of folks that are nerds and folks that use computers. Try thinking of something or someone other than yourself for a change and perhaps you might learn something.

And to those moderators who modded this as insightful?.......Shame on you.

Re:My Recommendations

There is some truth to this approach. I experienced some very significant problems that were partially related to food and partially related to antibiotics. I've been able to overcome those problems by changing my diet. The diet change turned out to be the solution to a chronic problem that required antibiotics to solve. Since I haven't needed the antibiotics for clse to a year now, the more severe mental issues they were causing have gone away. I can't promise that a diet change will cure a mental problem, but it could if that problem is induced by other health problems or their medications. As I learn more, I trust medicine less and less. I'm not saying that medicine is evil, but I think we are too quick to jump on them as a cure. Diet is certainly a major factor in our well-being. Just in case it may help, I will say that I experienced severe depression and an odd out of control psychotic episode that was induced by the antibiotic Levaquin (a quinolone family drug). It was quite scary. Now I am reading that a related drug that the military has been using, Lariam, is being connected by some people to murder/suicides occuring in military personel. The only reason I was on Levaquin was to cure some really severe sinus infections. And, at this point, it looks like those sever sinus infections were caused by my diet. So don't rule diet out, but don't count on it being the only cause. Sometimes we also just drwa the short straw genetically. The main key to a good diet is to avoid as much processed food as possible. Up your vegetable intake. Cut out white processed sugar, honey, nutrasweet or basically any simple carbs. Increase fiber. Avoid white flour and products made with it. Hope this helps someone. It certainly worked for me in a BIG way.

Re:My Recommendations

Larium is a serious mind-altering drug. I was in a Spanish immersion class in Quito, Ecuador, for my university degree. We were recommended to take Lariam before we left to get blood levels in our system. It prevents malaria. (It turns out we didn't really need it. Never got bit once while I was there, even in the jungle.)

Anyway, malaria gives you nightmares. Serious, terrifying nightmares. Everyone who was in our group reported having dreams about dead people. It also gave me weird lucid dreams -- after a few weeks, at one point in a dream I asked a character, "Is this one of those crazy Lariam dreams?" and he said, "Yes, this is a lariam dream."

Anywho, a girl who was on the program the year before us would wake up screaming in bed, sweating. They were ready to ship her home before they thought it might be the Lariam and took her off of it.