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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?"
I'm sorry to hear of your trouble. I offer prayers for you and your sister.
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
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.
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.
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
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 fraccy4@hotmail.com. 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.
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.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
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.
My sister was diagnosed as schitzo-affective, a combination of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder (manic depression), about ten years ago.
:-> ) 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.
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
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
Paul Leader
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.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
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.
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.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.