Schizophrenia Experiences and Suggestions? 1128
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?"
Just Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
k5 (Score:5, Informative)
Find out more (Score:5, Informative)
no confrontation (Score:2, Informative)
If you are talking to them, don't sit or stand opposite them, but beside them.
Try not to disagree with them about this, or if you do, don't do it negatively.
People with Schizophrenia can very easily turn away from you, cut you off, and want to have nothing to do with you.
I don't have any experience here, but this is from something my sister told me (she was a phsychologist, so I can only assume she knew what she was talking about).
T.
Look to your local organizations (Score:4, Informative)
Take the medication (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Asking for psychiatric advice on Slashdot? (Score:1, Informative)
Meds, Meds, Meds. (Score:5, Informative)
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
Support in taking meds (Score:5, Informative)
This is like asking for cunnilingus tips (Score:1, Informative)
Just trying to be helpful
Ok, let me relay what I currently deal with (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Best case scenario??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A Beautiful Mind... (Score:4, Informative)
Excuse me (Score:5, Informative)
That said, you'd be wise to be wary of medical info from some of the ACs aroud here.
Make sure she stays on her meds (Score:1, Informative)
Medical facts (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Difficult to describe and conceptualize (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a former Psychiatric Social Worker. The hardest part about understanding and empathizing with someone with Schizophrenia is that a healthy mind really can't understand what it is like. The fundamental thought processes in schizophrenia are off...so where you and I might be able to make a logical and reasoned conclusion that A and B therefore C. Schizophrenia often messes that up to the point where A and B therefore Bannana and ALWAYS snakes. And that would be perfectly reasonable to someone with schizophrenia because they cannot concieve of it otherwise.
I've worked with people with very severe and active positive symptoms (symptoms that are in excess of normal behavior) like auditory and visual hallucinations. At times it was hard to even communicate becasue the hallucinations were so intrusive.
I remember attending a workshop about schiozphrenia (bear in mind there are 5 types of schizophrenia) and we took turns wearning headphones that played a simulation of auditory hallucinations. It was pretty disturbing. It played for about 30min and changed volume and the sound on the tape was intermittent. The content varied from really annoyoing buzzes and beeps to whispered speech and ocassional screaming or demands to perform some action. The idea is that would be the NORM for someone with schizophrenia.
There is hope however, despite the medication conspiracy theorists, the folks that I worked with felt so much better while taking their medication. Many had their symptoms reduced to manageable levels and could hold down jobs, live on their own in an apartment and have a social life.
I would suggest working very close with your sisters psychiatrist and asking the doc about support resources that he/she knows about. Learn all you can about and be an active participant in treatment planning.
There is a lot of good and bad info on the web so be careful there. Schizophrenia.com is a good place to start.
HTH
Re:Just Remember... (Score:0, Informative)
No! You are thinking of Asperger's syndrome.
NAMI (Score:5, Informative)
- 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).
Re:Just Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
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".
Had some cousins... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
Not only are the two not the same thing, they are COMPLETELY unrelated.
Advice from someone that has Schizophrenia (Score:5, Informative)
- 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 in The Tigger Movie!!!" - my best friend's son, Gabe, at 5 years old. [everything2.com]
Here is the scoop (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part I) [kuro5hin.org]
Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part II) [kuro5hin.org]
Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part III) [kuro5hin.org]
Schizophrenia (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Best Advice is Nutrition (Score:2, Informative)
commonly seen (Score:5, Informative)
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.
90% cure rate (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A friend of mine was scizofrenic (Score:1, Informative)
Different Sort of Experience (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:I understand... but WHY on slashdot? (Score:3, Informative)
You're wrong. From the Slashdot FAQ [slashdot.org]:
CmdrTaco and his gang are still in charge here, and I personally like it that way.
My experience (Score:1, Informative)
As far as my memory goes back she has always been medicated. And when she's on her meds she's fairly normal, although she still can't go out among a lot of people or it bothers her. But when she gets off her meds it gets pretty scary. She'll just take off in the car and drive to see people she hasn't seen in 20 years, then when she gets there she might snoop around, but she usually turns around and comes back without ever talking to them.
My dad and her never got along, but he felt obligated to take care of her. They divorced shortly after I and my two siblings were out of the house. This was the worst time because there was no one living around her to make sure she stayed on her meds. You'll learn to tell immediately when they've missed a day. It's very frustrating to, because a psychiatrist who doesn't know her will sit there and tell you she's fine when you know otherwise.
Getting a good psych is probably the most important thing. Find someone she likes and preferrably someone that you think will be around for a few years. We have had real trouble finding good psychiatrists, but have been lucky on a couple of occasions to find wonderful ones. You need to find someone who understands that the family is going to be the people who understand her best. I hate going into a new shrink who starts to try and tell me how it is or how she's doing. A good psych will understand that you've been there and that you are the primary caregivers, not him. He's your heavy support unit to come in and get things done when the situation escalates. When my mom was doing the best she only had to go twice a year to the psych (great guy).
My mother has a fairly weak will, even before the disease, and this caused us all kinds of problems. How your sister makes out in life will depend mainly on her willpower and the support your family gives her. If she can find something that she enjoys doing that keeps her productive, that is probably the most important thing. My mother has rarely worked, and the jobs she has were jobs where she didn't have to deal with people. She loves animals and has a houseful of cats, dogs, iguanas, birds.... That's the main thing that keeps her going.
Do your best to make sure she stays on her meds. One psych explained it to me with the bouncing ball analogy. Every time the dopamine levels drop, they never quite come back up to the same level.
As far as a Beatifual Mind, I didn't care for it. I didn't think it was a great view of how it really is. Most Schizophrenics don't have visual hallucinations (or very few). Typically they have audio hallucinations. My mother had a few visual in her pre-med days.
Lastly: Be patient. You will get frustrated, scream, and cry. It will pass. You'll learn to deal with it and life will go on.
Good Luck
An Anonymous Coward
Re:Replace any and all mercury/silver/amalgam fill (Score:3, Informative)
Yet there is no evidence there is less incidence of the desease than in countries where this 'hype' has not been promoted.
My brother in law who is a dentist thinks it has mainly been promoted by money hungry German dentists as the procedure is expensive and the alternative fillings need more repairs.
schizophrenia .. you have a long road ahead. (Score:1, Informative)
There is an interesting book called "touched by fire" about biploars which has an interesting bent towards the artistic side of it and is a thinly veiled research paper to cull efforts to isolate the gene behind it so it can be eradicated. The book show the positive benefits it creates in society in the form of art and writing and even the sciences (math/computers etc). and also traces it through history as it is an inherited trait.
From what I know, bipolar is a form of "temporary" schizophrenia that affects people in waves instead of all the time. For people with bipolar (and by aproximation, schizophrenics), the average age for hospitalization is 28. And the average age for onset is around 20. Some people will only have one "episode" in their lives and then it goes away. Some have it bad, and the ones who are all the time are called schizophrenics.
Anyway, you concerns should be first and foremost possible suicide, and secondarily you should be concerned with drug and alcohol use.
For the people affected the terror induced by this can be crippling and their friends (who often don't stick around long after onset) and family are really put through the wringer.
Medication is a dual-edged sword, on one side it can help by numbing the person into oblivion, but they always realize what is going on and so desperatly want to feel normal that they will risk a bad episode to just "feel normal" again for a little while. Medication, unless administered, is spotty at best. And since most people affected are also alcoholics (on at least some level) and no psycotropics mix well with alcohol, there can be serious concerns. (I speak from some really scary personal experience here).
Coming from a family that has had to deal with this (half of them have talked to angels or seen demons), you may find yourself later in life having to do a lot of helping out and acting as a guide for you sister. (my brother is also affected badly) and had to come live with me for a while when my parents could no longer handle him.
You have a long road ahead with her.
Though, there is good news, once you get into your thirties, it can mellow to the point where you generally are okay, though as the name of that book suggests, she will be "touched" forever..
Re:Just Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
The Icarus Project (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Replace any and all mercury/silver/amalgam fill (Score:3, Informative)
Can you provide a reference on this? More than one would be nice since you say it's been demonstrated repeatedly.
Mercury poisioning is not an imaginary malady, by any stretch of the imagination; ask any dentist about the precautions required for handling mercury as the amalgam is prepared... the precautions are extensive. Yet they will happily insert this substance immediately into your mouth.
Two things:
1 - Since dentists work with Hg over and over and over, they need to take precautions others don't. It's like X-Ray technicians - they hide away from the X-Ray device while happily bombarding you with high energy photons. That's because they're around it every day.
2 - Nobody denies that elemental Hg is dangerous. Precautions do need to be taken, especially before the Hg is amalgamated.
This [ncahf.org] is the position paper of the National Council Against Health Care Fraud on the topic of Hg amalgam fillings.
Schizophrenia as mental model run wild (Score:1, Informative)
Medication for schizophrenia may be necessary, but it'll stultify creativity. This is an acceptiable loss if the situation is severe. If the situation is not severe, hard work to build critical thinking and reality checks is a good start.
All the subsymptoms, like depression, psychotic behavior, etc, stem from friction between the mental model and the actual world.
If you want to understand the schizophrenic in your life, try and understand their mental model. You won't help them by screaming "that's silly!" or "but that's not how it is!". You'll need to either understand the points where their mental model clashes with the real world and help to lubricate, or opt for medication.
One last note. Schizophrenics should stay away from psychedelics, especially marijuana. The most charitable reason is that psychedelics encourage creative mental model construction.
Re:Yes, find out more (Score:2, Informative)
The disease often attacks the capacity to reason correctly. And even in the case of someone who still has the capacity to reason well, the materials with which they reason, their starting point, is going to include lots of delusional beliefs. And while you might have hope that you can help them rationally rebut one delusion at a time, it turns out that reasoning about one belief requires a huge background of assumptions to be effectively fixed. And this background will have so many other delusional beliefs that it is basically impossible to isolate a single delusion for refutation.
But more likely, having a broken brain will preclude them from reasoning very well at all, let alone distinguish delusional from justified beliefs.
My aunt is Schitzo... (Score:1, Informative)
Virtual Schizophrenia (Score:2, Informative)
NPR has an excellent story [npr.org] on schizophrenia.
The most compelling part is the schizophrenia simulator [npr.org] (Real player required). Headphones will give you the best experience. From the story:
Hearing voices is a nearly universal symptom of schizophrenia, and the simulation reproduces that in a way that Frey says is very authentic, and Silberner says is alarming: "The voices jump around you -- they're in front, now behind, now to your left, now on your right. They're persistent, impossible to ignore or filter out."
Re:Troll??? (Score:2, Informative)
Read the moderator guidelines. A Troll is something that is factually inaccurate, and intended to start a debate on false premises, or to get helpfull "Corrections". Flamebait is just being offensive.
Firstly, it is none of those things. It is a relativly minor imbalance that is easly treatable. Even untreated, you don't go insane. You'll certainly have trouble concentrating, and perhaps hear voices...many teens diagnosed with depression and pumped full of drugs actually have Schizophrenia, and should be on completely different drugs. (As a side note, antidepressents are NOT known to work on people under the age of 21. In fact, double-blind studies show a signifigant increase in symptoms of depression over those receiving a placebo treatment, and a 50% increase in suicide attempts)So there you go, that bit of the article is wrong. "A Beautiful Mind" isn't very accurate, either in what happened, or in what Schizophrenia is like...but the article never said it was, just "If it is...". AFAIK, the modern medicines do not make you impotent, or have any other nasty side effects, but I havn't looked into it.
However, the submitter is admitting not knowing about the disease, and is asking for information. He made some inaccurate statements at the beginning, but that is because he doesn't know much about the diease (And hence, is asking for help). In conclusion, although the submission is not 100% correct, it is not a troll. A troll would have to be full of things that the poster knows to be wrong, and is hoping to get a rise out of people with. A troll article would have made more references to a Schizophrenic being crazy, refered to multiple personalities, and perhaps used the movie "Me, Myself, and Irene" as an example ;)
IANAP (Psychiatrist), but my mom is ;)
My mother has schizophrenia; Advice (Score:5, Informative)
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.
It's a terrifying experience (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Remind yourself and your family (Score:3, Informative)
I suffer from clinical depression, and believe me; it can also fundamentally affect how you perceive the world and how you think.
It certainly isn't the same as schizophrenia, but it is a real and sometimes debilitating disorder as well.
I'm don't think you were attempting to minimize it at all. But since you mention "sadness" along with it, I need to point out that there is "depression" which most people, sooner or later, experience (after the death of a loved one, etc.); and then there are clinical cases.
That's a whole different animal.
Nash was a mathemetician first and then went crazy (Score:4, Informative)
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.
My Brother (Score:2, Informative)
It really became obvious to our family that he was afflicted with something serious on an outing he and I went on. We were headed to a wrestling event downtown and he was to meet me at a certain train station in the city. He lives in the suburbs with my mother and I live downtown where the event was taking place. He arrived looking extremely stiff and frightened and appeared to be drenched in a cold sweat. When I asked him if anything was wrong, he denied it. He complained of feeling sick and suggested he might have been poisoned. I still didn't make much of it then, until he became increasingly incoherent and uttering something about being followed by a girl he once knew, and harassed by a bunch of acquaintances. I wondered if he'd taken any medication he may have had a reaction to. Nope.
Throughout the evening he kept looking behind him and the bewildered look worsened. Sometime earlier I got frustrated with his lack of communication with me, since he wasn't totally talkative but completely preoccupied with his delusions to the point where I had extreme difficulty getting his attention. He kept asking about said girl, and I said she's nowhere to be found. Perhaps the worse of his delusions was the belief that there were people out to kill him and his family. He believed his mother was in danger, he believed people had visited and ransacked the house, he called me frequently to ask if I was okay. He also believed people were filming him with a video camera, odd things of that nature.
To make a long story short, we cut the evening short and I took him back home and gathered the family. We immediately took him to the emergency room to have him looked at. They then suggested he stay awhile for a more thorough examination. That "awhile" ended up being more than a week in the psychological ward.
There are two categories of indications that suggest someone might have a mental disorder -- positive and negative. The positive behaviors are those gained with the discovery of the illness. Likewise, usual behaviors that have lessened or disappeared altogether are considered "negative" behaviors. If your friend or relative becomes increasingly anti-social (negative) or displays a nervous condition (positive) or has a body language that is no longer expressive or stiff (catatonic, negative) or wildy gesticulates (catatonic, positive) or bites his or her nails a whole lot (positive) or a typically passionless expression, you might have a person on the verge of a mental illness.
Overall today, my brother's behavior has changed a lot. While on his medication he's fine, except he doesn't leave the home anymore where once he used to be very social. The medication rids him of his experiences, but the subtler ones persist -- the nail biting, subtle rocking back and forth while seated and a very mild catatonia. He also doesn't laugh as much as he used to and appears to not react to humour the way he used to.
Generally illnesses of this sort strike people young, usually around their late teens to early twenties. I'd leave all sorts of information about things to do (in Canada) if you find yourself in this situation, but a good place to start would be your local emergency room, where they'd be able to put you in touch with a qualified psychiatrist.
- AC
Re:commonly seen (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Just Remember... (Score:3, Informative)
My son has had it for 10 years (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what are some good books on the topic? (Score:2, Informative)
Basically there are 2 observed "types" of schizophrenia - positive affective and negative affective. Positive affective means that the person is experiencing things that aren't there like the police shooting rays into his brain t control his mind. Negative affective means that they are not responding to stimuli that are there (like you snap your fingers in front of his face and he doesn't move / respond). Positive affective is generally controlable with meds - negative is not.
Generally my advice it to find a newer book (better yet - check the psych journals) - this info was new enough when I took psychopathology that it wasn't in the texts yet....
Re:Support in taking meds (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:My son think he owns Linux (Score:3, Informative)
McBride.
TAKE YOUR MEDS, TAKE YOUR MEDS (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Schizophrenia (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes, find out more (Score:3, Informative)
I disagree. There has been a strong correlation between creativity and several mental illnesses, but the link between genius of a standard analytical sort and mental illness has yet to be substantiated by statistical analysis. However, that said, I found that none of my creativity was removed by the introduction of atypical antipsychotics into my daily regimen, and while I am obviously a best-case scenario, the only thing that I saw suffer was the number of projects I started. Not the number I finished, mind you, but the number I started.
Re:My mother has schizophrenia; Advice (Score:2, Informative)
Secondly, I have had a few bad experiences with psychosis (be it schitzophrenia, diagnosed or undiagnosed, I don't know) and I know that, though meds are not the be-all and end-all of psychology, they are the catalyst for getting those that have slipped particularly far down the way back on a plane level enough for psychoanalytical methods to be effective (as others have said, you cannot talk people with these afflictions into not believing what they do no matter how good a psychologist you are)
My uncle and father suffered from psychosis, my uncle a diagnosed schizophrenic and my father a suspected (yet undiagnosed) one, both very violent, though this was probably nothing to do with any condition, rather a symptom of their own childhood (details I won't go into). I myself suffer from symptoms of Schizotypal Personality Disorder [mentalhealth.com] and I took a psychology course at college to discover more about my suspected condition.
To anyone in a situation where a loved one is diagnosed with a mental illness, or you suspect you may have symptoms of one yourself, that is probably the best thing you can do - if you go to doctors and ask them for their view they could be overly positive, and the media tends to overhype these things and present them in entirely the wrong way - just go out and research everything you can and try to get everything presented to you in an objective way - a course such as the one I took is the perfect example as you get objectivity along with the ability to ask questions of the information you are given.
I learned a lot and am a lot happier with myself now I know what could be going on inside me, and I've emerged from a period of my life where I needed a lot of help and am now coping fine, and my dad, with treatment, was well on the way to that before he unfortunately died of cancer five years ago.
Just research, research, research if you're in this situation - if you're like me, you'll find it reassuring that you know you're not being kept in the dark about anything - remember, knowledge is a powerful tool, both for reassurance within yourself and for helping those that need it.
Re:Just Remember... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:commonly seen (Score:3, Informative)
First 72 hours is only the time allowed for the immediate commitment requiring no court order and no possibility of getting out of it. After this (at least in california) the supervising doctor can put in for a two week extension just on their discretion that the individual is a danger to themselves or others (but this is a very week standard which any psychotic person meets). This two week hold *can* be contested by the patient but pragmatically the presumption is against the patient. I'm not entierly sure what happens after this two week period (I only had the unpleasentness of this experience once) but if someone actually has a psychotic illness it is fairly easy to keep them commited.
As for the issue of psychoactive drugs you are simply out and out wrong. Despite lots of studies no one has ever been able to demonstrate any permenent damage from LSD, either functionally or biologically. I forget what journal it was in but there was fairly recently a review of all the evidence on long term effects of LSD and they determined there was no evidence of long term functional harm. Sure this doesn't mean there isn't any but there is no more reason to believe it exists than to believe it exists for something like asprin. Moreover, even things like 'flashbacks' are now believed to be nothing but strong memories of an altered state and not indicitive of any lasting damage.
On the other hand there is considerable scientific evidence that anti-psychotic drugs cause neuron death and damage. People who take these drugs for a long time have very significant functional losses as well as often develop facial ticks and other problems which persist even after they stop taking the drugs. They often usually result in severe depression for the user.
Quite simply you have no evidence to believe that psychoactive drugs in general cause any more permenent brain chemistry changes than normal experience does. In fact several recent long term studies of chronic marijuanna smokers concluded that after a period of abstinence they had identical performance with non-users. On the other hand there is tons of scientific evidence that anti-psychotics not only cause changes in brain chemistry but also permenet damage and reduced functionality.
Finally on the issue of capability I was clear (or at least I hope I was) in the original post that the person should make this choice while on the meds. When they are sane they have just as good judgement as anyone else and only they have access to their subjective experiences on and off the meds. As for the issue of being a danger to others it is certainly something to consider. Should someone be a danger to others he might need to be commited if he doesn't take his meds. In this case his choice is between on meds and freedom or off meds and being commited but this still should be his choice.
In short we shouldn't sentence someone to a life of misery just because they are more functional this way.
Re:what are some good books on the topic? (Score:2, Informative)
Things start happening in your head which you know you aren't doing, which is terribly frightening. It literally is loosing control of one's own mind. Upon loosing control, the person struggles and fights harder to regain and maintain control. In response, the brain fights back harder, all the while the person thinks "Who is that? What causing these thoughts?" You know it isn't you, so who is it?! Paranoia ensues. Can things hear thoughts? Can things transmit thoughts? What's going on? People do not realize it's the brain because of typically something they fear that 'could' be capable of putting thoughts into a person's head.
The brain can and does act independantly of 'you' often. Like walking or driving and going on autopilot, and suddenly realising you're almost at your destination, and can't remember one bit of the trip. The brain walks/drives on it's own.
Most of the time the brain is not handed the reigns. But if it sees you doing something stupid or harmful, it won't hesitate to either try to persuade you (having a feeling about something / fear) or grab them away from you (reflex, pain).
This also happens in cases of fears and mental / emotional pain, especially when people supress things. People try to rationalize the brain acting on its own out of normal situations based upon what they know (or think they know). It is not common knowledge to people that the brain will act out on it's own in in subtle ways in response to certain emotional and mental pain, such as trauma - and that all those scary thoughts that the person thinks are coming from outside their head are actually coming from inside their head. It's the brain's response to try to heal, like how the skin heals from a cut. When the person actively interferes, it's going to try to take matters into its own hands. The problem is that it cannot heal without you wanting to, or working with it. And so the battle to get you to try to heal is waged. Unfortunately, people don't realize that's what they have to do to heal and kick and scream just as a child would, while having someone try to heal a wound. It hurts to heal.
When a person suffers from such 'thought paranoia', showing a person what it's not will do nothing without showing them what it is.
Anyone at risk of developing a mental disorder of some sort, the worst thing for them to do is be alone. Alone, there's no one to help combat the thoughts. Reality begins to disintegrate, and the basic rules that govern how the world works get rewritten. Numbers are an example. Having to do something a number of times. A number meaning something.
The brain attacks with images, thoughts, voices, memories, whatever it can use. Where are they coming from? People suffering from this often refer to them as "they" and come up with some outlandish explanation that cannot be proven or disproven, as they cannot confirm the existence of 'them' themselves. Voices aren't really something the person thinks they hear - it's like having a song stuck in your head. You can 'hear' it, but not really. Written words tend to get translated into an annonymous voice.
I could write way more, as I have been suffering from lies and rewritten rules for years. Seriously, that person needs to realize that the thoughts are coming from his brain and heal whatever he fears. Search for the truth, for it is the only thing which can set a person suffering from fear and paranoia free.
And when you find it, ACT LIKE YOU BELIEVE IT, because actions speak louder than words, ESPECIALLY in our heads.
a schyzo speaks (Score:2, Informative)
Schiller's The Quiet Room, atypical antipsychotics (Score:3, Informative)
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
DON'T go on a shroom or acid bender (Score:3, Informative)
i went on an acid bender in my late teens, trying to understand what it was like to be psychotic. it set off my latent bipolar disorder and then i had a REAL opportunity to see what psychosis was like, one that wouldn't stop.
please don't take powerful psychedelic drugs without supervision by a psychiatrist. at least find out whether you're predisposed to mental illness before you do.
Disorganized Schizophrenia (Score:1, Informative)
1) Disorganized Schizophrenia
2) Schizo-affective disorder
3) OCD w/ intrusive thoughts
4) Neurotic Depression
5) Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Not all schizophrenics are paranoid or delusional. There are some schizophrenics, like myself, who have trouble organizing thier thoughts or perceiving the world properly and responding accordingly. Disorganized schizophrenics can be totally incohent in thier speech and writings. They can be grossly abstract and spaced out.
I also suffered from severe migraines on top of being very disorganized and psychotically obsessed. To top it off, I was extremely anxious and scared because the psychiatrists I went to couldn't make it stop.
After suffering for 6 years in what is best described as a torturous mental hell, I became suicidally depressed. I resigned to kill myself in 1996, but fortunately, and on a fluke, decided to get treatment for my migraines.
Luckily I found a doctor that specialized in pain and he treated my headaches properly, and most likely saved my life. His name is Moosa Heikali and he has a practice in Beverly Hills.
It has taken me 13 years to get to the point where I can now handle a job. But even then, the job has to be simple and of little stress. And I must sleep at least 7 hours a night.
A big help to my mental state was the FDA approval of Zyprexa in 1998 for the treatment of schizophrenia. Zyprexa finally made the hellish world I lived in bearable and had positive side effects.
So currently I take 20mg Zyprexa, 300mg Topamax, 225mg Pamelor and 2mg Klonopin. Even then I still have an unshakeable chronic headache and am somewhat lacking in concentration. The Pamelor has completely removed my neurotic depression.
When I met my girlfriend she was basically an untreated Manic with Borderline Personality syndrome. She also had intrusive thoughts. That's a whole other story, but with treatment and my love, she is now perfectly normal.
Good luck with your family!
Schizophrenia (Score:1, Informative)
Schizophrenia has two basic components the "positive" symptoms, and the "negative" symptoms. The positive are the symptoms that most people readily associate with schizophrenia such as hallucinations (auditory, visual, or any of the senses). The negative symptoms are a flat affect, lack of good hygiene, depression, etc...
Medications that treat schizophrenia work on the dopamine receptors to limit dopamine. (note that dopamine is the same nuerotransmitter that is stimulated in those that have taken LSD). Medications are slowly beginning to target the correct receptors in a more specific way, so that there are less side effects than the older anti-psychotic meds like haldol, navane, etc. The newer type of drugs are called "Atypical anti-psychotics" (like resperdone, olanzapine). The Atypical drugs also target (somewhat) the negative symptoms.
Re:Interesting related question. (Score:4, Informative)
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.