Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Reminds me of: Lucy
--
PS: lameness filter sucks.
How do you mark an article submission as "Troll"? Beautiful Mind was not a terribly accurate film; it took a ton of non-realistic liberties for "artistic" sake. Also, it was (poorly) showing a relatively severe case of schizophrenia... Hardly a "best case" scenario.
Slashdot already provides people with enough inaccurate Science and Technology information... lets not shoot for Medical as well...
is if Slashdot posts this again tomorrow. :P
Too many people confuse Schizophrenia with Multiple Personality Disorder. The two are related, but are not the same thing.
Are we implying that slashdot readers will have a higher number of schizophrenia symptoms? I would not expect the rate to be higher than... let's say car mechanics...
no, you don't.
Helps me put things in perspective when I'm depressed/sad/dejected. Maybe it'll help you too.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Go to Kuro5hin. There's a number of fascinating, lengthy, relevant articles on the subject there.
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 would probably be worth taking a look at too.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I'm sorry to hear of your trouble. I offer prayers for you and your sister.
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
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.
The only think I know about dealing with someone with Schizophrenia is to never confront them.
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.
It's a vague term at best, and you should try to find out more about the specific form you're dealing with.
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.
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.
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.
Have you talked to a doctor yet? sure it's nice to know other peoples personal experiences, but doctors are a good source.
if you have, then ignore this.
There have been many stories on Kuro5hin by people with mental disorders. Take a look at Living With Schizophrenia. More recent, but not very relevant to the question is Living with Asperger's Syndrome, also a fascinating read.
I knew a girl who had schizophrenia. As long as she took her medication she was pretty much indistinguishable from everyone else.
One time we were all taking a long ride in a car. Just having the usual conversations that people have. She totally flipped out. In her mind, she thought that everyone in the car was talking about her, saying that she was ugly, stupid, a slut, whatever. She was having some major auditory hallucinations or something. But that was the only time that I ever saw her do anything strange.
The above incident is what prompted her to tell all of us about her schizophrenia. If it wasn't for that I never would have even known that she was schizophrenic and I had been hanging out with this girl at least twice a week for over a year.
Schizophrenia treatment has advanced by leaps and bounds since the days of John Nash's disease, so don't consider that a "best case scenario" for anything but the 60s-90s. Realize that the main barrier to effective treatment is cost - the "worst case" scenarios are the poor and lower economic classes. The destitute and lonely. Those without support, they who cannot afford the best care.
Therefore, unless your family is already wealthy, it is up to you and the other able members who are willing to provide for your sister to create and pool wealth to use for this purpose. Some families are not willing to do this, or are only willing to contribute enough to ensure basic care. To ensure the best possible outcome, ideally you and your able family members must adopt a completely altruistic stance regarding medical care for your sister, and work hard to the end of improving her condition as best it can be improved.
I think Cliffs been watching "A Beautiful mind" too much.
They told him to post it....
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
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.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
on what type of schizophrenia she has... there's paranoid, disorganized, catatonic, etc. Prognosis varies depending on subtype.
Also, does she have chronic schizophrenia, or a reactive form? The reactive form (usually a psychotic "break" in response to some illness or crisis) is much more treatable, and has a better prognosis.
There's a wide spectrum of schizophrenic severity... some people respond to lower-dose older meds, some only to the newer antipsychotic drugs... some don't respond at all.
More info, please.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Psychology is a grey area in my opinion with a long history of extremely bad practices... like psychotherapy with LSD... good one doctor.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Can't offer you any real help, but maybe you should consider
a) consulting an expert in that field
b) not relating your sister's experience with some Hollywood movie (which is far from accurate by the way).
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.
I wouldn't base your knowledge of anything on a Hollywood movie, for christs sake! (Didn't Hollywood have the Americans cracking the Enigma code? Sounds bizarre but it's what a friend who saw the film told me!)
Generally Schizophrenia is treated as either a joke, or as multiple personality disorder, for some reason.
There are plenty of resources on the net with information about schizophrenia. There are some forms of medication which can help but we're still in the dark ages when it comes to the treatment of mental health, so expert little more than fear from friends and family, and chemical lobotomy's from the medical profession. The cause will be described as being anything from genetics/hereditary problems to drug use, pregnancy, shock, the stress of modern living, viruses, your mother having flu during pregnancy etc etc. Ultimately someone suffering from it is going to need help to get over it, if they ever do. Good luck.
Ah, you speak of that rarest of posts, the +5 troll
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
One thing to do right away is to get realistic about what drug therapies are likely to do. Even if a particular drug seems like it's working, often they lose their efficacy over the course of time and something else must be tried, which can result in relapses and other complications. My wife's aunt is schizophrenic, and there are good times and bad.
One key is to keep treating that person with respect and dignity, even though sometimes it is hard due to the nature of their illness. Good luck.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
schizophrenia P Pronunciation Key (skts-frn-, -frn-)
n.
Any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances. Schizophrenia is associated with dopamine imbalances in the brain and defects of the frontal lobe and is caused by genetic, other biological, and psychosocial factors.
A situation or condition that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities: the national schizophrenia that results from carrying out an unpopular war.
Schizophrenia
n : any of several psychotic disorders characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact [syn: schizophrenic disorder, schizophrenic psychosis, dementia praecox]
from www.dictionary.com
T.
I mean really. Couldn't you think of a more appropriate forum?
Just trying to be helpful
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.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Hmm at first í thought I had loaded kuro5hin.org up instead of /. I'd recommend you to go over there and search for a submitted article on this very same subject. It received a few hundred replies, many of the extremely helpful. I should know, I work in mental health care myself.
Everything I know about schizophrenia I learned from Wesley Willis.
http://www.alternativetentacles.com/bandinfo.php?b and=wesleywillis
http://www.monzy.org/wesley/
http://www.wesleywillisart.com/
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Because, in addition to being legal experts and marketing geniuses, we're all also highly qualified psychologists and medical doctors.
You've got to read The Eden Express, by Mark Vonnegut (Kurt's son). It's an incredible true story of an intelligent man who rises from the depths of a debilitating condition.
Because the people who keep chasing him threatened his life if he didn't get something posted on Slashdot.
One recently discovered variation of schizophrenia causes the sufferer to experience bizarre delusions of property-ownership, as well as the paranoid belief that an international conglomerate of shadow agents - and their masses of followers - are trying to steal aforementioned property and subvert the sufferer's day-to-day life.
Doctors are starting to refer to it as "McBride Disorder."
My kid brother had a mild version of it - he went on drugs and had counciling for about 9 months. He is now fine, living a normal life with a girlfriend, car, and all the other consumer goods, etc.
One thing I *cannot* stress highly enough, keep your sister away from cannabis or other drugs as best as possible - and by other drugs I include coffee, chocolate, alcohol, etc.
Once my brother (who for a while, was as nutty as a fruitcake) stopped smoking weed, drinking 5 cups of coffee a day, and started exercise/medication he was much much better.
Don't lose hope, this condition is NOT always a life sentence.
Multiple personality disorder is a distinct illness.
"I would like the vast audience here to help me understand the disease through experiences and that it might help me aid my sister"
Um yeah I guarantee 80% of all the posts will be some jackass making fun of you/your sister or the disorder in general....GO INTERNET.
Ave Molech Setting
I asked slashdot for ideas on how to create a portable server room, that got rejected, but suddenly, hey, WebMD slashdot edition.
I guess I forgot to ask medical advice with my computer question.
Ask Slashdot:
A friend of mine had the clap, which linux distro should she use?
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
...which is, what can this man do to help his sister? Moral support is good and all, but moral support also comes from practical support.
Finding God in a Dog
Only published in paper and long out of print--but available from second-hand booksellers such as abebooks--you may want to read Barbara O'Brien's haunting book "Operators and Things." This 1958 book was written by a spontaneously-recovered schizophrenic and is a first-person view of the schizophrenic experience.
The title refers to her delusional revelation that what seems to be human beings in the world are actually two different kinds of beings, Operators and Things, and that she is a Thing.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Why in the world was the post green-lighted?
All this poor soul is going to get is a bunch of crappy comments going for funny, rude, or both. I have no doubt there are people on this list with friends or family with mental illness, including me.
A very good friend of mine recently "went nuts" (I don't want to go into detail). There are so many other places much better suited to ask this question. I would never ask for advice about my friend on Slashdot. And if I did, I would hope someone would have the good sense to reject the comment and perhaps the sensitivity to send me an email telling me why.
A simple google groups search turned these up:
alt.support.schizophrenia
sci.med.* (23 groups)
alt.health.hmo
alt.nurse
and: www.schizophreniaresource.com
Slashdot staff get a -1 (Offtopic) for this post.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I have no knowledge of this disease with the exception of what I have learned in high school, however, I am very familiar with the psychiatric profession.
If you take you sister to another psychiatric facility (for something like Schizophrenia, you definately want more than one doctor on board) she might be rediagnosed, however, the course of treatment might be different.
I know you want the best for your sister, so my suggestion is to get a second opinion. If it's the same, you are doing the best you can do. If you get a different one, you should get a third. Mental treatment is something that may have permanent effects, wanted or not. The decision should be educated and thought out.
I wish you, your sister, and your family luck and good hope.
religion != morality
from a quick search on http://groups.yahoo.com: 4 schizophrenia This list is for those with schizophrenia or a family member of someone who is schizophrenic. My husband has this illness and I've never been able to find a list where loved ones or anyone with this disorder could discuss things, so am starting my own list. I read slasdot for computer tech news, not for info in other areas.
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.
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.
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.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I was in a hospital for depression. one day playing cards with some of the other kids, one guy stood up, started shouting at me and throwing things at me. the staff took him to his room and calmed him down...the problem was that my voice was the same as a voice in his head and I freaked him out. I think it freaked me out a bit too.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Linux on the pacemaker - gives "kill -9" a whole new context
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Seriously--many schizophrenics can live perfectly normal lives if they stay on their meds. The biggest problem is they DON'T. For a lot of reasons--the meds make them feel bad, they start to think they don't need them anymore, whatever. Make sure she understands that there will be a very strong temptation to stop taking her meds at some point in the future and that she should discuss this with someone else, preferably a doctor or family member, before she does it. A perfectly normal life can get perfectly fucked up in very very little time.
I babysit a kid with downsymdrome quite often and to be honest I don't go "OMG YOU ARE TEH RETARD!", he is still human and sure his marbles maybe missing one or two but he isn't some lepper or something.
This sounds really harsh but you (the ask slashdot poster), sound like you're asking about something "weird" or "bad". Remember she is still your sister and because some one said she has a mental disability does not change a thing.
She is the same person she was before the person said it, and she will be the same person years after he has. Try to just "accept it" and don't act like she is disabled or however you perfer to think about it
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
I don't know many schizophrenics very well, but I have a couple of friends who suffer from it's poorer cousin, manic depression. (My understanding is that the latter can sometimes develop into the former.)
I would generally agree that Slashdot is not the best place to seek advice, except that these same people are often otherwise intelligent and talented people, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a larger percentage of such people in IT than in the general population.
From what my friends have told me it is an *emotional* disorder; i.e. often aggravated by stress etc. but also can be brought on by emotional highs as well. Manic depressives and schizophrenics have to learn to watch out for highs as well as the lows and control both.
The other thing is, talk to other mental illness sufferers as well as doctors. These people have to take a lifelong interest in the way their illnesses work, are often quite intelligent people (as I said earlier) and can in some respects provide as useful information as your doctor.
They will frequently make very supportive friends as well, simply because they know how important that can be.
Of course I am neither a doctor nor a schizophrenic myself.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
I understand you need advice but Slashdot may not be the best place for it. Try webMD. It has many articles on anything medical and even discussion groups. And most of the information there has been put there by either doctors who know what they are talking about or people who are going through the exact same thing.
http://www.webmd.com
Cliff:
In case it helps, I once heard about someone with a sudden onset of schizophrenia. After going through a divorce (consequence of schizophrenia), she had her mercury fillings removed and fully recovered. The symptoms from mercury (heavy metal) poisoning are essentially asymptomatic (non-deterministic), so it affects different people differently at non-lethal amounts. FYI, another common (perhaps the major) symptom of mercury toxicity is (often undiagnosed, asymptomatic) CFS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which creeps up on you and can be debilitating.
I've had all my mercury (aka amalgam, silver) fillings replaced and would recommend doing so. If your sister has any silver/amalgam/mercury fillings, I'd suggest getting them removed --- for general health if not to address the possibility of causing symptoms of schizophrenia.
Not to complicate matters, but I'd also recommend going to a dentist who is not a quack (the silver filling fiasco has been abused by unscrupulous, incompetent dentists) but sensitive to the issue. Removal of mercury fillings can be toxic in itself, so extra measures can and should be taken including an air/water dam around tooth (to avoid swallowing any additional mercury) and a ventilator (to avoid inhaling mercury fumes as byproduct of drilling, removal).
And, no, the ADA (American Dental Association) won't corroborate any of this advice since, according to them, mercury (silver/amalgam) fillings are only toxic when outside your mouth (i.e., before filling, and after removal --- where it's required to be dealt with in toxic disposal!). (Can you say huge liability lawsuit (a la tobacco) for conflict of interest in supporting amalgam fillings?) Unfortunately, the NIH is no more accountable on this issue.
Best luck.
Because the voices told him to post it here...
"I can be self-referential if I want to," said Tom, swiftly.
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 seems legit). Educate yourself as much as you can.
I'm not a marketing genius.
schizophrenia is not the same as multiple personality disorder, dispite the fact that schizophrenia means "split mind"
t y_ disorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_personali
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.
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.
I did some research for schizophrenia not too long ago and found this great link. It's from NPR, and it actually has a multimedia simulation on what it's like to have this terrible disease. Check it out.
Actually, I vastly don't appreciate some of the jokes flying around. I was diagnosed schizophrenic about 6 years ago.
Of course you don't appreciate the jokes. They're all aimed directly at *you*. We know who you are...
http://xkcd.com/386/
First of all, I have a mild form of that disease, I am/was able to integrate it into my life and cope most of the time without meds. But depending on the severity meds are very important, Schizophrenia can be a constant nightmare for people who have to deal with it and even more for people who suffer from it. All I can say is, inform yourself, your sister should do the same start a therapy and depending on the severity of her schizophrenia consult a psychiatrist to discuss medication. But be warned most of the schizo medication has sideeffects, depending on the meds. Most of them make tired and some of them make constantly hungry, so a constant workout schedule is required. But one thing your sister should not do, is to give in and do nothing, you can live with it, you can get out, but if you do nothing, then you run into a horrible nightmare. Also have in mind that the suicide rate of schizophrenics is very high.
My uncle suffers with Schizophrenia to quite a severe extent.
I can only assume from my grandmothers accounts the difficulties in dealing with this. I have always been somewhat distanced from him due to his illness and \ or treatment (he is in a hospital far away), so this may not be too accurate.
The first step is to completely understand the illness, and how the person suffering. Be that suffering due to perceiving things that are not real and mental anguish rather than traditional pain.
It is difficult when someone fails to recognise their own mother, hears voices or sees things but remember this is an illness.
As far as I am aware my uncles quality of life has improved since moving to somewhere specialized to deal with things like this. While he was local to me he actually got the reputation as the village tramp. This page is a community edited guide to places in the UK and it's quite a shame to see his name included.
People don't understand, one of the things you could do to improve quality of life is try to educate the people around you.
Sorry if this doesn't make a great deal of sense as it's a bit rushed (I want to go home).
Feel free to contact me to discuss my experiences further and while I'm not so rushed.
Avontech | Play dirty! They started it!
*rolls eyes* It's people like you.....anyway, I don't drive currently, dingbat.
Well, it wasn't about *my* sister...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Generally speaking, as I am a liberal, I am against it.
The movie at best glosses over Nash's true situation and how it impacted his life and work. Sure, the movie was well done, cinematically interesting and had a lot of Jennifer Connelly in it, but other than that, it is not something you'd want to base a psychological assessment on.
Schizophrenia was once a catch-all diagnosis. Just about any disorder could go into it. It wasn't until the idea of a DSM came around that disorders started getting segmented.
As for MPD, sorry. That's just not true. It makes for a good conspiracy theory, though.
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
who are you replying to?
you turn to Hollywood and then Slashdot? Now *that* is insanity.
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."
- The DSM IV (diagnostic and statistical manual)
- National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (find your local chapter and get as much support for the rest of the family as for her)
- schizophrenia.com (get literate and read like crazy [oops], and eventually get a sense of humor rather than just crying)
- Voices by Dream Theater, 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).
The anonymous coward who said I should stop driving....the one who is too damn chicken to even put a name to the insults.
I don't blame you for posting this on Slashdot. It's a big crowd of people...there are bound to be a few that have experiences with schizophrenia. And when this news hits, it's pretty scary and you just want to know more from anywhere!
I have a friend that may be schizophrenic. They keep changing the diagnosis between bipolar and schizo. The initial events were pretty scary. She ultimately disappeared for a month or so (both mentally and physically). After some institutionalization and meds, she's much better. I think sticking to the meds is probably the best advice. Of course, with the number of crappy side-effects, I'm sure that will be hard. Avoiding stressors is also good advice, but..yeah...hard to do in a 'normal' life.
But, so far, my friend has been doing quite well and she seems happy and healthy. I think she does get bothered/scared when symptoms flair up (voices, hallucinations, etc.) Something she'll have do deal with for the rest of her life I suppose. But, I'm glad she's alive and with us again. Good luck.
-buzz
schizophrenia as i understand it occurs due to the organization of the brain (biochemically) living more inside of the internally synthesized world with fewer checks/syncs with the sensous of the external world. plenty of debate exists as to causes, some of it nature (genetic expression) and some of it nuture (consensus reality is full of opposing models that cannot reconcile without being at least a little "crazy"; aka "doublethink").
interesting to read is the anthropology of jaynes joyce and the origin of consciousness in the bicameral mind. he proposes that historically most humans thought in a schitzophrenic manner; that our "inner voice" (as in when you read to yourself) was once not recognized as such, that self-identity didn't exist and your inner voice was "the gods talking through you".
on the nurture side of things are some interesting work by gregory bateson, basically stating that some people's brains have a very difficult time simultaneously holding contradicting views, particularly children raised in heavily contradicting environments such as troubled or broken homes. the summation of which leads to the full-blown break from reality in the form of schitzophrenia.
perhaps the best description i've heard is the metaphor of your ego being your house. some people use psychedelic drugs to leave their house and explore for a time, but ultimately returning to the safety of their coherent mental models (or schemas). for those with schitzophrenia, it's as though their house has a hole in the roof where the rain gets in (no pun intended to the beatles); the inner world of their modeled schemas aren't adapting well to the physical world of consensus reality.
now, for a solopsist, it would be fair to argue that the viewer determines the observed. there are also some big questions as to whether those judged "sane" within consensus reality are truly any better or worse off than the "insane" others. see "dust theory".
for all you know perhaps quantum probability is assembled by tiny demons to pull the wool over your eyes as to what's "really real". or perhaps wittgenstein is correct in that abstraction notions of "real" and "true" are just misapplied words/metaphors themselves.
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.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I have a friend who manifested minor, secondary symptoms of schiz for years. he was misdiagnosed with depression, and the prescribed medication understandably did little.
Finally he had a complete break with reality. Voices...psychic transmissions...shadowy groups controlling his mind, and the minds of those around him...I patiently listened through this, and suggested that while those things might be real, it was also possible that it was schiz, and that he should see a doctor to be sure. if it wasn't schiz, then i would believe him and help him vs. the psychics.
He wasn't too agreeable at first but luckily his parents convinced him to go to a doctor before things got too bad. He was really turning into a danger to himself or others.
Today he is on medication and under therapist supervision. The meds are rough on him but he's making progress. He's taking classes and finally about to go back to school fulltime to get a degree. In time, once the meds get balanced and he learns how to handle it, he'll be leading a perfectly normal, though regulated, life.
He's different now than before, more subdued and less volitile, but its still him. Schiz is very misunderstood, and difficult to treat -- its hard and it takes time, but it can be done.
Moo.
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.
I recently got out the hospittal for untreated bi-polar disorder... also my father was schizo-effective... thats schizophreana(or however you spell that) with a mood disorder... in both places I saw what happens to someone that goes unteated...
my father killed himself because he got off his meds... I saw several people in the hospital because they were so delerius from the schizophrenea that they didn't know who they were...
one guy thought that we were on mars and another guy thought that everyone was out to kill him...
these are the thing where it can lead of someone gets off their meds.. that is the most important part.. stay on the meds....
Uh...okay folks, this DID pass moderation. Someone thought it was worth talking about.
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. It was quite interesting and talked about his condition in some depth.
Also, check out the Wikipedia article 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.
In case you really don't know.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Till I saw A Beautiful Mind I didn't know talking to yourself or imaginary people is not normal. Now it feels weird...
Don't go asking all the idiots on here for their OPINION ( few will have any rational knowledge or experience )
You also have a mental health support system in your state government.. use it, you've paid for it....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- 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.
-The Libra
"Please be patient--The future will begin momentarily."
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).
Schizophrenia and MPD are two completely different things, trust me, I know what schizphrenia is, I've lived with it for 6 years.
Maybe they assumed that since so many people act out mental diseases in slashdot postings, there would be a common experience base.
"What's the point of going abroad, if you're just another tourist..."
I lost one brother in 88 to this disease. He was hospitalized in 87 and had been on heavy medication for a year with a lot of side effects. The drugs were a lot more cruel then, so he found his own cure.
A second brother starting showing signs in about 90. We lost him in 97. May they both rest in peace.
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.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
in recent revisions of the DSM to "Dissociative Identity Disorder" (DID) rather than MPD.
The current theory is that DID exists on a continuum with some of the personality disorders, particularly Borderline personality disorder. The common denominator seems to be very early, severe childhood trauma (emotional, physical, sexual assaults, etc).
Not picking a nit, just FYI.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
This is probably not the best place to get useful information regarding your sister's condition.
I havea good friend who was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia. I always just thought he was a little weird, but his weirdness grew progressively worse as he got older, culminating in some pretty strange episodes which finally got him the medical help he needed.
He spends his time playing prescription roulette now. Sometimes he's lucid, other times he is way out there. He's still generally weird.
He's still my friend.
Living with mentally handicapped loved ones is not easy. You have a hard road ahead. But you are not alone on that road, although it can feel like it at times. Don't be afraid to reach out for help.
And learn as much as you can. There are a lot of assholes out there who like to profit from other's misery by peddling the cure of the week.
> I'm not a marketing genius.
The classic ploy of undermarketing yourself to make people curious. You ARE a marketing genius!!!
For what it's worth, it's still not entirely clear that multiple personalities even exist. The few documented cases of MP remain suspect and incomplete. It's fairly accepted now that even the famous Sybil (treatment by Dr. Cornelia Wilbur dramatized in the book by Flora Schreiber and later made into a movie) did not, in fact, have multiple personalities. Dr. Wilbur basically encouraged and influencd Sybil to claim she had MP's, while Ms. Schreiber's publisher only wanted something sensational -- thus, an entire cultural understanding is born. I don't think Dr. Wilbur meant fraud, but unconsciously influencing a subject/patient based on your own desires is hardly unheard of. Here's a couple of links, if you're interested:
A chapter from Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations And Shattered Lives
An FMS Foundation newsletter from 1997
Search the pages for "Wilbur" and you'll find the interesting bits. You can also search for "wilbur schreiber sybil hoax" or something like that.
Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part I)
Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part II)
Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (Part III)
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Since no one appears to be addressing your questions, here goes. I have 2 cousins with Schizophrenia; one to a greater degree than the other. Granted, this is a broad term that can encompass a variety of abnormal behavior. Generally speaking, you may notice that the older she gets the more severe the symptoms. For instance, my male cousin in his younger days could hold a job, was married twice, and was basically functional though you always knew there was something wrong. Now, at 50, he could never hold a job and his grip on reality is severely damaged. He has fits of paranoia and get's angry very easily. It takes a lot of patience to deal with him. My Aunt has, thus far, avoided committing him to a home though he has spent time in a psychiatric facility at different times in his life. On the other hand, his sister has by and large had a less severe form. She has had periods of severe symptoms but overall she's less likely to get excited or angy, has few if any fits of paranoia, and while not working fulltime for anyone she does handle domestic duties at home just fine. She too has been married and has two children. So the answer is not clear, but I think what you need to know is that you need to be very patient and not too surprized if this illness progresses.
K5 is horribly hostile towards those with mental problems. The stock response to articles of the above ilk is "Wow, you need to invent a syndrome to excuse being yourself" which is pretty sad and narrow minded from a normally intellectual and interesting userbase.
One was with my friend's mother, which was confounded with bipolar. It started in her thirties under quite a bit of stress, but medication and counseling has been sufficent for her to get her life back together.
The other was with a friend with a more sever case. He was fine when he was taking his medication, but we couldn't get him to keep taking it. His parents couldn't, noone could. It's not like you can just pull an ultimatum, either. I mean, they're not thinking in the same way you are. (He had this belief that God would heal him. When you look at all the TV shows and the Bible, he had enough evidence he needed.)
You don't mention her age. She's probably a little bit older, as it starts in women later than in men usually. All I can offer is my condolances, and suggest http://schizophrenia.com/
'Esc-x doctor'
From what I remember, Schizophrenia is a psychological condition, when a person is sure of something that is not true. By saying 'sure' I mean not just convinced, but rather mentally unable to accept any other possibility. The condition usually have triggers through one of the senses (the most common ones are some images / colour combinations, or phrases / words). This comes from an experience that is connected to the creation of condition. This can happen to anyone, anytime because in certain situations our brain "loops" to protect itself (imagine bad security software). As long as the triggers are rare, the person affected can lead a normal healthy life and succeed in any discipline. However, the more common the trigger, the worse condition may become. Schizophrenic people are well known for their sometimes phenomenal creativity in arts. The problem is that the peak of creativity usually is triggered by the same factors and is dangerous for the person. Still taking everything into account, most of schizophrenic people are able to lead a normal productive life. I know a very successful accountant and several artists (musician and painters) who have the condition, but still enjoy their lives, have families and are probably more normal than most of the geeks on /.
... the same way the guys in Pink Floyd did, make some albums. The next best thing is to listen to theirs.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Grandma was senile and had a habit of smearing shit on walls. I found that getting shit off of painted drywall was almost impossible. If you put vinyl wallpaper on the walls, the shit is MUCH easier to clean off.
I don't have schizophrenia, but I have had a serious mental illness since I was 19 years old (I'm now 35). I'm on medication for life and have had to modify my lifestyle to adapt to my limitations.
I'd recommend contacting your local mental health office. If your community doesn't have one, call one in the nearest large city and plan a visit. Both the person with a mental illness and family members need support. Find out all of the resources in your area and use them. Things like medication, group therapy, counselling, psychologists and psychistrists are all helpful. If you're part of a Church, you can find help there, however in my own experience charismatic churches (ie: Vineyard, Pentecostal, etc) can be counterproductive as there can be a bias that all mental illness is demon possession. Physical activity is also very helpful in coping with mental illness.
The main thing to realise is this: You Are _NOT_ alone! Give yourself, your sister and your family lots of time to learn about how to cope. Know that there are going to be some tough times ahead. Learn to talk about it with others around you that you trust, and you will be surprised how many people have mental illness. If you want, you can even email me directly here through slashdot, and I'd be more than willing to talk to you more.
There are no quick fixes, but treatments and knowledge in the area of mental illness is improving every year.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
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
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in May 2001, and pronounced recovered in September 2004.
:)
The first thing you must accept is that this is long term. No one gets better over night, 12 - 36 months is normal. The medication for the illness is almost as bad as the illness itself; make sure your sister can take all the time she needs to rest. I was sleeping 16 hours a day on average. If your sister was in school, or had a job, she most certainly will not be able to get there everyday. Pushing her to continue school, or continue work is far from a good idea right now. She must take her medication everyday. Missing just one dose doubles the chance of relapse. You and your family may have a hard time coping, but your concern about how you feel that is complete selfishness. Your sister is the one with the illness, and one quote I read "If depression was the common cold of psychological disorders, schizophrenia would be the cancer." is entirely true. She needs a lot of loving care, and she needs to take things very very slow. One question to ask, "What's another year?" What's so bad if it takes her another year to complete school? Forcing herself to live her life as she usually did will have horrific results. She does not need any stress right now - just understanding and comfort.
I lost 2 years of my life to the illness, but I did recover. Recovery is possible, always remember that. It will take a year, maybe 5 years... but 1/3 do recover with no chance of relapse. There are a lot of scary statistics, but as long as she takes her medication everyday, and minimizes her stress, things may improve.
I'm sorry I'm not able to give more specific information, but from the details you gave, that's all I can say now. If you have more questions, I'll do my best to answer them.
Long term, even thought I had the illness, I did recover, and I am going onto second year psychology in University for a Ph.D. (My final mark in first year psychology was 90%) Once she recovers, she'll have as good a life as anyone, if not better.
Dollar Highway Financial News
I've gotta disagree with you here. While Schizophrenia may be "more common than you think" that's a pretty lame reason to include it as an "ask slashdot". AIDS is probbably more common than you think, is that the next Ask Slashdot? The point is that Slashdot is a techno-geek news site, and this just doesn't relate to techno-geekdom. You could have an article about "new treatment for schizo", or "what causes schizo", or even "schizo on the rise in US, computers to blame". But an article discussing everyones experiences is NOT techno-geekdom. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it, this just isn't the place to discuss it.
I'm almost positive there are FAR better places to ask this question than a techno-geek news site. There certainly must be blogs specific to this disease. I'm sure there's been many books written, and medical professionals can be found in better places.
And to those moderators who modded this as insightful?.......Shame on you.
Shame on them? What's wrong with modding something up that probbably 9/10 people thought of when they first read the article? Oh yes, we're never supposed to question the motives of someone who's suffered. Now you "shame" them because they haven't played the appropriate social game. I find that extremely manipulative.
AccountKiller
I hate to say this, but it's true. A good co-worker friend of mine is a paranoid schizophrenic. To make a long story short, I asked him if he had ever not taken his meds, or gotten sick of taking them, and he told me a story of what happened a week or two after he once decided he was sick of taking his meds and decided he wasn't going to take them anymore - how he crawled out of his window in his underwear and ran down at top speed to the nearest ER because "they" were coming to "get him".
So that's the important thing - you can fool yourself into thinking that not taking your meds might be OK, or that it's really not necessary, but the truth be told, the meds tend to really, really help, even though your rational mind objects to having to take them all the time.
It's very tempting not to take them, but just take them. Nothing good will come of it if you stop taking them.
Diet might help; improving your diet might help; work with your doctor to improve your diet; but don't stop taking the meds. Exercise might help; work with your doctor to improve your diet and exercise regimen; but don't stop taking your meds. It's mentally difficult to resign to taking these meds indefinitely, especially with the side effects, but the best thing you can do is just to keep taking them. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Yes, it sucks. It sucks royal. But just take them, they make it better. Not perfect, but better. Better than what happens if you don't take them.
The main thing I know about this disease is that once you are diagnosed with it, the diagnosis sticks with you for life. No second opinion can countermand it. Scarry because it has the potential to be abused.
This book won't help in any practical fashion, but perhaps some time down the road you might be interested in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes (late professor of psychology at Princeton). The book relates schizophrenia to consciousness as part of Jaynes' overall theory. The arguments he uses are compelling and wide-ranging, drawing from a broad array of disciplines.
Again, this book won't help with any of the more pressing questions you need answered right now. But it does shed light on the possible role of schizophrenia, or something like it, to the development of consciousness. It's very readable, too.
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.
Un-news
What can you do? Not a lot. Research doctors, encourage her to take her meds, give her lots and lots of love and be strong when she rejects it. And good luck.
They were all REJECTED
Then I see something like this and am like WTF? My topics were more interesting and relevant than this..
"Um...my second cousin thrice removed re-married and divorced suffers from chronic back pain. How do those of you who suffer from this deal with this?"
Uh yeah...this is relevant to slashdot....lets mod down to 0 this...
I once did some research on autism and found the guys at alt.support.autism very helpful. There's also an alt.support.schizophrenia group. If you don't have access to a news server, you can go to groups.google.com ..Introduce yourself, cite your concerns, and meet some great people.
The article asked:
:)
What are the long term implications for quality of life?"
The answer being, in the long term you die, schizophrenia or not.
Which doesn't really have any impact on the rest of the universe, but that's just the way it is.
If someone is looking for a personal experience it's more common to ask your friends or a group of peers. Slashdot teems with a community and subculture all its own, so his question is valid. Not everyone always wants a strict "just the facts" answer.
That said I do have a book sugestion its called Surviving Schizophrenia. It is geared toward caregivers, family and people with the disorder depending on what level they are functioning at of couse. The link also has other good suggestions.
--
I'm going to support John Kerry right after I vote against him on November 2
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, for further information regarding support groups for mental illness, and make sure that you get supported 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.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
some of use think "stuff that matters" can actually extend beyond who has the largest memory bus for under $300, or whatever story this week about how SCO is ruining the world
.. although some google searching shows me that it's probably actually not a form of schizophrenia, but some other type of similarly related schizoid disorder. from my girlfriend's experience (albeit somewhat unrelated), all i can say is that from what i know, medication the best bet of probably controlling things.
in a related, and on-topic note, my girlfriend's mom has (what i am told) is "Narcisstic Schizophrenia"
thanks for the informative reply to what is obviously a serious question.. wish i had more to contribute.
You should also look at the book "I am Not Sick I Don't Need Help!" by Xavier Amador, which gives some extremely useful advice concerning patients compliance (or lack thereof) with taking medication.
The prognosis is not so good. Unless there is some miracle cure that is found - and I see nothing on the horizon - this is a problem that will remain with your sister for the rest of her life. I felt that the first half of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" did a good job of showing how the onset of schizophrenia shows up, but I felt that the second half did a poor job of showing how schizophrenics could "cure" themselves. My opinion is that the current medications are the way to go. They do have some bad side effects, but not as bad as the disease. The disease will slowly get worse as time goes on, but medication seems to slow its progress.
Finally, one of the very newest medications (I am thinking particularly of "Abilify") avoids the problems with many of the anti-schizophrenia medications (e.g. weight gain, a flat personality). Your sister may not be able to tolerate this medication, and it seems that the most effective medication differs from patient to patient.
You are an asshole.
"Conventional" medicine is still living in the dark ages on numerous neurological, degenerative and digestive disorders and will offer no real hope. Anything that does not examine for biochemical causes including simple biochemical - "nutraceutical" treatment 1. research pioneer Canadian MD Abram Hoffer's work on the internet; and also see 2. Twenty-Nine Medical Causes of "Schizophrenia" Excerpted from Nutrition and Mental Illness by the late Carl C. Pfeiffer, Ph.D., M.D. http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/ca usesofschizophrenia.html
The "conventional" medical-pharmaceutical- industrial complex creates blind doctors, corrupt anti-scientific marketing practices. Do yourself a favor, read, look and think for yourself. Find people with technical backgrounds that have experience with biochemically based nutritional alternatives. Hard to believe but many lives, probably your own, will depend on reading, work, knowledge and independent thought. Use the least expensive, quality supplements you can find, i.e. usually
Costco, vitamins.com and vitaglo.com
Sometimes a local health food store if I'm in a hurry. Good luck.
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.
The problem is, M.D.s wouldn't consider this an appropriate forum for a proper discussion of this sort of thing. If the discussion gets at all personal, then there are issues of patient privacy. If not, then why bother? Why not just recommend some good books instead? And why couldn't the poster get book recommendations and other generic, non-personal advice from a more appropriate web forum?
As for the Ph.D.s, I'm not so sure they should say anything. While they may know quite a bit about the current theories about Schizophrenia, I not sure how helpful that would be to someone who's actually dealing with it. Then there are the Ph.D.s who think that they're M.D.s, who are a whole different kind of problem... if you don't spend your time treating patients, seeing them year after year (running someone on the WCST every six months doesn't count!), then IMHO you don't have as much to say as you think you do.
I think the most useful voices would actually be other SlashDot readers who have had similar experiences (e.g. relatives or friends with Schizophrenia). Again, though, a more appropriate web forum is a better bet, if only because you'll find more people in that category. Not to mention that other venues will be more accomodating to personal discussions (e.g they're not cached by Google, people might actually give out their real e-mail addresses to each other, and so on).
So I have to say that on the whole I disagree with you. While I don't agree with the grandparent posts' tone, I think they're basically right. And no, a discussion about how Schizophrenia affects us personally is not "News for Nerds". Maybe a scientific discussion about the differences between the brains of people with Schizophrenia and other people would be "News for Nerds", but the current topic is too personal to even be considered "News" per se.
Be careful. If schizophrenia develops into paranoid schizophrenia, be afraid.
I once worked with a guy who heard voices - we only figured it out when it got bad enough that he would continue conversations with them (the voices) after the real people had finished and walked away. As his illness progressed, he became paranoid, and decided that one of his coworkers was trying to plant a chip in his head to get his bank account information for the RCMP.
I'm not saying don't care, I'm not saying stop loving them, but be aware that you can NEVER trust a schizophrenic to be rational and safe to be around... you can never be sure they haven't decided to stop taking their meds, you can never be sure they haven't become paranoid.
Get back in your room and put your tinfoil hat back on. Sell your crazy somewhere else, we're all full up....
The poster is quite correct, actually. Mercury fillings are linked in more than just anecdotes to a number of potential problems, though evidence is far from exhaustive.
However, one thing has been demonstrated repeatedly: in cadavers, when amalgam fillings are extracted and tested, only a fraction of the original mercury content remains, variable directly with the age of the filling. This means one thing: mercury from your amalgam fillings is leeching into you as you eat, drink, or potentially even breathe.
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.
My own dentist will admit openly that the amalgam filling is probably dangerous in the long term and is happy to use porcelain instead; he says he uses the amalgam because customers usually prefer it... it's less expensive and lasts longer.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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 best friend was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the early 80's. In his case, it was clearly genetic: his mother and all his siblings are all either genius or sub-genius, chain smokers, and borderline. In his particular case, though, his full-blown schizophrenia was let loose by a cocaine mickey that a vengeful co-worker slipped him at a company party. For the next week, he was prone to dangerous mood swings, saying things that had nothing to do with reality or the situation at hand, and just general flipped-out-ness. When he finally checked in to the hospital, his diagnosis was easy; unfortunately, learning to live with it was the toughest thing he ever went through.
His symptoms all came down to one core problem: the inability to distinguish reality from the bubblings of his subconcious mind. At its worst, a demonic vision could paralyze him with fear. Along with the schizophrenia came the occasional paranoia, not necessarily unfounded: when you're dangerous, they really are out to get you, before you hurt someone.
He learned to control it through meditative breathing exercises and martial arts training, specifically jujitsu. If he could feel an attack approaching, and could get away soon enough to do his breathing exercises, he could actually stop it before it got out of control. On the other hand, if he had a bad day, and an attack hit him as he drove home, he could only focus his mind so that he could tell the difference between the real cars and the imaginary ones. When that happened, he was down for a week.
Last year, he took his own life during a schizophrenic rage. I don't know everything that happened. But the evidence that he smashed his computer beforehand is enough for me to know his mental state when he did it.
My advice to Jagercola and the other family members: Be very permissive. She will probably say some very hurtful things along the way. She may even believe what she says, at least while she's saying it. For your own sake, and for hers, remember that she doesn't know what she's talking about when she says it. There will be good times, and tough times. The more unshakeable you are, the better chance she has of living as normal a life as possible.
It's still OFF-TOPIC and IMHO an abuse of one's authority.
I mean, heck, many people submit articles that are much more relevant only to have them rejected.
Seeing this posted (a personal off topic question) by a super-moderator just makes the little guys feel like there ain't no point.
Might as well post about my second cousins' sister's daughter's boyfriend who has herpes and genital warts as one of the many M.D.s on Slashdot might have some advice.
I find it interesting that no one seems to even be hinting that nutrition plays an INTEGRAL role in most, if not all, medical (including mental) illnesses. Having suffered from chronic depression for several years and receiving NO RELIEF from any Medical/Psychiatric Dr. I finally found true relief when I began taking St. John's Wort and a super green food called Barley Green. My mood improved overnight and I was finally able to get back into the public and rebuild my life. Of course everyone's body is different and requires constant nutritional "tweaking" to stay at an optimal level. I no longer need the St. John's Wort but have added Coral Calcium because of the high acidity of my body. More information on the affects of nutrition on schizophrenia can be found at The Life Extension Foundation an excellent source of nutritional information IMHO. There is a wealth of information that cannot begin to be tapped in this forum. My prayers are with your family in this endeavor.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
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.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The query is coming from someone who thinks this community can provide a response fitting to the situation. Why, you ask? Probably because he's a geek, asking other geeks if they've had experiences with this. Geeks research things in their free time, and search out answers to problems. This probably isn't the only place the question has been asked; it's just one more piece of research. Anecdotal information isn't the most reliable, but it is still information about coping from real people like him. Combining this with the other research our Asker has performed, he'll be able to synthesize this into a better understanding of his sister and her problem.
Geeks should never reject an inquiry, even if they do feel it misdirected. It's disrespectful, and adds no value to our forum.
"A group of words expressing something other than their literal intention. Now that... is... irony!" - Bender
Go to www.metametrix.com and order the ION (Indiviual Optimized Nutrition) test. Its very comprehensive and should shed light on her problems. Just get a local doctor to write a prescription. It costs $640. The lab will send a kit to your doctor who only need draw the blood, process it and mail it back to the lab for analysis. It takes about 6 weeks to get the results.
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
MOD PARENT UP. Very interesting. (I'm willing to burn some karma on this.)
Speak truth to power.
Well, psychologist now believe schizophrenia to be genetically inherited. So there is an increase chance that you could be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Sorry buddy.
Well, I'm probably more qualified than some (almost have the PhD in Clinical Psychology, and have been working in that field for years). You can go check out my previous comment on this thread.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Chances are that the "mild schizophrenia" your uncle had in that case *is* autism -- actual schizophrenia doesn't show up until later in life, and the old name for autism (before they has a clue what it was) is "childhood schizophrenia."
The repetitive teaching method you're speaking of is Applied Behavioral Analysis, and virtually every adult autistic that I have spoken to is against it. Instead of helping the autistic leverage our natural savant skills, ABA just spends years forcing us (in an extremely abusive manner) to do mindless tasks precisely as told on command, like dogs. The drugs jammed into the autie are primarily to keep him/her from showing autistic signs of distress or that they're different.
(I'm telling you this because autism *is* genetic... Don't be shocked if you get another autie in your family -- and speaking as an adult Classic Autistic, if you do have one, please don't torture it with ABA. We develop at our own rate and become much *more* functional members of society by adulthood if that isn't done to us.)
I think people must really search out opportunities to fully apply their half-wisdom to being total dicks.
If you'll re-read his post he was not looking for scientific or medical advice, he was looking for experiences and suggestions, something which an online community, even one as apparently harsh and more than occasionally dimwitted and arrogant as Slashdot is good at providing.
As for relevance, I think this falls well within "Stuff that matters." Oh wait, it doesn't matter to you? Then I take that back, let's delete it in favor of another story about someone who designed a "Tribute To Vi" casemod.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
My understanding is that Dr Abram Hoffer, on Vancouver Island in Canada, claims a 90 per cent cure rate for acute schizophrenia for recently-diagnosed patients (ie with no more than two years of the illness). Google for "Hoffer schizophrenia".
> *rolls eyes* It's people like you.
I will put my name on this, unlike the AC. Despite the unnecessarily terse tone, the sentiment is sorta' right. He is responding, perhaps too harshly, to a very valid issue. It is not people "like him" that cause a problem. I don't want to insult you, but the problem is with people doing dangerous things that they don't need to do, just because they feel "it's my right." Or others encouraging them to do dangerous things because they think it will help the person's self-esteem, or some other reason. I'm glad that you aren't driving, it's probably much safer for you and everyone around you. Not everyone with schizophrenia is like you, though.
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?
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
"I've gotta[sic] disagree with you here." This IS slashdot... so Schizophrenia *is* more common than anything transmitted by another person... especially sexually.
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
I tend to agree that Slashdot isn't the best place for this type of question, when there have to be thousands of real-world and online support groups out there. On the other hand, the person asking the question obviously has an affinity with the Slashdot community, and so experiences of Slashdotters may have more resonance for them than say that of a bunch of random AOL users.
For starters my mother, my grandfather, my uncle, my aunts... it's almost inevitable I'll be able to include myself sometime within the next 5-10yrs.
Once the right medication is found (if they truely have schizophrenia) then they can lead a perfectly normal life so long as they take the meds.
The only affect which remains to any significant degree when taking their medication is that they will come up with excuses not to take the medication. They cannot live alone, there MUST be someone who is with them everyday and makes sure they take the meds everyday.
If they go off the meds for even as little as 24hrs then they will be hearing/seeing/mistranslating? things. So long as they stay on their meds, they might have a moment of strange thought but are generally "there" enough to recognize it for themselves and dismiss it.
What I've seen with my family is that they start out having breaks, something stressful occurs that triggers it and they go... odd (it's hard to explain and only someone who has lived with someone having a schizophrenic break or lived through one really knows what I mean) each day more and more off with reality until they fail to fake it and finally would take them to the hospital. There they would give them meds and have them back to normal within a couple days, sometimes the same day. And of course release them a week or two later.
Since getting them on a proper medical routine in the day to day they are perfectly normal and fine like they were before the first break, but the disease itself has worsened and now they can't go off the meds at all and it doesn't take a stressful event to cause a break, going off the meds is enough.
Makes for some good stories though if you and they can have a sense of humor about it. For instance:
When my mother goes off, she believes she talks to Jesus, she first contacted Jesus through a Ouja board. Shortly after Jesus contacted her directly, applying pressure to her right or left temple for yes and no. Later yet Jesus began vocally communicating with her in her head. Hell at one point Jesus even passed messages for her through me (*shakes his head thinking back on the tricks of a 10yr old who didn't realize yet that first time that his mother was very very sick*).
My Uncle is more interesting. During his worst break he believed he was the prince of egypt and that the Pharoh was trying to assassinate him. He striked pre-emptively and stabbed my grandfather 16 times in bed (that got him 2yrs rather than 2 weeks in a state hospital, my grandfather is schizophrenic also and understands his state at the time, my grandfather testified on his behalf at the trial). Yes grandpa lived although it was pretty hairy for awhile and they had to do some serious surgery to repair the holes in his lungs and stomach.
Both my uncle and my mother are perfectly normal and extremely gentle people on the day to day when they have their meds and you'd never know they had schizophrenia talking to them. They have plenty of friends who know nothing about it.
Run, don't walk to your local NAMI affliate !!! http://www.nami.org/ Check out their "Family to Family" program. There is great hope. Science is moving quick. Don't accept old out of date info !!!
Take heart, being diagnosed with Schizophrenia is considered 'industry experience' for SCO upper management. Positions open today!
I had a close friend from college who, later in life, was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The Internet is a very dangerous place for people who suffer from it, because every conspiracy theory can be "confirmed" somewhere on the net.
In the old days, schizophrenics would think that, for example, people on the radio were talking to *them*, etc. Imagine what things like message boards, chat rooms, and alternate news services can conjure up to someone suffering from schizophrenia!
In the case of my friend, he became obsessed with the "Illuminati", black helicopters, 9/11 conspiracies, etc., mostly because of Internet sites.
Best Buy can have you arrested
"After all WWJD?"
If she was indeed possessed by demons Jesus would cast out the demons not the person.
That is the way He dealt with Legion. He cast the demons out of the man into a bunch of pigs.
Luke 8
30Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"
31"Legion," he replied, because many demons had gone into him. And they begged him repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.
32A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into them, and he gave them permission.
Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.
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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut (Kurt's son) may be a good book to check out to aid in understanding what a person goes through. Mark explains dealing with his own schizophrenia first-hand. As this happened in the '60s in a commune of sorts the setting is a bit removed, but the thoughts and feelings I'm told are pretty accurate.
Also, on NPR.org there is a schizophrenia simulator which may also aid in understanding what the person may be going through:
link
I had a good friend, who was a psychologist no less who I believe had schizophrenia, (The helicopters that were following him was a pretty good indicator) a bunch of us were going to perform an intervention, and that night he disappeared. Nobody could find him but his truck, wallet, keys were found in somebodies yard about 30 miles from his house. They found his body about 1 year later in the middle of the desert.. This disease is no joke, it took a guy who was a great person and turned him into a someone completely different..
*narf!*
Because it takes one to recognize one....
I am a jelly doughnut.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time studying mental illness and experienced several paranoid-skizophrenic experiences myself I need to correct the original post. NO, a beautiful mind is *nothing like* a skizophrenic experience.
What a beautiful mind presents is what people who have never had an experience with a seriously altered state would expect skizophrenia to be like. Those of you who have used psychedelics (or at least high doses of them) will understand what I'm saying, this is the same misapprehension people have about what mind altering drugs are like. Actually, trying mind altering substances is a very good way to start to understand altered mental states. If you really want to understand what your sister is probably going to experience you should try several doses of various drugs. None of them (unless perhaps you enter meth psychosis which is indistingushable from one type of skizophrenia) will be exactly like what she is going through but it will give you a better basic idea of what altered mental states are like.
Unfortunatly, people whose only experience being altered is with something like alcohol or perhaps even weed have a very hard time understanding truly altered states. In order to offer a story of skizophrenia (not an explanation) to these people a bueatiful mind presented Nash's illness in a manner they could understand. Namely they portrayed him as acting rationally in response to illusionary situations. This isn't anything like how mental illness works.
While it would be very hard to portray on a movie, especially to individuals who have never experienced anything similar, the basic feature of skizophrenia (or at least paranoid-skizophrenia) is a disruption of normal reasonable thought. If a basically rational person started hearing voices not much would happen, they would immediatly conclude they were crazy and it would only be a minor annoyance. While the thought processes of a skizophrenic might be twistedly logical they are fundamentally unreasonable. For the most part they see the same features of the world as we do (plus sometimes voices and things at the corner of vision or in darkness) but they interpret them totally differntly.
I got so mad at the portrayl of skizophrenia in a Beautiful Mind that I had to walk out of the movie. Portraying skizophrenia as a vast consistant illusion is to delibrately encourage a horrible misapprehension of how mental illness works.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
hear voices? :P
Although I do not have much experience with schitzophrenics, there is a history of some mental illness in my family.
A real problem that I have to deal with is understanding how much responsibity to give to a person with mental illness. It is relatively easy to understand the limitations of a person with a physical disability. With the mentally ill, if they are hit with a disease like schitzophrenia, they are lucid and normal some times. Other times, with no outward indicators, they are not. When do you determine that someone is having a schitzophrenic attack and when do you reason that they're just being dumb, mean, or forgetful in a mundane way. It's easy to make this distinction at the extremes, but the day to day uncertainties are grueling.
On being forgetful: a huge part of living with m.i. is taking medication, which has to be taken on schedule every day, and regulating lifestyle (like sleep patterns, and alcohol is a big no no. Cigs are ok, especially for schitzophrenics--apparently nicotine helps us control the focus of our hearing somehow. Most s. are smokers). When people begin to have attacks, they tend stop taking medication (paranoia makes them think that the meds are making them sick) and tend to start acting more spontaneously than when they are in their regimine. This, at first, seems great to the friends and family members. (The drugs that people take for m.i. tend to sedate you far more than they should. This is because mixing psychiatric drugs is not an exact science, and doctors tend to err on the side of caution.) A few days after the person with m.i. cheers up, they have a severe attack. At that point, their circle of support looks back on the last few days and reinterprets all the signs that they should have noticed before. You, as a member of that support, will feel guilt that you did not realize that the good signs were actually symptoms. So, once the attack is over, you resolve to be more vigilant, and become more like a jailer than a family member, and feel guilty about that. Eventually you lighten up because you decide you are being ridiculous. Some time after that your sister will have another attack, and it is partially your fault for lightenning up on her. This cycle will continue as you try to deal with the disease. Unless you are unbelievably lucky, it will happen a lot. If it does happen a lot, your sister, in her paranoia, will become a very good liar and confuse the issue even more. Since normal and abnormal states are relative to each person, you have to learn. It can be done--a significant percentage of families deal with mental illness--but you need a lot of patience.
I remember a movie I saw back in college that I thought was a very good treatment of schitzophrenia: "clean, shaven". (I was a little bit of a film freak in college, so I might think the movie was overly sylistic if I saw it today.) From what I remember, it is harrowing. I would recommend not letting your sister watch it if possible.
A lot of good medical work is being done on schitzophrenia. From what I remember reading in the papers, doctors are beginning to think might be possible to cure a patient of the disease using normal drugs rather than psychiatric drugs.
My mother is schizophrenic. I won't lie to you, it was very hard to live with, and frankly, she was dangerous. She attacked me once when I was a teenager, and she attempted to kill my youngest sister when she was about a year old or so, and also attempted suicide immediately after that.
For the record, my mother has symptoms of paranoid and disorganized schizophrenias. The disorganized symptoms are the ones that are hardest for me to deal with on a day to day level. She's almost impossible to have a conversation with because she makes horrendous leaps of logic that simply make no sense, like the idea that calculus was responsible for my flunking a couple classes one term in college because "calculus" is another term for a kidney or gallbladder stone. It's pretty hard to keep up with her train of thought. Of course, when you add in the paranoia about people's brains being linked in an 'internet' and people getting raped and attacked over that 'internet', it gets even worse...
But here's the deal. I'm going to echo what about half the people here are saying: her meds will keep her and the people around her safer. The meds suck. They make some people feel dead inside, and I can understand why people don't want to be on them. I don't know how to make sure she stays on them as long as she needs them. I certainly have no way of controlling my mother.
All I can really tell you is to talk to her doctors, read up on the disease (schizophrenia.com does seem legit and useful), and do your best to live with your sister as peacefully as possible, for your own sake as well as hers.
You're wrong. From the Slashdot FAQ:
CmdrTaco and his gang are still in charge here, and I personally like it that way.
My mother's Schizophrenia started shortly after I was born in 1977. It wasn't actually diagnosed for a few years and she wasn't on meds for that time. From what I know of that time through family members, it was pretty bad.
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
Things that are not well known.
Smoking dope doesnt cause Schizophrenia. However, if you have any tendency at all to get it, smoking pot will exacerbate that.
Schizophrenics often try to self medicate with pot. Sometimes they are suffering from strong and overwhelming emotions and the idea of slowing down and relaxing seems good. It is very important that if your sister smokes that she cut back, then give up.
The medication makes you feel like shit. Anti-psychotics have horrible, horrible side effects. Many people with quite serious mental illness don't want to take them, from their point of view, the cure is wores than the illness. From our point of view this is hard to understand.
Schizophrenic people need support and care to help them come to terms with their problem. If they are not motivated to go through with the treatment, then they wont be willing to put up with the shitty side-effects of any medication.
The most effective treatment is cognitive behavoral therepy. CBT. This is using your awareness of your thoughts to change them. Learning what is real, and what isnt. Prefering to think more good thoughts than destructive ones.
This is very hard work and usualy needs a professional counciler or the like. Takes years. Only way a severe Schizophrenic will ever recover very much though.
Medication helps, but it is not a cure. As I've mentioned, it isn't even a very nice treatment.
To effectivly treat Schizophrenia, you have to chagne your life, from top to bottom. You can't just swallow the blue pill. Or the red one. Sorry. No easy fix.
In the maelstrom of the chaos at the center of my mind, I taste the salt of sadness as I feel my soul unwind.
He has a problem with drugs, so lock him up? What is this the 1950's? People with drug problems need clinical help and treatment programs. What he really needs is to take his meds and get some daily interaction with human beings so he does not get the urge to take speed.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
if posted in a somewhat juvenile fashion.
Feel free to google/webmd/emedicine.com any point I make on here. I'm simply sharing my expertise in this forum, as others do... and I have no problem backing up anything I write.
I rarely respond to ACs, so post under your actual account next time, coward.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
My one year old likes to grab a handful when I am changing his diaper and fling it - preferably at me but anywhere will do.
It comes off the wall quite easily.
I also note that the below poster was correct in (his) assessment of you.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Surviving Schizophrenia by E. Fuller Torrey is really the classic book about schizophrenia from a family perspective. It's written by a doctor who has a sister with schizophrenia, so it's a great combination of science and personal descriptions of the experience.
All I can tell you is that it's important to get treated professionally, as early as possible. Mental illness can be merely a pain in the butt (the meds aren't fun to be on), or it can devastate both the person who has it, and everyone they're close to. It's very, very tempting to believe that you can help the person yourself. You cannot, don't ruin your lives trying. It works out about as well as trying to treat someone for cancer yourself. All you can do is support them while they get treatment from a professional.
Science has made great strides in the last few years.
The biggest problem is that mentally ill people
deny they are ill, or they consider the
side-effects of the meds worse than the illness.
Check out NAMI. Great org !! Saved us a lot
grief.
http://www.nami.org/
There are a number of factors that can lead to an apparent psychotic episode, not all of which might be schizophrenia.
Also, there may be symptoms of other conditions (like OCD, ADD) that may be present.
This is important because you want to treat the _primary_ condition and not one of the apparent symptoms of the psychotic episode.
Having the wrong medication (i.e. being treated for schizophrenia when it is something else) can be very unpleasant and actually do more harm than help.
It is difficult to say specifically without knowing more about the circumstances surrounding your sister's difficulties. Age of diagnosis also plays a role.
If she is older, she could develope techniques for dealing with some of the symptoms. If this is happening when she is younger, she wants to avoid being defined by her illness.
Do not give up hope, as there is progress being made in this area.
But it is important that she has unconditional support from those around her, to help her adapt to the symptoms. Her biggest success will come from her being proactive in her own treatment.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Try thinking of something or someone other than yourself for a change
Aren't we making unwaranted assumptions here?
--just asking because there are a plethora of modern diseases that are exacerbated by a crummy diet.
I know it's not the total cause (if there is one) but it doesn't hurt to look, here's a quick google search clicky for you.
My personal opinion is that diet is still a major overlooked causality for a number of ailments. Crummy fuel=crummy performance, whether a mechanical engine, or a biochemical one.
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.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Wow. I didn't know the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the family ad council posted on /.
Let me provide a counter to this: I know someone who is mildly schizophrenic, and smokes pot instead of taking meds, which only made things worse. With a low dosage, less than a full joint per day, this person is doing just fine. I'm not saying that pot is a miracle cure for any disease, just that different people react differently to the same thing, so couching anti-pot propaganda in this way is useless. I know the AC whose post I'm responding to was making shit up, but you never know, someone might believe him.
http://xkcd.com/386/
but my voices told me not to help you. Sorry.
I know that is not what was asked by the submitter, but the related link he has given citate a 1% of the population being schizophrenic... Isn't that a bit... High ??
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I believe they mean the typical psychotic craziness. As one of the other psoters on here has said, schizophrenia was at one point a catch-all diagnosis. I'm only a hobbyist in psychology, so it could be that I've missed recent developments (IANAP?), but classic schizophernia included paranoia, hearing voices, being convinced there were "agents" tracing your every move... Schizophrenia covers all kinds of ground from the paranoid schizophrenic convinced that people are tracking his thoughts and that the voices are radio messages from the implant in his skull to the fellow who stands absolutely still on the street corner, convinced that God has granted him omnipotence and if he so much as twitches a muscle, he could destroy the world. It's got a definite genetic basis (identical twins develop it more often than non-identical twins), but there seems to be some kind of trigger to it. Once it starts, it keeps getting worse. Psychotherapy won't touch it, as I understand, but drugs sometimes help.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Oh common mods.. that was +1 _funny_ +1 true...
http://www.nami.org/
Get straight info from a top notch org !!!
Revolutionary punk musician Wesley Willis had schizophrenia. He took tons of meds which helped him live a normal life, at least relative to what a morbidly obese 6 foot 5 musician could. He was living proof of what can be accomplished while taking medications.
How do you mark an article submission as "Troll"?
A "troll" is a posting that does not actually represent the posters opinion and instead is designed merely to elicit an angry response. How is someone's statement that "A Beautiful Mind" was a good/accurate movie a "troll"?
People like you, who call everything they don't like or agree with a "troll" really kill thoughtful discussion. If you disagree with the story or statement, respond to it, don't moderate it out of existence.
Tell her it is better to imbue her visitors with psychic powers so that she can talk to them silently. This is what I do. No one suspects a thing and I hold conversations with dozens of people a day. HA! Take that!
Ok, I already apologize for this cheap joke. In fact, I really sympathize with you and wish you much luck. I am totally incompetent to help you otherwise.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Stay on your meds. Period. Think you "feel better"? Stay on your meds. Think you "aren't yourself anymore"? Stay on your meds. There will be any number of temptations to skip doses, to stop taking them, including financial, emotional, and of course the disease itself could manifest itself in a desire to stop taking them. Don't listen. "Being yourself" can become a raving lunatic, no matter how "better" you feel at the moment.
That is, of course, if you don't want to have schitzofrenic episodes. If you want them, get off the meds. Otherwise, if you want to live a "normal" life without such episodes, stay on your meds. Given the option of having some of being "normal" and having schitzofrenia, make up your own decision based on the kind of life and mind you want.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Bipolar is very similar to schizophrenia, and they were both classified as the same thing up until just about twelve years ago, and they are often confused and mistreated badly. I am a bipolar type I, and have (at around age 28) gone through periods of hallucinations and severe alcoholism and very bad danger to myself and others. 80% of schizophrenics (and bipolars) smoke and drink as a form of self medication.
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..
Interesting, and sad, that the only responses you get to your post are negative.
It's also sad that there is nothing available to help you. I don't know what country you live in, but is it possible that there is some government program that can help you with getting the proper medication?
In any case, best of luck my friend.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
cheers to that. I was going to post the same response.
slashdot is both news and a community. if it was _just_ news then it would just be a nice RSS feed.
By treatment, I mean helping them to be who they want to be, not drugging them, electrocuting them or institutionalising them. I hesitate to use the word cure, but as far as you and I are concerned, that is what happens in 60% of his cases.
He does not believe in the dopamine theory of schizophrenia - if that was accurate, a dopamine antagonist would turn schizophrenics into normal people - it doesn't. But he does understand schizophrenics, which is something no-one here (nor even of all the writers of Beautiful Mind) can claim.
He freely provides these understandings, backed by many prominent psychiatrists, on his website, which you'll find interesting in any case.
Chances of you reading this post are slim. But I hope you find it anyway and she may one day thank you for researching beyond the limited help the medical community provides.
I know enough about the condition to know that everyone is going to have vastly different experiences with the disease and course of treatment. I was with one guy for 7 yeas, whos father and unlces were formally diagonsed. He knew that statistically, the risks were high to develop it, and yet refused to seek help. It really started with bouts of depression, lasting longer and longer as time went on, and then the paranoia and irrational behavior stepped in. I knew it was bad when he started using his own lanague - and then progressed to using his own language and insisting it was english. I really don't know where he is going to end up. He is intellectually brillant, but can not focus long enough to do anything. My best friend was also recently diagnosed. Hers manifested itself as strong suicidal tendencies, social anxiety, and odd personal behaviors (such as cutting off in mid-sentence and wandering off to do something completely unrelated). She is on Ambiel, among other meds, and there has been a marked improvement of her behavior. It has not made her a shell, but for the first time in years she feels like she can control her own thoughts and the suicidal urges have disappated. She still retains a very active and quirky sense of humor, and is very much like the person I first met 7 years ago. She still needs professsional help beyond what she can get right now, but it is an improvement. I don't think treating it is as easy as taking a pill, but you can't get better on y our own (which is what my now ex bf thought). But as a sibiling, you should try to be as educated as possible - try http://www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/schizoph reniamenu.cfm for more info. And find a support group, either online or in person....like I said, I think experiences differ, but having other people around that know what you are going trhough might help!
-Libwitch
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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I knew a woman who had conversations with ducks when she didn't take her medication. I knew another that would just have bouts of mild paranoia and that would result in insomnia.
I don't know why you posted here, though. I think you will find more helpful info doing a search on Google.
However, I will give you some advice from a peron who has had friends with a similar condition. The most important thing you can do is to give support and be patient with your sister. Medication is going to be a big part of her life and you and your family are going to need to help remind her and to try and make sure she takes it. There are a lot of Patients who forget or refuse to take their meds and need to be hospitalized and have the meds forced on them until they take affect again.
Support and love are the best things to give you sister.
Reminds me of...
"Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."
...
"You only think I guessed wrong - that's what's so funny. I switched glasses when your back was turned. Ha-ha, you fool. You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia", but only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian, when *death* is on the line.". Hahahahahah.*falls over dead*
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Why is it lame to include it as an 'ask slashdot'? RTFH[eader]...there's a "Stuff that matters" part in there dude. Apparently someone screening the submissions thought this fit those criteria. Frankly I'd agree - I've found this discussion interesting...much moreso than the usual MS FUD or what stupid legal trick SCO was trying to pull this week. Personally I don't think ANY topic of discussion should be off limits here on good 'ol /. I would caution anyone from taking advice given here as gospel without conferring with someone with an educated and informed opinion.
Excellent article to be found at Scientific American Neural Pharmacology Decoding Schizophrenia. Perhaps the most insidious and pernicious symptoms of schizophrenia are the negative symptoms of social isolation and apathy which can be wrongly seen to be a lack of effort on the part of the sufferer.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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
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.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Because while we might not all be professionals in such areas, but there are some. Moreover, due the volume of visitors to slashdot, it's not unreasonable to suggest that some have had a similar experience and may be able to offer helpful suggestions.
You don't have to be a professional to offer life-experience, and sometimes that's worth more than a medical diagnoses, particularly when you realize that you aren't alone with a problem...
On the issue of your responsibilties to your sister. I may have been a little bleak. The two or three things you can do for your sister are: be there for her when she wants to talk, help her live the lifestyle that she needs to to fight the disease, help provide a good home (if you live with her).
These things, while significant, pale in comparison to:
What psyciatric drugs can do. They are brutal, but I don't think there is a reasonable alternative.
The disease running its course. With schitzophrenia, there is a good chance her body (mind?) can beat the disease.
Her learning to live with her condition. If she fights the fact that she's sick, (it is understandable, mental illness is inherently unfair) your efforts will be nearly useless.
In the short term, you will probably be most helpful to the other people in your family. And as long as the rest of you hold together, she has a much better chance.
I believe these movies were written by people who are either schizophrenic or at least borderline (Terry Gilliam and Phillip K. Dick come to mind). They show you what it's like more than a movie like A Beautiful Mind.
Take the Matrix as our model. The hero believes that he has figured out that normal reality isn't really real, but there is another reality that is the actual one. The hero can percieve this actual reality. The fake reality is controlled by an evil conspiratorial organization who has everyone fooled with mind control techniques. They have henchmen (agents) who are out to get the hero. The hero concludes that he will have to defend himself violently, sooner or later. Sadly many schizophrenics often kill themselves and others because they are wrapped up in this fantasy world.
So, if your loved one shows signs of diconnecting from you or their normal life, make sure they are taking their medication! They are getting wrapped up in their fantasy. They may think that you are with Them. It sucks, but tough it out. Follow up on them. Make sure they have no guns, no means of getting them, etc.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You won't get any support. The attitude towards psychology and the idea of mental disorders there is downright hostile.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
It would probably a good idea to review what Schizophrenia is and what it isn't. Many people often confuse multiple personality disorder with schizophrenia. I imagine that schizo is a broad nomenclature for a disease much the way that cancer is. Putting a finer point on the diagnosis and its particular manifestations would probably benefit the family and friends the most. Of course, finding a suitable and effective treatment for the disease would be optimal, but getting one's head around the entire condition and learning to deal with it at face value would be the best starting point.
Hope that helps in some way beyond stating the obvious.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
That's tough. I used to work in a geriatric hospital and nursing home as a music therapist. I worked with a variety of populations/settings (adult daycare, locked psych ward and dementia patients). Schizophrenia was one of the more challenging conditions I encountered. I'd say every other group responded favorably to music, but the schizophrenics usually became agitated more often than not. However, I did notice that the meds made a big difference for them, and I could tell it worked by how they responded later on in their treatment to the music. Meds may prove to be a big help....that's a big challenge. Good luck.
Don't know if you want to hear this but.... My brother ended up with schizophrenic symptoms. He was never properly diagnosed, as he was over 18 at the time the severe symptoms started, and none of us could get him to follow counseling or medications. We ended up having to bring him to the county once for his own protection, and they medicated him. He was a different person under medication. He was my brother. After getting out of lockup, he stopped taking his medications. He ended up killing our mother with a gun in her house within a year. About three years after first exhibiting the altered behaviors. He is in jail now, but still refuses medications. My advice to you, out of my personal experience, is to make sure that your sister stays with medications and counseling. She can live a mostly normal life. Keep in touch with her, and watch her closely. Research as much as you can about the disease and become an expert. I only became an expert too late.
--"I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it." Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still(1955)
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?
like i said a ver interesting topic for slashdot.
Well let me start off. I was dianosed with SchizoAffective disorder, it like Bipolar mixed with Schizophrena about 1 year ago. I have not been able to concentrate very well and thus am not working right now. Getting the medication straight was the real first thing, getting some anti psychotics really helped everything work. Just if you want to know I am on 150mg of Lamictal, 4mg of Risperidone, and 20mg of Prozac. This helps slow you mind down and get it back on track.
Also I am involved with a young adult group, most of them are bipolar and some are schitzo. This really helps me come to grips with what has happened with my life. Adapting after shuch a mental break is hard and you will never get over comparing yourself to how you used to be. But talking about it with other people in the same situation really helps quite a bit.
I keep hearing people say that A Beautiful Mind was a "best case scenario" for schizophrenia. OK... so he actually seemed to recover from it after YEARS, but he certainly went through hell to get there. I have trouble believing that there aren't many more milder cases of schizophrenia. If you mean that the movie was innacurate, then what did you find innacurate about it (other than the liberty they took with facts about Nash's life)?
Have you considered putting together a journal about your experiences with the disorder? I would find it interested to learn more from somebody who actually experiences life in this manner.
You are lost in words.
AccountKiller
Whether you're feeling silly or serious, you get the best of both worlds.
Being that most of us here are of a different ilk mentally than 98% of the population (not in terms of intelligence but in the ways we process information) this isn't the wrong venue for a post like this.
/.'rs I would venture to guess carry some genes that make us slightly different. Yours may not be to aparent but it may be in your offspring.
Due a google search for asperger's syndrome, if you're reading this there's a good shot that you, your wife or your kids probably have it. A staggering number of high level "techs" of Fortune 500 companies have some sort of mental disorder in their immediate families. Far far above the % of any other field or industry.
If tech stuff comes second nature to you, and has a common sense flow to it, I personally say that you are normal. However that would make the other 96% of the world the abnormal group. Those numbers don't make sense.
I boycott signatures
Be careful about reading the books that the parent suggested. If you become obsessed with helping your sister then you may only serve to feed the environmental problems which are causing her frustration.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
"I did alot of reading on the subject and here's some things I learned."
You did not do enough reading to learn that Dissociative Identity Disorder is not at all the same thing as Schizophrenia! You might want to look into BPD and DID, and stop getting your medical advice from comic books or the National Enquirer.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The movie "Spider," directed by David ("Videodrome," "Scanners," "Naked Lunch") Cronenberg is, by most accounts, a much more accurate -- admittedly harrowing, but sadly realistic -- portrayal of schizophrenia.
Breakfast served all day!
you are wise to ask questions. And you are not only correct the movie ABM seemed to put schizophrenia in a best scenario light, it put it in an unbelievably inaccurate, and misleading light (what else would one expect from a movie directed by Opie?). I suggest you do research, and read research by some respected experts. You might start with some of the research by Kay Jamison, while she specializes in manic-depressive research, her insights into the mind are fascinating (she has personal experience, she has grown up an extreme manic-depressive).
Good luck, God's speed with this.
"[schizophrenia's] poorer cousin, manic depression"
Richer cousin. Bipolar disorder correlates positively with income, social class, and creativity (although yes, it can derail your life too).
Found this and a line from the Merck manual as references. There are many more, but no time to look just now--I am at work.
Truth be told, I take medication for sever depression. My first clue to my problem was due to irrational thoughts of suicide. And it would often come in waves, say a few times a week. Turns out it's because of a low level of serotonin in my brain. Because of the lack of this neurotransmitter chemical, I was misdiagnosed with ADD in the 80s. Interestingly enough, when I went on medication both my depression and ADD went away.
The reason I bring this issue up is due to being "off the meds". I believe people do this for the very reason I will go off them; be it consciously or unconsciously. The reason I will go off them is because I will feel fine while I'm on them to such a degree that I see no logical reason to be on them anymore. But when I do that, depression will set in gradually over time. I find that my cognitive abilities rest with the laws of physics (chemicals in the brain) and not with my soul. I guess you could say it's a very sobering revelation to the human psyche as to just how mortal we really are.
Life is not for the lazy.
'this just isn't the place to discuss it'
The why the hell are you discussing it? Don't like it? Then don't read it and don't reply to it, but don't be so critical of those who choose to post, read and discuss things that YOU're not interested in. There's no rule that I know of that states that geeks must only be interested in tech related subjects, or that people should never ask geeks for their opinions on non-tech questions.
I feel better. Thanks,
If you can't just be yourself, then be more like me, ok?
"...an editorial in the journal Science describes schizophrenia as the worst disease affecting mankind (not excepting AIDS)"
Schizophrenia is a terrible disease--it must be devastating. I hope that your parents don't feel they did something wrong in raising her... that's an old misconception.
A detailed peer-reviewed description by a medical professional is here.
It's more common than you thought and it affects a great number of folks that are nerds and folks that use computers.
Depression, obesity, obsessive compulsive disorder are also common among folks that use computers. I agree that an "ask slashdot" such as this doesn't apply to slashdot. There isn't anything asked about technology, science or computers.
However, I do find the topic interesting and I'd like to see a 'slashdot' spin put on it. I work at the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center at Hartford Hospital. We work with schizophrenic patients to find structurally what is different in their brains than in control subjects, using fMRI. Some of the research is very interesting, and so are the subjects.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
However, one thing has been demonstrated repeatedly: in cadavers, when amalgam fillings are extracted and tested, only a fraction of the original mercury content remains, variable directly with the age of the filling.
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 is the position paper of the National Council Against Health Care Fraud on the topic of Hg amalgam fillings.
My wife works with schizophrenia for our county health dept. She has run group homes and mentored those in apt. settings.
Now, having listened to her complain for years I will explain the secret of good treatment for your sister.
First I need to explain our location so you can picture the context of my statement. Do you remember the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"?
Yes, of course you do. The village around that school has the most successfully treated patients in the state. Here is the secret.
#1) Be a child of an important doctor. Esp. one with major hospital to government laision.
#2) Make sure your parents take part and give lots of money to groups like NAMI (National Alliance of the Mentally Ill.). Its really surprising how great treatment ties in with key membership of a parental unit in NAMI.
#3) Give money to the leading local pols with the the bluntly stated explaination that you expect great treatment for your kid. Maybe, even make it as scholarships for their children to win for college.
#4)Be an active nagger at your county mental health department. Be sure to name drop Pols owing you favors as you nag.
#5) If you are a lawyer, volunteer to help them get their patients out of outrageous hospital bills by creative bankruptcy support.
#6) Have your sister take part in drug company studies with the provision of cheap or free medicines in exchange for taking part. Drug companies may counter offer with membership in hardship programs. You want that option as the drugs will, over time, bankrupt any insurance policy. Fight for it.
#7) The relgiously funded programs have restarted. Don't ignore them. Remember that most hospitals are associated with some religion or sect. These have joined the President's program but most people are not aware of them as funding just started. Since the hospitals are religous they can erase the bills as easily as add them. They are more willing do this if you are in their programs. So have you sister join. She can expect hosptial stays a few times with the illness. Meds quit working after awhile and if a sharp watch is not kept stuff happens.
I don't know if you'll see this so late in a post but I know three people who have had this disease, one of whom was my brother.
Just from my own experience it changes a person character totally. My brother was always a sharp minded individual but the disease changed him so that he is now very vacant and uncommunicative. I also have a cousin whose personality has been altered. He was very quite; when I herd about him last he kept getting into fights and talked too much.
Lastly a friend of mine, who was known for his tact, became the most irritating individuals you could have ever known.
The disease from my experiences changes people, but many people recover (like my friend) and get back to normal, just don't expect it to be soon.
Schizophrenia is about having an internally consistent mental model of the world without regard for external consistency. The model eventually becomes self-reinforcing, and the feedback loop is very destructive.
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.
I have a rather bleak view of the disease. The medications work... no doubt. But they may work for 6 months, a year, two years, five years, but eventually, and I don't know the medical resons, people build resistance to them, their condition changes or their bodies will lash out with reactions to the antipsychotic drugs... this could appear as mood changes, exhaustion or they return to their old behaviour.
My point is that even if somebody is "taking their meds", they can still go into a psychotic episode. Many times they won't want to admit themselves to the hospital, and as long as they're not considered a danger, nobody can force them there... nor can they stop them from signing themselves out.
Finally, and this is something subtle... people who have the disease and get help don't generally "see that they had a problem"... the lines between sanity and delusion are blurred, and memories of delusions are just as real as the delusions themselves.
So if the neighbours were using reflections to monitor their mind, when they go on their meds, the neighbours have either stopped or they're not doing anything with the information anymore... the psychiatrist will tell the patient "not to talk about that stuff", and if they're good, they won't.
There is no "normal" and the disease never goes away. Half the horror can be trying to convince the person that you're not a nazi robot sent to monitor their mind and the hospital is really there to help them... and you'll have to relive those experiences every few years as they relapse and the "meds" need to be figured out all over again.
I guess too that it all depends on the personality of the individual and the severity of their disease, but like I said... I have a rather bleak view.
My name is Thomas. I was diagnosed as schizophrenic (actual paranoid-schitzo). On the MMPI (Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory), I scored a 60 in the schizo-zone. 20 - 30 is normal. All schizophrenia is is a detachment from reality. That's it. Most teenagers are (hence 20 - 30 being normal). In some people it manifests as seeing things, or becoming delusional. In my case it came around that I believed that everyone at my high-school had to die. And I was ready to kill them all. Let me tell you, that when you get someone as geeky as me plotting things like this, it is intense. I went so far as to look up the public-record blue-prints and engineering notes about the school, so that I could identify load-bearing walls to demolish. Crazy shit, let me tell you.
Then one day, I realized something. Maybe I'm a lucky one, but I realized it. THAT'S NOT FUCKING NORMAL! What sets humans apart from the rest of the animal world is the ability to self-reflect. Introspection. We can look at ourselves, judge it, and change it. Anyone, ANYONE, who says "well, it's diagnosed, so that's that" is a damn cop-out. ANYONE who says "I was told I'm this by a guy in a coat, so it's okay if I don't try" is taking the coward's escape. Any human being on the planet, including those severely detached from reality, have the ability to look at themselves and change it. Everyone has the ability to think "You know, I'm horny, but I don't want to have a kid, so I won't fuck", or "Yeah, it would be fun to get drunk, but I have to work in the morning", or "Yeah, I could kill everyone and everything in the school, but that wouldn't be right." Everyone can say "but". The challenge is that someone who is extremely skitso, will look at themselves and see something that others don't. That's what the therapy is for. Stick with it, work with the person to show them that they aren't crazy, and that they can get better, and they will. They have to realize that they can change themselves, and then it will be almost over-night. Working up to that point, on the other hand, is a long, hard process. Believe me. I've been through it.
And whoever told you that the movie "A beautiful mind" is the "best case scenario" was out of their mind. Schizophrenia is just a detachment. It can be mild, or extreme. The best case is that you sister will realize, "I don't want to live this way anymore", and change it. I will keep you both in my prayers that that will happen.
Sorry about the rant, but it's the truth, and I hope it helps.
Oops.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
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.
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There are several examples of alternative treatment centers which keep use of medication to an absolute minimum. One such example is the Soteria Project, which has the same success rate as conventional medicine, but none of the terrible side-effects of heavy medication such as Tardive Dyskinesia. (The US uses the world's largest dosages for treatment of schizophrenia; amounts that are up to twice as much as the accepted dosage in Europe.)
Furthermore, it's not yet fully understood how or why the antipsychotic drugs work. They think it has something to do with dopamine receptors, but it's all speculation at this point. There's been some intimation that chronic schizophrenics have different brain chemistry or morphology than "normal" folks, but they have yet to show whether these conditions exist before the onset of the disease, or whether conditions in the brain or heavy medications cause these changes.
Personally, if I start slipping into psychosis, I'm going to scrape together my money and buy a plane ticket for Bern, Switzerland where the current Soteria House is...
- ben
My son recently started to manifest some signs of schizophrenia. Last Year he suddenly announced that he owns Linux and that every body should pay him to use it. At first we where thinking that this was just a premature April fools day but then we realized that he really was meaning it. Thousands of people tried to explain him the ridicule of is claim but unfortunately he was each day more and more in denial.
In one of his crisis, thinking that he was now some kind of Dr Evil he asked a ransom of 3 billion dollars to IBM. He have a friend, who I don't know if he is a pimp or sell drugs or something but the fact is that the guy named Bill have a lot of money and gave him some 30 millions to encourage him to continue to live in is fantasy. Shame on him!
Each day he is getting more delusional and I really start to worry that he hurt himself by doing something stupid or just annoys to much people until is ass get seriously kicked.
Should we check him in a psychiatric institution?
Mrs Macneil
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
And I never knew it until I was an adult. Oh she was a little bit odd, but she was NOT the most odd person in the family. She is competent enough that she could occasionaly babysit for my siblings and I when we were little, and she currently will often watch her grandchildren (although her mother, the children's great grandmother lives in the next house over). She goes out, she has fun, she reads, she does WONDERFUL art (which I have found out is a symptom of another mental "disorder" she has OCD). She is a wonderful person, and the only real difference between her and other people is the added sting when she makes jokes about "voices in her head". Yes, she will make such jokes, and we know they have a hint of truth in them, but she deals with them, she is on medication and she lives a normal life. What's the problem? Not much. There are MANY, MANY better senarios than A Beutiful Mind. And there are now better treatments than when my aunt was young. Don't think this is the end of the world, it isn't. It isn't really even a tragady, just another pothole on the road of life.
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.
NPR has an excellent story on schizophrenia.
The most compelling part is the schizophrenia simulator (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."
Slashdot already provides people with enough inaccurate Science and Technology information... lets not shoot for Medical as well...
So he should refrain from asking here, and instead ask his random acquaintences? Remember - that's what people DO in such situations.
Or maybe he should get his ideas from the established print outlets of the popular press. (When was the last time you saw THEM get ANYTHING right when you knew what the REAL story was from personal experience?)
At least on slashdot he has access to a very large population of interested people, some of them actually practitioners or reasearchers in the relevant fields. The environment is more conducive to constructing clear answers than a face-to-face conversation. And while it doesn't prevent the propagation of bogosity, it exposes it to critical reply from people who know better - and can support their claims with references to authoritative literature.
The only alternatives I can see that might get him a clearer idea would be to hire SEVERAL professionas for their expert opinions, or start a foundation to research the subject and hire enough experts that he can sort out the bogus ones.
Remember - even professionals propagate bogus theories. Sometimes they become the accepted paradigm for decades or centuries. And Psychology is particularly prone to this.
For instance, you haven't heard much about Freud's theories from anywhere but Hollywood lately, have you? (And even Hollywood has dropped most of the psychobabble.)
It seems that with the increased use of cocaine on the underground drug scene, people in the emergency rooms treating overdoses noticed that their babbling sounded amazingly like Freud's articles. Given that Freud was a known cocaine user, medical personnel began to suspect that his theories may have had less to do with insight into the workings of the mind than the characteristic halucinations of the use of that drug. Combine that with the low success rate of Freudian-theory based treatments of mental illnesses, the school's practioners' worse-than-chance success rate at predicting which released patients would take actions threatening those around him, and the succes of drug-based treatments built on more mechanical-failure models of mental illness, and the school is not in good repute these days.
So, sure, a question here will elicit a lot of crap. But it will also elicit a significant amount of good advice. IMHO, once doing a little sorting he's likely to end up with better answers this way than by anything else he can do (except perhaps enter college and specialize in the field.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Don't you think that not believing in God because you think that He caused you pain is a self-defeating argument?
null
"A Beautiful Mind" posits the notion that a person who has severe schizophrenia can simply "will" his delusions away, and ignore them.
Bullshit. Total bullshit.
A person with serious schizophrenia can no more ignore the input of what their brain is telling them than you could simply say that a (real) speeding car heading right for you is "just all in my head." A schizophrenic is receiving input from one part of the brain to another that feels UTTERLY real -- a product of real-world input from their senses -- and they can do little consciously to stop it.
David Cronenberg, in talking about his movie "Spider" (a MUCH more accurate portrayal of mental illness), said that "Mind" was ridiculous and dangerous, i.e., if you have schizophrenia, hey, you can just "deal with it" -- you can just learn to ignore what your brain is telling you (which to YOU, is utterly indistinguishable from objective, externally-confirmable reality), and you'll even get a beautiful woman who looks like Jennifer Connelly to fall in love with you, and STAY by you even though you're delusional to the point of being a danger to yourself and others.
Nonsense!
FYI, I have bipolar disorder, and go through serious manic/depressive phases -- but I wouldn't wish schizophrenia on anyone. (My second cousin has it, and unless she's on her medication, she'll simply wander away from home.) No matter how up/down my moods can get (for limited amounts of time), I always realize the difference between how I feel and how that affects my attitudes about the world AT THAT MOMENT, and I always know that this, too, will pass.
My advice to the original poster is, get reliable, reputable medical attention for your sister, and if she's prescribed medication, make SURE she stays on it. One of the biggest problems with people who are taking drugs for mental illness is, after the symptoms wear off and they "feel better," they often come to the conclusion that they no longer need the medication -- and they quit, with predictable results.
While Schizophrenia may be "more common than you think" that's a pretty lame reason to include it as an "ask slashdot"
Yeah, that is a pretty lame reason.
On the other hand I think that since this deals with the brain and how we think (even when that thinking process is impaired) it's something that would be of interests to geeks. I've always found the function (and dysfunction) of the brain interesting and although I don't think I'm a geek, my wife and all my friends do. Even the imaginary ones....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Although I am not a psychologist, I am a counsellor; and have worked with some cases of Schizophrenia through my practice.
There are medications available (the specific mediations, I am unsure of), which decrease brain activity, allowing the subject to more fully focus on their local environment.
A simple explanation for Schizophrenia is: Schizophrenia is NOT Multiple Personality, it is the inability to connect entirely to reality, and the crossing of the subject's dream world with their perception of reality.
There are Schizophrenic patients who go on to live in healthy, fulfilled lives; the key is for them to seek the necessary resources which may assist them (i.e. Counselling, Medication, etc.) and to find a job which they are productive at, and feel satisfied.
Warnings: *I* do not suggest long-term psychotherapy, it is unnecessary, allow her the freedom of making all of her own decisions, self empowerment is the most powerful healer.
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.
Get that book and read it. It'll open your eyes.
I have some Schizophrenic Writings 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.
Hey kids! For years, schizophrenia has been the Cadillac of mental disorders- everyone admires it, but there's just not enough to go around for everyone.
But now, due to insightful new research, schizophrenia is suddenly achievable! The key is Provigil / Modafinil, an exciting new prescription drug. The approved use is to treat sleep disorder, but studies suggest an off-label effect: consistent intake of 2-3 times approved dosage for a period of more than 6 days may induce the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Ask your doctor if schizophrenia is right for you!
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.
1st of all:
I feel sorry for your sister and what she may be about to go through. I've had serious issues of phobia as a teenager (which I also coped with with philosophy) but I know that that's cake compared to what schizo induced phobias can be. I shure hope all involved get through all this well and grow stronger from it!
Someone mentioned checking for amalgam fillings. Usually composed of all sorts of posionous metals, including mercury and lead. I second this totally! These are poisons that can seriously affect brain activity!
But also check for other external chemical causes of the disease. Including nutricion as someone else mentioned. Even sugar can be a cause of a wide range of mental symptoms with some people.
General point in case:
I was in Wales a few years ago and the people I stayed with told me that some years ago seriously notable amounts of sheep farmers in the area where getting depressive with a large part of those commiting suicide.
It turned out that was due to a new anti-parasite treatment bath the farmers treated their herds with. Inhaling the fumes was enough for many of them to get seriously depressive in a very short period of time - even those who had never been depressive before.
Bottom line:
Mental diseases can have chemical causes! Double check for those and adjust acordingly, even if the 'experts' say it a non-issue. In the worst case it only supports the heavy-drug medication, therapy and treatment, which is just fine anyway. Be it even a placebo effect. Who cares?
A last thing:
I know this won't count with a lot of people and probably go through as unscientific esotheric crackpot bullshit but I'd like to give you one personal advice:
Do also consult an anthoposophical Doktor. They allways have the classical medical training but also have the additional anthoposophical knowledge. WHich makes them additionally creditable in my opinion. Many people will say (some 'normal' Doctors especially) that the stuff about the etheric and astral body and such is major bullcrap but do consult one if you have a chance. Be it to get your own impression. These people know more answers than lots of the run-of-the mill psycologist or other specialist dealing with semi-'physical' issues.
If you sister needs stationary treatment (god forbid) I also strongly recommend an anthoposophical clinic if you can afford it. Even if it's substacially farther away.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Schizophrenia is a severe mood disorder, not a personality disorder like dissociative identity disorder which is what you're describing in this stupid poem.
My younger brother was diagnosed with a severe case of paranoid schizophrenia only a few months ago. The transition was not a gradual one -- he seemed fine and normally behaved all his years (he's 24 now) until one day he didn't made it home from work until many hours later than his usual arrival time. He telephoned home confused and frightened and was in the middle of nowhere. We didn't make much of it at the time. He eventually found his way back.
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
As they say in statistics, the plural of anecdote isn't data. I fully expect to see several postings of similar tales. In this instance, the Devil's Advocate might note that the friend was under a lot of stress related to marriage trouble, and may have suffered clinically significant mental effecs because of it. She recovered afterwards because a) she divorced the guy that was causing the stress, and b) she could blame the fillings for the divorce and not herself.
A more charitable interpretation is that the 'schizophrenia' was the result of some other undiagnosed disorder--a burst blood vessel in the brain, perhaps.
The symptoms from mercury (heavy metal) poisoning are essentially asymptomatic (non-deterministic)
As they say on Slashdot, I don't think that word means what you think it means...'asymptomatic' means 'without symptoms'. If the chief symptom of poisoning is that there are no symptoms....
The parent poster presents as fact some highly controversial ideas--the 'link' between mercury and schizophrenia or chronic fatique syndrome, for instance. There is a statistically significant increase in the body's mercury load from amalgam fillings, though it is extremely small. Well-controlled, randomized, blind trials have not found a link between mercury amalgam fillings and any illness, though there are ongoing clinical trials in several places.
Perhaps one of the most troubling observations with respect to dental amalgam is the number of individuals who self-diagnose an amalgam related disorder--of course removal of the fillings cures the psychosomatic illness.
From The Lancet,
Further thoughts--in addition to damaging the teeth during filling replacement (and possibly leading to unnecessary surgery and the associated nonnegligible risks) there are concerns that the replacements for mercury amalgam may be more dangerous to health than the mercury fillings themselves.
~Idarubicin
(eom)
Your prescription for schizophrenia treatment is a better diet and some enemas? You have no idea what you're talking about. Meds are the only way to try to help, What fails most of the time is getting the patient to take the meds. Another problem is that psychiatric hospitals can only detain hospitalized people against their will for too brief a period to rule out things like PCP induced psychosis from giving a schizophrenia diagnosis and proceeding to try to find the meds which don't have any adverse reactions. Nevermind.
-The one that causes people to continually misspeel the word "schizophrenia."
-The one that causes people to first confuse the disorder with Multiple Personality Disorder, and THEN to make terribly unfunny jokes about it.
Ex:
"Yeah I was diagnosed as schizophrenic."
"Hahaha well I wish you all the best of luck with that!!!"
Rimshot, gunshot.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I did a quick google search & found this:h does indeed show an increased level of mercury in the brains of cadavers with amalgam fillings.
http://www.nvbt.nl/hot-metalen4.html
whic
Dentists are exposed to the amalgam while it's fresh and outgassing more mercury than it ever will again. If there were a problem they should show it first.
You want to talk conflict of interest, remember who makes money replacing your amalgam fillings.
My Father was first diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1997 when he first went into a mental hospital for a breakdown. At the time I had just turned 20 and wasn't sure what to think of it. The doctors gave us a lot of hope when he first went in. They told us about how far the treatments have come, new drugs, etc. but what they didn't tell us is that if you can't convince the person that they need to take the meds, then none of it does any good.
I won't go into all of the story (because it would take way to long to tell), but the short version is that he wouldn't believe he needed help. He was convinced that "they" were after him, and there was no way to reason with him. He wouldn't stay on his meds, so he was very cyclical. He would be fine (while taking them), and then he would get bad. We (the family) tried everything we could to help him. Of course a lot of the time the paranoia would keep him from trusting us, so our talking to him would do no good.
I guess we couldn't do enough to help because in December of 2003 Dad committed suicide. Needless to say it was a very hard situation for the family to go through. Nobody saw it coming (even his psychiatrist said things had been looking up), so we were all shocked. And of course there are the "what if" scenarios that everybody plays through their minds.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is make sure that there is somebody around that can monitor/administer the medication. I'm sorry this had to happen to your family, but I'll be praying for you.
Thanks for asking.
My 9 year old son was recently diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia. His experience has been one of "Mean voices" telling him to run away and hide, and he becomes so distraught by this, that he forgets to look for traffic when he runs across the street, and he's been known to climb the utility pole in our backyard and try to hide in our chimney.
More than anything, my wife and I have been concerned for his safety. When he gets distressed, he's a danger to himself.
We've been through two miserable psychiatrists at Kaiser-Permanente (NorCal), and finally found a good shrink at Sutter Center for Psychiatry. We've been through a litany of drugs, and the thing that seems to be helping now is a cocktail of (primarily) Abilify.
We've also been trying to get him into a clinical trial at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, mainly to get a firm diagnosis. That prspect seems to be waning, so We're looking into programs at USF and the MIND institute at the UC Davis Med Center.
It's been taxing on my wife and I, but it's also cemented our relationship. He's quite a handful, tending towards ADHD and OCD as well. He ends up in our bed most nights because of the night terrors, but when he's focused, he is the most loving and caring child, more so than his "normal" sister.
I hope I've given you some insight.
- John
Did a report on it, in psych 101... some things i picked up..
-Dosen't really have a cure, treatment only helps in about 25% of patients
-Used to be that if you were mentally ill, you were considered schizophrenic. Now it's a very specific category, divided into even smaller categories.
-
I remember back in the late 40's after my father came back from the merchant service I had to be put into a foster home on Staten Island while my mom was in an asylum where she spent several years. As she got older the symtoms got gradually less and less until just before her death in 1989 at age 75.
For most of the 60's thru the early 80's she seemed "normal". It would seem that the illness can slowly attenuate in some people.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
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
The depiction of someone with Schizophrenia in 'A Beautiful Mind' is somewhat misleading. When someone has schizophrenia they generally do not realize their illness. My greatest sympathies, though; Schizophrenia is a terrible disease.
I've been slightly schizophrenic all of my life. If you sister has a mild case like mine, it is easily controlled by your own thoughts. SELF MEDICATION IS NOT THE ANSWER!!! Taking drugs to feel better will DEFINITELY bring out schizophrenic episodes that you might not recover from. (Like a bad acid trip, but FOREVER!) People who can control their schizophrenia without drugs can have useful "disassociative" thought processes. This type of unchecked thinking can lead to inspiration and the "A-HAH" moments that programmers value so much. (See previous slashdots for those "Eureka" moments. All in all, I would rather be slightly schizophrenic than "normal", but I would never want to be an uncontrollable schizophrenic. I live the greatest adventure anyone could want. -- Tock the Hunted
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
I know this will never get read being so nested, but I think its worth mentioning. Multiple Personality Disorder does not exist, instead there is Diassociatative Identity Disorder (much like as with Retarded to Developmentally Challenged). The difference is the the 'personalities' are really personalities. Personalities are multi-faceted while each so-called personality is flat, uni-faceted, one mood, one identity, etc. Instead the term DID better reflects the current understanding the disorder. In it the individuals disassociates aspects of them selves to better compartmentalize the trauma and to be better deal with the situation. It is a lot less like multiple personalities and more accurately a single fractured personality in which one aspects does not recognizes other aspects of the self.
IANA Psychologist so stake this a grain of salt, but my mom is (MSc)and I talked her about this out of general interest and have read some abnormal psychology.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
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 also 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, for further information regarding support groups for mental illness, and make sure that you get supported 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.
psychology is the study of behaviour, psychiatry is a medical field.
I was just about to point this out when I noticed this post. As my mom is a psychologist I can tell you how many times that has been reiterated to me. It is an important clarification that people fail to grasp, but the difference is quite pronounced. It would be like confusing physics and engineering as one field since they share a common root in Newtonian equations.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
I'm one of those lucky lads who have an hereditary bipolar disorder and, during my later teens, a marijuana-induced semipsychotic stupor (I smoked weed chronically). During that time I manifested many of the common schitzo reactions, and this only abated after I had quit.
;) In this manner it's possible to set up logical bulwarks vs. some of the problems that come with the territory, at least. I know a few other tricks which I'll jot down for you later if there is sufficient interest and when I have a little more time. Hope this semicoherent brain-fart helps ;)
Up to this day I'm not sure whether it was the weed or true schitzophrenia, though I suspect the latter. And while I have been tested, tried, drugged and shrinked from childhood for my bipolar disorder, I had/have never been tested for schitzophrenia. I would guess that, if it IS the case, it is simply difficult to detect since I'm already eccentric by myself. I also feel no need to find out because whatever the case, I've learned to deal with it insofar as possible. I also have tolerant friends who don't freak out if one of my colorful observations are off the mark in whichever way. But I DO remember clearly that during my stoning times, I was in my own hell where I trusted almost no-one out of pure paranoia and had plenty of delusions to go with it. My bipolar disorder in manic phase was, ironically, the only time that I functioned well; I had the energy to have a normal life and it sharpened my wit far enough that it compensated for the inevitable slowdown that weed gives you.
These days I've given up on drugs (except for beer and the occasional cigar), including perscription drugs. My bipolar disorder is mild enough that I can control it by simply keeping an eye on myself - eating and sleeping habits, spending tendencies, etcetera - and compensate by applying the brakes wherever necessary; also, under certain conditions, you can keep yourself slightly manic without danger of the fallback into depression by not overworking.
I suspect that the backslide into depression is caused by heaping up too much work on your plate when you're manic; by keeping yourself in shape, getting plenty of sleep and decent meals, and knowing when/how to give your brain a break - and that means something which requires little thought, such as reordering your baseball card collection, or ironing, or cleaning up, or going for a walk or jog (NO tv, no internet!) - you can keep yourself an a heightened mentally active state indefinitely. I suspect that bipolar disorder may have been an evolutionary advantage once, and that due to social pressures and/or the differences in our modern ways of living compared to, say the stone age, it became a liability rather than a bonus. It might even be that depression wasn't always a necessary component, I don't know.
The delusional aspects from the schitzo-like affliction from my teens (I am now 27) gradually faded through time; one thing that really helped was writing down my delusions and seeing if they stood any statistic chance of being true. For example, when I was convinced I could control stoplights mentally; I simply drove around and compared how often it worked to how often I thought it worked. Needless to say, there were a few discrepancies
Jynx
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
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.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Had an exroomate and close friend who has crossed into this arena. He's brilliant, creative, and all in all a good guy but I don't let him in the house anymore because he's highly unstable. The problem is no matter what you do you can't force them to deal with it. He was forcefully commited a total of three or four times and knows the system (they can only hold you 48hrs, etc). It was when he started comiting crimes (fraud, gta, etc.) I really got tired of his use of his condition, but total lack of any attempt to get real help, to do whatever he wanted and have since tried to avoid him. My advice is to try and help be patient but don't get hurt or ripped of in the process, even though it is a family member. My friend was as close as family to me as anyone and tried numerous occasions, wether it was giving him a place to live or feeding and clothing him I went a long way because I wanted to see the old friend I missed so much. Hate to asay it but I'm not sure he's coming back. It's a sad world. this appears to be widespread and in my opinion growing rapidly due to... (what else but the ultimate scapegoat) socity and it's reaction to the evermore persuasive mass media. idunno it baffles me. Jevfro
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/12/15484/031
Simulating Psychosis
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/1/4/18195/51
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.
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.
meh
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.
Gary Coleman is an evil leprechaun.
Jared from the Subway commercials is still fat, but no one can see it because of the mind control implants.
Dogs speak english but no one can understand them because they talk too fast.
Jerry Garcia was elected president in 1972, but the CIA altered the results so that Nixon would win.
Nazi's went to the moon in 1944 in a flying saucer designed by Werner Von Braun.
Aliens that look like giant bird men are living in the appalacian mountains. Bigfoot is living in Cleveland.
Cell phone radio towers are actually defensive SDI weapons that shoot microwave beams at incoming ICBMS, frying their on-board computers.
The bilderberg group controls the governments of the world through manipulation of international finances.
All computers have a chip in them that lets the government see what you are doing. The scroll lock key can be used to de-activate it.
Glenn Close is really a man.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Because the human brain is the most massively parallel computer (albeit an organic one) in the world.
I had the opportunity last year to speak at length with John Conway (of game of life renown among many other things), who happens to be a close friend of John Nash (protagonist of A Beautiful Mind). Here are some of the bullets:
1. As far as we know, Nash never actually suffered multi-sensory hallucinations - they were purely auditory. That doesn't mean he never had them - it just means that if he ever did he still believes them to be real, and nobody can prove otherwise.
2. Nash got divorced shortly after his diagnosis. He got back together with his wife last year - and never bothered to mention it to anyone. The first Conway knew about it was when he noticed the city's announcement in a local newspaper.
"Hey John, when we had lunch together a couple weeks ago, had you just gotten married that morning?"
"Uh, yeah... why do you ask?"
3. Nash's wife absolutely loved the movie. Nash never bothered to see it until his wife forced him to. He remains pretty neutral about it, and accepts any inaccuraces as reasonable artistic license.
4. It's almost unheard of for a paranoid schizophrenic to reach Nash's current level of functionality without medication. Truly remarkable.
5. When he meets someone new, he really does ask someone else to confirm that they exist.
While I was in college, I signed up for an "early intervention training program" to work with one family's autistic son, who was about 2 years old, if I remember correctly. I kept thinking, while watching him, that he indeed looked like he was being programmed for a limited set of responses.
I don't think it's very enabling, as it seems more for the convenience of the parents in terms of managing the child, than in giving the child extra tools to deal with the world. The training very purposefully tries to extinguish any variance from the rote behavior, and certainly never gives room for questioning the training.
So a kid ends up programmed to say, "please read me a story, mommy," when he wants a story (or maybe just time sitting on the couch getting attention), and will say that exact phrase to his father or even guests in his home. If he needs new behaviors later, he's not only not got an easily modifiable and growing base of learned socially-acceptable behaviors that he could adapt, he actually has to work harder, fighting against the programming that says there are only certain ways to do things in the universe. Furthermore, since he's being conditioned, at least at an early age, to always allow himself to be on display, and unquestioningly accept directives from anyone around him even when he's doing things like using the toilet, he's possibly being set up for some real issues with being a target for manipulation or abuse later.
A "normal" kid is allowed to take initiative to ask why, and challenge authority in (limited) ways, and that's how he learns independent thinking. Admittedly, I didn't get to see whatever training changes occur when (if) an older kid makes it to school, but for the younger kid, at least, this type of behavior is quite against the program. This type of program may still be of substantial benefit to those who have limited potential for internal growth, but I have to think that for kids for whom there's hope of eventual integration into society, the range of outcomes of this training seriously need to be studied more.
Get off my launchpad!
I can only imagine the added complications coming with an young child unable to communicate effectively to start with.
Many people lead relatively normal lives with this condition provided they have some rational balance to measure against, a close family member who is aware and educated to watch for disassociative signs or developing patterns. It can be a terribly tragic situation for family members and friends, God bless and I wish you the best of luck.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Roses are red, Violets are blue. I am schizophrenic, and so am I.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
first, yes, my bad, should have said her, not he.
Stealing thoughts? Naw, I just license them, because thoughts can't be owned, merely copied and expanded upon.....
heh heh heh heh
I FIRMLY believe that most people would get a significant health boost from a better diet. You can't suck all the micronutrients out of the soil for 80 years and not think that the food is of lesser quality. They put back into the soil basically 2-6 nutrients (N-P-K and a few minerals like lime, etc), but strip out 80. Bound to be some nutrition lost there. Not to mention all the various sprays and whatnots that get put on and in food. If al queda sprayed nerve gas on some farm someplace they would call it a "terrorist attack on the nations food supply!" But it gets done daily all over, just not by al queda. It gets done by al monsanto-da, and saddam bin dow-ssein.
That REALLY don't compute.
Oh well, big garden = "good" this year. I dig it!
He's been schizophrenic for a long time. I've known him since college and a few months ago he switched doctors and convinced his current doctor he no longer needs medication for it. Well, he's started to really get weird. He thinks "crazy russion software developers" are trying to kill him. He thinks his house is bugged, people are breaking into his computer, etc.. When I ask him how this is all possible he either has no answer or an absolutly jaw-dropping response. I don't know how to approach this situation without telling him "Dude, get back on your medication". He's fairly sensitive and isn't picking up subtle hints I have been dropping. I don't know his family very well so I would feel weird hunting down his parents' phone number and calling them up "Hi, you don't know me but I am a friend of your son's. He's mentally ill and needs to get back on his medicine". Any ideas?
Mark Vonnegut worte a great first hand account of his own experinces with sckhizophernia. It is a very good read and makes the whole situation seem very scary for all parties invloved. I would suggest reading that book. Mark is now a proffessor of phsycology somewhere. He belives the whole thing is chemical.
First of all I just want to say that Slashdot is full of idiots. Someone asks a question about a serious mental disorder, looking for other people who have had experience with it, and most of the people on this thread are cracking distasteful jokes or telling you to look elsewhere. I apologize for their rude behavior.
Anyway... I'll just review what others have said that I think is helpful. Getting the patient to take medication can be the most difficult thing indeed. My friend was gaining weight due to the medication making him want to eat a lot. He leveled out, but his grandma (of all people!) would antagonize him about his weight! So of course, he would often stop taking the meds because he didn't want to be fat (especially with idiots telling him he was fat).
I wonder how things might have been different if this guy had never drank alcohol or smoked marajuana. If nothing else, friends and famaily probably would have gotten the disorder diagonosed more quickly. In the most extreme case, perhaps he never would have manifested the disorder. I don't know enough about it to comment further, but I think some of same neurotransmitters involved in marijuana use are involved in Schizophrenia (not to mention LSD which he also did a bit more than a few times).
I can never tell when he is or isn't taking his meds because sometimes he tells me he's not and yet he seems to be acting normal. This disorder has seemed to regress a bit, but at other times I've seen him manifest (apparently) typical behavior. Thinking that the government is watching him, that his phones are tapped, that there are listening devices in the walls, that the world is generally out to get him (I'm surprised he continued to trust me throughout all of this).
The delusions are further aggravated by religion. His mother is a Catholic (as is his Grandma who he lives with) and his father is a relatively fundamentalist protestant. He is significantly worried about burning in Hell forever at times (sometimes he's convinced that he can't avoid this fate; I've read of people going crazy from this alone). Be aware of the religious environment that your sister is in. My friends grandmother, as I said, is a Catholic, but he is a protestant (taking after his father). This has resulted in some legendary arguments (just look around the Internet using Google for Protestant vs. Catholic disputes). That's definitely not a good environment for a person with such a disorder to live in. He's not living with his parents because for reasons I'm not sure of, he attacked his father once and was kicked out (it's not like they've disowned him or anything, they just won't let him live there). Obviously I can't expect you or your sister to abandon any religion you might adhere to, but try to emphasis the how-you-live-your-life aspect over the you're-going-to-burn-in-hell-forever if you're not careful aspect. I'm personally agnostic, but there are defendable forms of Christianity that don't include an eternal Hell (universalism teaches that everyone will *eventually* go to Heaven, annihilationists teach that God will simply wipe bad people out of existance rather than pointlessly tormenting them for eternity). Unfortunately, my friend cannot be swayed from such beliefs. Afterall, it seems safest to believe that God is going to torment you forever and take the "necessary" steps to avoid it than it is to assume otherwise (regardless of how irrational the idea that a perfect loving God would eternally torment an imperfect creation for imperfection is).
In short, make sure your sister takes her meds. If she gains weight, be supportive and maybe try and subtly change her diet and monitor her eating (rather than telling her she's fat and expecting her to change her eating rather than stop taking the meds). Depending on the severity of the disorder, she may be able to live a relatively normal life. The more severe it is, the more support she will need from family. Ultimately, you can't expect this problem to take care of itself (via medication). You'll need to take an active roll in your daugther's well being unless you're blessed with a mild case and a cooperative patient.
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 for various items about psychiatry going down the tubes, etc.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I hope this doesn't come across badly. But it someone is hallucinating people, are all the details filled in? I mean do they have shadows? Does the wind move their hair? Do they leave footprints?
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
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.
Yes, you are absolutely right. I have read the mercury behaves like calcium in the body and ends up in the bones, leaking out indefinitely back into the blood stream probably for years. AFAIK, there is no way to purge the bones of mercury. The typical purge only affects the bloodstream without clearing the bones. So, mercury fillings lead to a lifetime of (a)symptoms.
Perhaps this is why the Germany effect doesn't see rapid improvement in ailments, since the mercury toxicity degrades slowly.
Also, this eternal leakage issue essentially renders western medicine impotent to solve it "objectively" since the bloodstream (what they usually test with a blood test) is an inconclusive test (even though they treat it otherwise). It's a shame NIH doesn't take a more logical approach to the situation.
-=-
As an aside to the naysayers (but noone in particular):
Didn't Greek civilization fall in some consequence due to lead food containers, and consequent heavy metal (lead) poisoning? Welcome to "modern" civilization! (History repeats itself for those unwilling to learn from the past.)
Why is this disease "chronic, severe, and disabling"? In what ways will it destroy the quality of life of the individual who has it? My best friend, and long time romantic involvement has schizophrenia, yet is none the worse for it. Yes, there are times when she would become a little vague, or yell at someone to shut up when there was no one there (Yes, that really does happen), but is this all that different from the actions of other, "normal" people? I find your language offensive, and would suggest that you talk to a professional psychologist, who can explain to you that schizophrenia is not the horror that you take it for. Kevin
Surely his reality was real to him, otherwise he wouldn't have interacted with it, but it's not demonstrable or experiential for anyone else. Reality is only meaningful when there is a functional, shared definition.
Millions of people believe they're communicating with higher powers every day, but since that experience is shared and accepted as valid by multiple people it is considered real and valid -- I think we call it "religion".
When just one guy decides he's talking to a higher power and no one else shares in the experience, we call it "mental illness."
Well, judging from the number of replies and the content of the replies to this topic. It's because we're f****** nuts. I mean that clinically not metaphorically.
This whole spiel is going to be used by MS to show how freaking batty you have to be to be using linux.
Your ignorance is resoundingly displayed by your invocation of agoraphobia. Bringing up phobias in a discussion about schizophrenia is like sharing your thoughts on bandaids with a guy who's just had an arm ripped off.
The mind is a complex thing. The treatment of it continues to evolve. Modern treatment is not perfect, but to imply that it is unnecessary, as you have just done, is callous and irresponsible.
I am a Berliner.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Avoid aspartame (Nutrasweet) if you are schitzophrenic. It bonds to the N-Dopamine receptors, and makes medications which moderate N-Dopamine uptake, like the Lithium salts normally used to treat conditions like schitzophrenia, less effective.
My mother was a psychiatric social worker who dealt with the chronically mentally ill at around the time "Tab" came out. Mentally ill people frequently have poor body images, and fad dieting is common; a new diet drink on the market, and they were all drinking it. Fully 75% of them ended up in the state hospital for 72 hours until their medication levels could be sorted out. This happened a number of times, until someone clued into what was happening, and adjusted the medication according to the amount of aspartame they would have in them in a non-supervised, non-hospital setting. The best outcome is to get them off anything, over the counter products or dietary suplements, which could negatively impact the effectiveness of their medication.
Another common occurance with people in this boat is self medication, so watch for it. Abuse of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, and sometimes harder drugs, is common. The main reason for this is that people expect drunk or stoned people to talk to themselves (for example), and it's socially acceptable, but an apparently sober person talking to themselves or otherwise acting abnormally is cause for alarm. So they self medicate to "fit in". Think about that the next time you see a "party animal" friend acting out.
Other than that, she needs to be as religious about taking her medication as a diabetic is about taking insulin or someone with an organ transplant is about taking their prednezone, or someone with AIDS is about taking their cocktail. These are conditions which are treatable, but cannot be/aren't cured at present.
-- Terry
There is an awful lot of incorrect stuff being thrown around in these posts. There are also a lot of half-truths. I can't even begin to find each and every one and rebut them all. Just rest assured that I have recently (last December) studied schizophrenia specifically in an academic setting (with a slant towards cognitive issues rather than medical ones.) Also, my mother has been schizophrenic my whole life and I have taken a rather active interest in it as a result.
:) and they are also less likely to slip into disorganized symptoms as their disorder progresses. (Disorganized thought is a known symptom of schizophrenia that often tends to happen over time if the patient doesn't start off that way.)
1) Scizophrenia is a psychotic disorder. It is on Axis 1 in the DSM. "Psychotic" basically means having hallucinations, delusions, etc. A psychotic patient can also have issues with catatonia and other lesser known symptoms. Most of what people think of when they think of schizophrenia is hallucinations and delusions. If you have only those, then you have what is caled the paranoid subtype.
2) Scizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities (aka Dissociative Identity Disorder.) A schizophrenic may communicate with imagined entities, but they are not "alters" -- the term for alternate personalities.
3) Occurences of schizophrenia do, indeed, have a high correlation with changes in brain structure (a certain part of the brain is often atrophied in schizophrenics among other differences of the brand that are typical in mentally disordered people.) This does not necessarily make it a purely medical disorder. Depression is usually accompanied by changes in levels of certain neurotransmitters, as is anxiety and pretty much everything else you can think of. But this always begs the chicken-or-egg question. Note that 50% of people who have an identical twin with schizophrenia also have schizophrenia. This rate is actually extremely high as mental disorders go. But it means that only half of people with the exact same genes as a schizophrenic actually become diagnosable with the disorder. So there need to be non-genetic influences for onset to occur. I don't remember the stat for fraternal twins, but it is much lower -- indicating that genes do play a significant role.
4) The important thing to know about schizophrenia as a medical/cognitive problem is that schizophrenics _can_ learn to manage their psychotic symptoms. People who spend a lot of time excersising their ordered cognition powers are a lot less likely to become schizophrenic (so you can bet that I'm all about puzzles and games as a child of a schizophrenic!
5) Cognitive therapies are actually quite effective. Someone on here stated that "talking therapies" only have an ~30% success rate with mental disorders. This is plain rubbish. Success rates differ wildly from disorder to disorder, with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy being very successful in a large number of cases -- quite often more successful than drug therapy in mood disorders. Schizophrenia, of course, requires meds to reduce psychotic symptoms and cognitive therapy to help the patient and his/her family and friends manage the strange behavior. As someone stated earlier, make sure your friend keeps taking his/her meds.
6) Family/friend support is crucial to a schizophrenic's success in handling the disorder. They will not be able to be fully independent for quite some time and you must be willing to put up with some very serious crap from them. According to NIMH, the prevalence of schizophrenia is 1%. This means that 1 in 100 people are diagnosed with it. Take a look around. If you go downtown, you can probably see several hundred people at once. But the likelyhood is that none or almost none of those people are schizophrenic. If you want to see most of those 1% of people, visit a homeless shelter. Most schizophrenics don't get the support necessary to live normal(ish) lives. And they often end up destitute.
I can honestly say that my Mom was for the most part happy with her life and even lived a relatively normal life. My Mom was diagnosed well before I was born and before my father had even married her, so I grew up with a Schitzoid mother. Suprisingly, I didn't even learn until my early 20's exactly what was wrong with her, though I had suspected something was a bit off with my mom that time in high school she took off with no notice and left us stranded at school.
The blend of drugs that the doctors had my Mom on did a wonderful job of keeping her stable and able to lead a "normal" life. Naturally (as I learned later) her stability and demeanor seemed to improve as the years passed and the doctor adjusted her dosages or tried out a new medication. So really, between the medication and my Father sort of "covering" for her, I had a great family life growing up, and I would say there is great hope in this day and age for a Schitzophrenic and their loved ones.
The hardest part had to be taking the different drugs on the proper schedule, apparently her drugs were carefully balanced to have different drugs taken at different times of the day. Really the only times we had any issues was when maybe she would miss a dosage or get off, then the "Paranoid" part of her condition would kick in first, and she'd stop taking her meds all together because she became paranoid of the meds ("Those doctors!! I don't trust them!!"). It was a downhill snowball effect after that. Fortunately, for the most part, when she had an "episode" (off her meds) she'd usually get in her car and drive to her sister's house (about a 2-3 hour drive away)--which is in the town where she grew up. Then her sister would call us and let us know where she was and that everything was ok. She'd be home and stabilized soon enough. Once we got a call from the Sherriff's Office that they had our Mom and that she had entered a perfect stranger's house thinking it was her Doctor's office. These type things where she got off her meds and would just "disappear" would only happen every few years or so.
I am blessed that the last 8-10 years of my Mom's life were pretty-much problem free. I hope and pray that your family wil be as fortunate as ours was (I know that every case is different). And I can honestly say, having lived with my Mom for 30+ years with this condition, your Sister has a good chance to lead a relatively normal life, albeit with some added medication.
Can you spell CYA?
Nonetheless, I do find the ironic vagueness of your selected quotations entertaining. Too bad the NIH doesn't take the issue more seriously as it may be the most damaging and wide-ranging diseases in USA society (not modern civilization since mercury fillings are appropriately outlawed in many countries). I guess the NIH/USA/ADA and you have a monopoly on scientific and medical knowledge, right?
By the way, how do I tell if I have "general environmental anxiety"? Is the NIH concluding that's a symptom of mercury toxicity, or trying to debunk mercury toxicity with that statement? Your intent is clear, but the quotation's "suggest"ion is dubious at best as they could just as easily be putting the cart before the horse. That would debunk their own case, woudn't it? (IOW, question "authority" especially in the face of hard experience, poisonous toxicity, and chronic CYA by ADA and NIH.)
As for the replacement damaging quotation, I agree. That's why I suggested going to a mercury-sensitive but competent dentist for replacement.
Also, FYI, the toxicity half-lifes indefinitely from the bones even after fillings are removed, so the symptoms unfortunately don't simply disappear, but diminish over the course of years (with any luck). The best course of action is to avoid "silver"/"amalgam" aka mercury fillings at all costs despite NIH/ADA and your denials otherwise.
The woman with schizophrenia was lucky her (schizophrenia) condition vanished rapidly, but I'm sure her toxicity did not. I think a lot depends on constitution (genetics et al) and level of exposure (e.g., bone supply of mercury). Mercury reportedly damages the immune system (adrenal gland, etc.) as well, so the body can be too weak to recover normally for those severely exposed. It's too bad the NIH doesn't do more in depth, meaningful studies to expose the various aspects of the mercury issue, but then again it's also too bad western medicine doesn't take a more preventive approach to health and well-being, isn't it?
Perhaps the NIH will look more aggressively and perseveringly after the ADA stops recommending mercury fillings. I think that most likely (if at all).
In the meantime, I'm glad the lawyers, dentists, and doctors haven't completely outlawed self-diagnosis (yet!).
Cheers.
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.
If you're not, sorry to accuse you of such--but you sound EXACTLY like a Scientologist. They will tell you that all "psychs" are evil and want to "get their hands on you." Then offer you an expensive course at one of their centers and tell you to avoid "entheta" (i.e., criticism of anything they believe in).
Schizophrenia is really dependant on the person, the type of schizophrenia, and a lot of other factors. I have a friend who is currently diagnosed with it, and while she is paranoid and somewhat emotionally void, she is capable of doing most things on her own.
As for hope on the long term, well, there are drugs, but it's best to do some background work on the drugs and get multiple sources. Some drugs can cause severe neurological damage, other drugs can work wonders. New drugs are coming out all the time, so read up as much as you can on these new treatments, just in case the doctors haven't.
In the end, just be as kind as you can be. It's a hard thing to deal with, but with the right combination of drugs and attention, they can do alright.
Schizophrenia doesn't spell doom for a person's life. It is a painful disease to see someone have, but remember that deep inside that the person is still your loved one, and it isn't their fault that they're acting the way they are. There's always hope that things will work out, and if you take care of them correctly, with the right combination of things, they can resume a position in society. Just keep an eye on them, and don't abandon them.
I don't know if this will help, but good luck.
Secondly, you think LSD is a good idea? You've obiviouly partaken in aa little too much yourself.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Toxic Exposure Study Trust Foundation
Consumers for Dental Choice
IAOMT
Mercury consumption from Fish Calculator
Amalgam-Related Illness FAQ
There are many other sites.
The regulatory authorities are very schizophrenic (no pun intended) about mercury. We are warned not to eat too much fish and mercury is being eliminated from many products, but dental fillings are not a problem. Do the math. You can get as much mercury from a mouth full of fillings (10 - 20 micro-grams per day) as you can from eating fish. It is in a different form, but it is still toxic nonetheless.
And dentists do have a higher incidence of depression and other symptoms of mercury poisoning than the general population.
This is a tough problem to prove because the symptoms are so variable and a large proportion of the population has a natural ability to physically deal with mercury ingestion.
If A, then B; thus, if not B, then not A (contrapositive).
...
He's saying If (God exists and is good), then (bad stuff wouldn't happen). Since (bad stuff happens), God either doesn't exist, or isn't good. If God isn't good, he argues, then why bother? Why make the effort of having faith?
I am a soft atheist, and this is one of multiple reasons why (the reason he argues). Another reason is that the staunch religious folks I've met/heard in my life have never been all that great at basic logic
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.
Why do people think that mathematicians are somehow different from normal people (other than being good at math)? I can give you lists of mathematicians that were not crazy. Some maths are gay (Turing), some are schizo (Nash), some are adulterers (Hilbert), some are anti-semitic (Frege), some are semitic (Cantor), some are hypochondriac (Godel), some are boring, some are greedy, etc...
But then again, these things apply to non-mathematicians. Yes some mathematicians were/are crazy, but most are not. So please, even though pop-culture tells you something, think for yourself and don't over-generalize.
It's ironic you would mention schizophrenia, I just read martian time slip from phillip k dick. it's a classic book in sci-fi, but it also gave me an interesting perspective on the disease as it was understood 30+ years ago.
-- john
And yes, the mind-control people are out to get you.
A few months ago I heard a fascinating program on NPR, about a researcher who with the assistance of schizophrenics created a virtual-reality simulation of the hallucinations typical with this disease. He did this for the express purpose of creating a tool that would help people (mental health care, safety/police, relatives) get some insight into what it's like to be schizophrenic. Sorry I can't be more specific...
My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia about 2 years ago.
e ta il/glance/-/books/074756177X
1: The meds are important. Some fuck them up, have very nasty side effects. They have to find meds which fit, this can take a while. My brother seems happy at the moment, he has a two weekly injection which reduces the swings of daily medication and he doesn't have to worry about remembering.
2: Read this book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/d
He's a clinical psychologist. It's about family life in general but has some useful insights about schizophrenia.
3: The good news is that schizophrenics can have perfectly normal lives. But they need a basis of support and understanding from friends and family. Not necessarily intrusive support, and it doesn't mean you have to be a doormat or walk on eggshells but it has to be available, this is what seems to make the biggest difference between those who go on to lead normal lives and those who end up on the streets, locked up for life or dead.
4: Talk to other sufferers and their supporters, there are mailing lists, newsgroups etc Google knows.
5: Get a doctor she trusts (easier said than done). Makes a huge difference, especially if they are competent.
Basically, it needn't be the end of the world. She could be completely normal in a few years, not needing meds at all. It does take years though and a lot of it is down to how you and your family handle it. Not easy.
Deleted
I live in the good old United States of America. As far as I have seen, there are not any free health benefits for me to use in regards of my schizophrenia. *shrugs* I've dealt this long.
Yes, she probably is under the influence of a great number of demons - so what? I'm a born again believer in Christ Jesus that for a long time wandered in darkness dropping lots of acid and smoking dope. I, too, was diagnosed with schizophreina and after I stopped taking my meds and began submitting to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for total and complete deliverance, I occasionally see dark things fly out of me - I'm not 100% sure what they are but my guess is that they're demons or something similar and that they began to take residence inside of me during my druggy days.
But torture to drive demons out does not work - you have to cast them out by the power and authority of Jesus Christ else you'll just make things worse - see the Scripture concerning what happens when a demon leaves a person and returns with seven more wicked than itself.
That would be an interesting idea....I'd have to figure out how to phrase a couple of the concepts that explain a couple things that I go through, but if I could find a safe place to post it, I certainly would.
This is exactly what Scientologists talk about. There's this bizarre level of vitriol. "Don't let the head-shrinks get their hands on you!" "The pro-shrink defense squad can go get stuffed, the truth is the truth."
Perfectly logical human beings know that, like any field, there are good people and bad people. Scientology actually preaches as a tenet that "psychs" are evil and want to control you. This post sounds exactly like the anti-psych posts you see at Scientology sites and on a certain newsgroup.
Yes, there are Scientologists who lurk around Slashdot. Remember the infamous deleted comment?
You bring up LSD. You're right, it probably does no or at most a negligible amount of brain damage (due to its extremely low dosage). However, you concede that it produces semi-permanent effects. Those effects are not always benign as the visual impairments you describe.
I'm not going to lecture you on drugs. Take whatever you want. However: do NOT bring this junk to a conversation about mental illness. Mood- or consciousness-altering drugs are SEVERELY CONTRAINDICATED FOR ALL SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESSES. You should not risk implying their safety to people reading this discussion.
Since my post really highlights some of what's wrong with USA institutions (ADA, NIH) and already casts a long shadow toward the dental, medical, and legal community as well as a chronic short-sightedness of western medicine (to deal with trauma instead of preventive medicine), I figure I'll add one more step to bring this all back to a more relevant topic for slashdot:
patents!
Given western medicine's tunnel vision on trauma and drugs, despite eons and centuries of natural health remedies, how (in the hell) would you say we got to this odd place?
Good question.
I hypothesize patents. The whole idea (patent pending) of patents is ludicrous. You can own an idea --- bah humbug. It creates a legal landmines barring independent discovery/invention whatever you want to call it. It's antisocial and counter-productive.
However, lawyers have institutionalized them (in their own best interests of course). (Do you know the percentage of lawyers on the panel to decide whether to (over)extend patents into software? 100%. Can you say conflict of interest? Can you say industrial "taxation" by lawyers without representation of any non-conflicted constituents, e.g., software engineeers? Thank you Bruce Lehmann (under Al Gore's "techno-savvy" eye).)
You'd think the costs of patents were obvious, but they're not. They're wide-ranging and often subtle and incestuous.
The lucrative drug industry is a by-product of patents --- at the expense (in my hypothesis anyway) of natural remedies and preventive medicine. The focus of the NIH and congress and other powers-that-be is where the money is. The drug companies *are* the money in medicine, even though the doctors' lobby should be strong it gets outlobbied all the time. Guess what? The drug companies are driving the politics of medicine, and the result is a medical establishment blind to often obvious natural remedies, and not just closed-minded but actively obstructionist to well-being initiatives (at least those which threaten drug company interests).
Welcome to the modern USA world (which has a dire effect on the rest of the world as well since we wield so many of the world's resources on "behalf" of humanity).
Patents aren't just bad for software (or hardware) or even just medicine. They're bad for medicine and personal health and well-being. Severe brokenness has dire and far-reaching consequences.
Cheers (and thanks to Idarubicin for inspiring this circle of thought).
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.
When someone tells you they will be praying for you or your family, it's another way of saying they hope things turn out well and that they care on an emotional level about the outcome, to the point that they hope that fate might turn out better, be it caused by chance or deity.
It's showing a little empathy. Have some heart. Sheesh.
Well, with the hallucinations I have, wether they be auditory or visual, are very detailed, and very very convincing. Half the time I cannot tell the difference between reality and the disease, so I tend to rely on coworker's reactions to certain things, and also, my husband helps too. Say, for instance, a few weeks ago, someone walked into my store witha gun in his hand...no one else reacted to it at all, so I figured it wasn't really there. Other times, I have run into people walking home, that have said hello to me, but when I turned around a split second later, they were not there. It gets interesting. They have shadow, substance, sound, everything. It's a second world.
And, in addition, if anyone wants to say anything to me in private forum, or just find out what it's like, feel free to aim me....it's armygirl398. I'm always willing to talk, sort of keeps my head a bit more in reality.
I also have it on my personal site, with somewhat more pleasant HTML design and a few photos:
-
Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
I want the OP to know there is hope for his sister. Things were pretty grim for me at one time, but I do alright now. I've been employed as a programmer full-time since 1987, and since 1998 I've operated my own consulting business.I was really sick in my early twenties, but had several good years until I cracked up again when I was thirty. I thought the CIA was tapping my phone. I'm forty now. I had some trouble with paranoia and hallucinations last fall, but I knew well enough to get help for it and all it took was a simple adjustment to my medication. I'm doing really well now.
One can recover from mental illness, but it takes patience and a lot of hard work. There are many effective medications for schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders, however, not all the medications work well for everybody, so basically what you have to do is try them out one at a time until you find something that works. To make it more complicated, most people need more than one medication, so you have to find the right combination.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
schizophrenia, bi-polar, etc is not an illness but rather a spiritual condition than needs to be overcome - not "cured" - by the power of our savior Jesus Christ.
I think it's time for you to go back on your meds. Seriously.
Honesty. Loyalty. Kindness. Laughter. Generosity. Magic!
I've heard much less about schizotypal disorder, which is considered by some to be a mild form of schizophrenia.
Basically, it's much how you might think a less severe schizophrenia might be. Usually people believe they have some sort of supernatural or magical power, some way of affecting things. For instance, genuinely thinking that if you wish for rain all day, it's going to cloud up in the evening and rain. They also say odd things or have eccentric beliefs. Often they'll have random thoughts that don't seem connected to the topic at hand, or they'll speak in metaphors. They also typically have social anxiety.
I also recommend it, it's a wonderful book.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
While I'm not likely to change your high opinion of the field of psychology, you have several misunderstandings about psychology in general.
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.
First off: sitting in an undergrad psych class once doesn't mean you understand a thing about it. So just stop right there.
Second:
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.
Freudian psychoanalysis is vary rarely used, as another poster mentioned - Other forms of therapy, such as Bevahioral and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Most modern psychotherapies (not psychoanalysis, which is different) are short-term, and effect treatment for a variety of problems. People go to "shrinks" (more acurrately, psychiatrists) for drugs either to supplement therapy, or because they aren't always informed about all the options.
The shrinks are drug dispensers, basically. Moreover, in many cases the drugs dispensed are inappropriate. Agoraphobia has no known treatment.
Agoraphobia has a variety of treatment options.
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.
It's funny, because that's pretty much what a psychologist would have someone do in therapy (who do you think writes those books about recovering from anxiety and depression?). It sounds like you're more upset with psychiatry, and the medication of people who don't always need it. Two totally separate issues.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Slow down there. You want to make it out as if psychology/psychiatry has the same strong empirical underpinnings that, say, internal medicine has? Don't make me laugh.
As a matter of fact, everybody does pick and choose which laws to follow, from seatbelts to taxes to underage drinking to marijuana. I would be happy if everybody had the same skepticism towards psychology/psychotherapy/counseling/etc that we all have towards the government. Unfortunately, they don't - people give the field far more credit and trust, much more than it deserves.
I don't need homosexuality to show how dangerously ill-equipped psychology/psychiatry is to live up to its expectations. I'd start with lobotomies (fallen out of favor how recently?) and ECT (that's "electroshock," for the crowd)... which is... still being practiced?
Psychology/Psychiatry today is where internal medicine was 100 years ago. Leeches, cocaine, etc. We're getting better, slowly. But the original point is quite correct. It's a field with no center, running on bluff and hype, overpopulated with quacks and hustlers. It's kept aloft by optimism, dishonesty, and placebo effect, and not the least bit ashamed to leave a trail of human wreckage behind it.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
You and the drug-pushing psychiatrists - hello?!?! does 1984 mean anything to you? "thought police" ya know?
Benzapp,
I understand your reaction to my post. This isn't the first time I have come across this and I don't think this will be the last time. We are all human and bound to this experience of being human. Our flaws and weaknesses make us human. So do our strengths. I'm just sharing my experience. This "flaw" of being schizophrenic has also given me my greatest "strength" of being able to help other people who have gone or are going through similar experiences.
I will keep you and the people you affect in my thoughts and prayers today.
deli-x
I don't think he would have asked Slashdot if he had gotten a satisfactory/complete answer from a professional.
All too often, doctors treat people as individual cases to be diagnosed, solved, and sent on their merry way. Those of us who want to know more are invited to look up the information ourselves.
I know, IHBT, but I thought it was a good point to make anyway.
+++ATH0
I guess you'll like Isaac Brock on Interviews then ;-) But if people really are out to get you then perhaps paranoia is warranted, eh?
I did a quick google search & found this:h does indeed show an increased level of mercury in the brains of cadavers with amalgam fillings.
.0025 in white matter). This is indirect evidence suggesting that mercury from dental amalgam fillings may contribute to the body burden of mercury in the brain. The toxic levels of mercury in human tissues have not been sufficiently investigated and the amount of mercury in human brain tissue from dental amalgam may or may not be clinically significant. Nevertheless, dental amalgam exposure should be considered in monitoring sources of mercury accumulation in human brain tissue.
http://www.nvbt.nl/hot-metalen4.html
whic
Thank you.
Just a couple of comments. First, the levels found in the brains of the "subject" cadavers has a mean of 15.21 ng Hg/g wet brain. That is a very small amount. Very, very small. There definitely is a correlation to number of amalgam tooth surfaces. The mean for subjet cadavers is about twice the mean for controls (6.7 for controls, 15.21 for subjects). But 2 times a teeny number is still a teeny number. To contrast, look at the rabbit studies they mention. Quote:
Fukuda (11) was able to elicit a "fine" tremor in the fore and hind limbs of two of six rabbits exposed intermittently to mercury vapor; the brain concentrations ranged from 0.8 to 3.7 ug Hg/g wet weight.
In this case the units are ug/g, 3 orders of magnitude larger than the units in the cadaver study. So these numbers are actually 800 to 3700 ng/g , much, much greater than the amounts found in the cadaver brains (the highest outlier was 110 ng/ g).
I'm not knocking the article. The researchers didn't make any hyperbolic claims. But there isn't anything there that would lead me to believe fillings leach enough to result in toxic levels of Hg in brain tissue. The paper's summary says it well:
Data from this project demonstrate a positive correlation between the number of occlusal surfaces of dental amalgam and mercury levels in the brain (p [less than]
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/ ..just as a differing viewpoint. Worth a read.
FUNK!
There is a tremendous amount of stress placed upon the family of schizophrenic patients - by the patients, the medical community, and society in general. I've had three friends with this illness - one died in jail, one homeless and untreated by his own choice, and one has a wonderful life, family and career. Outcomes can vary widely.
Anyone with a schizophrenic family member should seek support -- from friends, family and social groups as well as professional counselling. At the least, this will help the family member deal with the stress of the situation and learn how to deal with the ill family member.
I, too, would like to extend my prayers for you and your family, for whatever it's worth to you - whether as something that is effective or simply an expression of concern from one human being to others in a difficult situation.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
I thought I was going crazy once upon a time. As it turned out, I was just really high and my best friend, who was always at my side, turned out to be the one with the problem. We would sit around and play music (we were in a band) and in between songs, he would start talking, and telling me things, and it would just make me start thinking all wierd and freaking me out.
Actually, in retrospect, it was kinda funny. Sad, but funny. When I had him committed (a hard thing to do, btw), his parents found garlic scattered all over his bed (to keep the vampire who lived in his room at bay while he slept). He used to tell me that as he drove, birds would dart across the road in front of his car, and as they did, they would say things to him. Quickly and almost unintelligably, but they spoke. The trees had alot to say too.
I remember once we found this strange ball in his room on the floor.. neither one of us had ever seen it before.. but it freaked us out! He insisted it emanated evil!! We picked it up (without touching it.. i think we wrapped it in newspapers) and got in the car and drove like an hour away to throw it deep into a lake we knew of.
Kind of strange, almost like its contageous! Power of suggestion.... the mind is a strange and powerful thing.
The last episode I know of, he was found on the floor of his kitchen, passed out holding two plastic kool-aid type pitchers. Apparently, some higher-being had appeared to him, and directed him into the kitchen cabinets, where he found these two magical pitchers which he had never before seen in his life. He then proceeded to fill them with water and immediately chugged both of them (mind you these were not small pitchers). I guess he was supposed to have gained some sort of super-human powers by doing this?
Wow. Being a schizophrenic is tough man. He was always a little different... but what I think triggered the onslought of delusions was the one and only time he tried lsd. It was all down hill after that.
He's doing much better now, having been institutionalized twice. After trying various different medications, they finally found one that seems to stabilize him (more than the rest) and he's living a happy life, still making music, doing the things he does.
Medicine = Good.
ok. im done. the end.
http://www.digifuzz.net
No way K5 is Communist--that involves planning.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I work on an adolescent in-patient psych unit and fairly often see family members trying to deal with an initial diagnosis of schizophrenia in a child or sibling. NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) is a source we often give out. NAMI has a great website and they do excellent advocacy and support work.
n es s&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID =3&ContentID=10850
http://www.nami.org
Or, to link right to their schizophrenia information:
http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=By_Ill
A quick "my $.02" (full disclosure, I'm still in grad school, no license, etc.) -- schizophrenia has a worse image in the public mind than I think it deserves. There are some pretty good medical treatments. Also, something you might be interested in is family therapy targeted at schizophrenia. This is _not_ (NOT!!) suggesting that schizophrenia is caused by parenting or other family social influences (that idea is long gone, thank God, in psychology/psychiatry), but there are ideas on teaching family members how to best support themselves and the family member with schizophrenia that can make a real difference for everyone. See pages 279-280 of _the Essentials of Family Therapy_, Nichols and Schwartz.
Take Care,
Curt
A nerd isn't just someone who is proficient at using computers... not by my definition.
I think most people here will agree with me when I say that, as a nerd, I don't just tinker with my computer - I tinker with anything I find. Whether you're into gardening, (car) mechanics, games, languages... it doesn't matter. You're a nerd if you're just *curious* about everything.
I think it's interesting to read what people are saying about this disease (disorder? I don't profess to know anything about it), and if you assign a rating of -6 to anything moderated funny, then you can read some really interesting things.
I disagree that this should not be a subject for Slashdot.
Whatever this says about me , I think of Slashdot as a community I belong to. We talk about shared experiences, starting from the viewpoint of, well, geeks, but we're complete human beings too.
I've learnt from the stories I've read and taken hope from the experience some people describe, all coming from people who share a world-view I relate to. We all stand to learn from the people we associate with. I'd rather not set limits on what I allow those people to teach me.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Feel free to email me about getting some free webspace.
http://phorm.phormix.com/cgi-bin/mailme.cgi
Sorry about the mailer page. I avoid putting my email online since I tend to get spammed a lot, especially with addresses on slashdot.
Such a depressing subject, I'm glad to hear someone who was smart enough to keep on their meds and enjoy a happy life.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I grew up in a household with a paranoid schizophrenic father. He wasn't diagnosed until I was 9, so I got a very good picture of both unmedicated vs. medicated.
His story is very similar to A Beautiful Mind in many respects. He doesn't see people (though he has a couple of stories which make me wonder), but he is a brilliant mathematician. The scene in the movie where the main character is frustrated because the drugs make it difficult for him to work on problems is/was a daily scene in my house.
It started with him occasionally thinking that someone stole something (LPs, or a book), or being extremely convinced that my mom was putting poison in his food. As time passed, these episodes (and general assumptions that people were out to get him at every turn) became more frequent until they were happening on an almost daily basis. He had stopped working when I was 1 1/2, and so he was/is home almost constantly, which meant that a lot of his paranoia revolved around my mother, and as I got older, me. He was extremely abusive to her, and would even lose himself in his paranoia so much that he would let loose on me (to this day, he swears that he didn't, but... yeah).
After a few hospital trips (by my mom), and a couple of trips to area shelters, he finally hit me in front of her. That was it. We left for 2 or 3 weeks, and he ran off to his parents. They made him go see a shrink, and so he was diagnosed (and this after 5 years of marriage counselors telling my mom that she was the problem *mutters about training*).
The next time I saw him, he was in the hospital and shaking violently from the anti-psychotics, but he was... pleasant to be around. For the first time, I wasn't afraid. Later they put him on something that makes him sleep 10-12 hrs to cancel out the shakes.
After a while (he was in the hospital 3x longer than most schizoprhrenia treatments because he kept stopping his meds), he came home. I didn't see him when my mom wasn't around, and that was great by me. When he stopped taking his meds for a couple of days (soooooo easy to tell), there was a lot of tiptoeing around him, until we could get him to take them them again (fortunately only a couple of days at a shot).
Slowly, he has stopped skipping them (intentionally at least). He realized after 10 years or so (~4 years ago) that he really is better toward all of humanity when he takes his medication. He even specifically took them on my wedding day (which meant the world to me -- even if he was drowsy during the father-daughter dance). As he is now a decent person almost all the time.
I don't know why this question was asked of Slashdot, but I will take this opportunity to put in my 2 cents. I think that anyone who is schizophrenic and in a relationship should take their meds. You might not notice the difference, but everyone else will.
I once dated a girl who was severely 'messed-up' (if you'll excuse the terrible phrase - she was undiagnosed and my knowledge in this field is still in it's infancy - if anyone reading this can give an insight into what her condition is and some links to some self-help stuff it'd be greatly appreciated, I'd dearly love to help her as I still care about her a great deal) and went through a similar experience to yours - for the purpose of this post let's call her 'M'.
Now M had a history of severe mental, physical and sexual abuse by relatives, and as a result of this had created her own internal world - let's call it 'escapist psychosis' - to protect her from these experiences. She had grown up with these things going on around her and with very little contact with the outside world and so had turned in on herself to escape them.
For the most part, she was perfectly normal, but she had 'episodes' where she would snap and hate everything, including herself that would last from a few hours to a few days. During these times she would have panics and delusions, including intense (and I mean intense) paranoia that I was going to leave her (mostly for her best friend, which I was never, ever going to do, but this didn't stop her threatening to stab us both) and panic attacks about the perpetrator of her sexual abuse coming to get her.
Her permanent belief she was worthless caused her to drop out of college (even though she is one of the best creative writers I've ever met, and could easily go very far in that field) and attempt suicide several times.
She was also very bad at long-term relationships, her hatreds generally destroying anything she builds up with anyone, as the cruelty of her attacks are unbearable at times (she used to leave me in tears over things such as my father dying, losing my 'first love', and other things) and I doubt there are many people that could tolerate it on a regular basis, plus she couldn't enjoy sex or anything to do with sex that much due to her history of abuse and it's repercussions. (on a similar note, my current girlfriend may be incapable of having children due to a physical complication - but that's another issue.)
I sympathise completely with your feelings, it hurts to see someone you care for suffer like that and be unable to do anything. I just wanted to hurt all the people that had hurt her because I couldn't do anything to help her, but that would have only made things worse. I cried many a night away because I felt so helpless for her. Believe me, you're brave posting this at all. All the people in this thread who are posting painful issues like these are.
But hey, I know me saying that doesn't mean much...
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
My sister first began to present symptoms of Schizophrenia about 15 years ago, and the intervening years have not been kind. The sister that I grew up with is gone, and what is left is a tragic figure. She's been in and out of treatment time and again, and she exibits the all-too-common response of being on medication for a while and then feeling 'healthy' or tired of the mind-dulling effects of another medication, she goes off of drug treatment.
She's 34 now and she's very single, unemployed and the last time I checked, she still had a place to live. She is quite intelligent and high-functioning at times, even holding down jobs (she's an award-winning hairdresser), but the demon of disease always is there to drag her down. It is really freaky to see her in full delusion, it isn't fun and she's physically attacked our mother a few times
What do I recommend? Well, I have nothing positive to offer you, sir. My experience has been purely negative. Here is what I can suggest:
1 - Watch the movie a few times, it is VERY insightful and can help you understand your sister's plight.
2 - Encourage her to STAY on her medication. Be her advocate with the health care system, NOBODY cares about her like you and the rest of your family does. Consider that many doctors view (perhaps as a way to mentally survive?) patients with no more compassion and individual attention than a quality mechanic may treat a BMW. In the end, your sister is just another 'thing' to be worked on. Your sister needs an advocate, and will ever more across the years ahead.
3 - I don't know how old she is, or how bad the disease has attacked her, but consider community living options, where she can live with professional care-givers and others who have other mental-illness challenges. These environments give her a level of independence, while also giving her the caring environment that you and your family may not be able to supply her. She WILL be a needing person for the rest of her life.
4 - Read, read, read, read up on the disease. Get to know the medication options / effects and what new developments there may be for treatment. You (or some person) will have to be there for her in a long-term, hands-on way to help and protect her.
What you are up against is almost as life-changing for you as it is for her. Nobody appreciates the loss you will experience, nor will they care much either. This will either make your family stronger, or it will pull it further apart (which has happened in my case)
This doesn't mean that all is bleak, as even flowers can grow from the most pungent dung. Our youngest son just celebrated his first birthday last month...he was my sister's third child and he is such a blessing.
I recently discoffered that my girlfriend has some form off Schizofrenia. I always noticed that she really could have big moodswitches and had some serious problems with herself. But I really started to worry when she became psychotic one night. She had the idea that people where chasing her. It was really frightning, like I was was playing in a bad movie. She was allready very stressed for some time and behaving more distant (less affection). But when I started to search the internet for the things I had seen I stuck on some sites about schizofrenia, to my horror the picture (all the things that can point to schzofrenia) fitted to well. Allthough all this knolledge didn't help me a bit. I had come to close to her. I wanted her to get some professional help, but she didn't want to see that there was anything wrong with here. It all resulted with the result that she broke up with me after 11 months - she coudn't manage a relationship anymore - thats what she said to me. In that same week she was still making plans for our future and told me nummerous times how very very much she loved me!! Six weeks passed by since then. I have seen her once since, wich wasn't planned. But the person I knew eleven months wasn't the person I ran into. The girl I know is completely gone. Her face expresions, her voice, her behaviour all is different. I loved her to death, but know I dont know anymore who I have loved. It seems like the person I loved doesn't exist anymore. I also discoffered that her story to everyone is quitte different from what actually happened. I find it very hard to hear that she blames me quitte a bit for things and has moved on like I never have exist! Not really a story that is helpfull. But it has tortured me for the last weeks. Goodluck with your sister!
Just to outline the point, there's a recent reuters article about how mortuaries are now having to remove the fillings because they create toxic smoke during the cremation process.
Not something I would want in my mouth, thank you!
yes, for around 80 years now, since artificial fertilisers and sprays became popular, monoculture has taken over big time. They will plant one, or at most two crops in the same place, year after year. They apply a fertiliser that is nitrogen, phosphorus and pottasium, but they don't re-apply all the micronutrients that plants require, and wind up in the food we eat. that number is coincidently also 80, so sorry for the confusion. They also don't add enough carbon back to the soil, which is loosely called the "tilth" in the soil, whcih causes topsoil loss, inefficient water usage, excess runoff going directly into streams instead of soaking in, and requiring heavier equipment all the time to do the same work. the soil becomes compacted, dead almost, it takes heavier equipment to work it once the soil loses tilth.
These micronutrients have a lot to do with your over-all health, but they gradually get sucked out of the soil, but you don't get them. You still get big crops, I won't dispute that, but the nutritional quality drops severely. That's why people take vitamins and mineral supplements-that stuff just isn't in the food anymore in the quantities it used to be, and even then it's not near as good as just having the vitamins and minerals directly in the food itself. It also gradually weakens the plants, meaning they are less resistant to diseases and to insect depradations, requiring more spray, sprays which are in essence, WMD put onto your food. there's really not a lot of difference.
Now with this "round up ready" stuff, it's designed so that they can REALLY spray that crap hard, directly on the food, and the slop over kills the weeds in between. It makes it easier to control the weeds that way, because a general over spray is easier to perform than spot sprays or cultivation to control weeds, which is the "old fashioned" way to do it. that's all I do, cultivation and a cover mulch, BTW.
So, with generation after generation of monoculture in the same ground and using sprays and only artificial fertiliser you are gonna get weaker plants, less nutritious plants for the humans and other critters that eat them,and more poison on the plants. And PAY for that.
Another thing, GM canola in canada is classed as a weed now when it escapes, because it takes just a ton of different sprays to eradicate it if it gets into someplace where you don't want it. It's called a "super weed".
And the main reason so many farmers are using it is simple,it's not because their seed is all that great, the old canola (rape seed) worked perfectly fine and they could save seed every year, saving money, etc, it's because if you got just *one* bozo in the area who uses it, it's no use, you're screwed, your crop will get infected, and monsanto will find out, and sue you, or the threat is there and has been for several years now. So, the farmers take the path of least resistance and basically pay a bribe to be left alone, and "jump on the bandwagon", and then they can't "un jump" they become stuck, they become corporate employees.
I worked on farms off an on all my life,I am now in fact, and I know VERY few truly independent farmers, vast majority are just 7 day a week underpaid corporate employees.
Like I said above though, the truly scary one is terminator gene plants. they are gonna screw the pooch with that one once they start using it on a big scale. Tons of stuff on the web about it.
I've got sealed metal cans of pure strain open pollinated seeds. I am saving them for such time in the future when I can grow my food inside sealed greenhouses, as I think that might be the only way to do it, even then it will be iffy.
...you stupid piece of shit...open your eyes and realize there are other people in the world besides you and your apparent self-hate. It's people like you that cause the sadness and hate and ugliness, not those that may have an affliction that they're dealing with, they're just looking for ways to be happy. All you can do is make life a little dark, hateful, and more negative.
I applaud all those in this post who have come forward with personal stories and have supported the guy in the original post that just wanted a little help from a group of peers that he respects. It's sad to see evidence of exactly the kind of thing I was afraid that I would ready when I clicked "Read more..."
...and Benzapp, no, i have no mental illness or record of it in my family, but I guess you probably wont care. Go to hell, there's plenty of negativity down there for you.
--J
PS: and no, i wouldnt stop with this post, i'd love to whip your stupid ass any day of the week...show you what pain is. Mod this down if you want, I really dont care, this is for two people only.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
I haven't posted in so long that I've actually forgotten my own password, but there's a couple things you should do here:
One: Understand the disease.
The Schizophrenia Society of Canada (http://www.schizophrenia.ca/) was good to my family in this respect.
The disease itself is a good deal more complicated than even the best descriptions you've seen here would indicate. The 'Positive' symptoms of the disease (hallucinations, delusions, etc.) are the most easily understood and controlled, but there are a host of 'Negative' symptoms (apathy, emotional withdrawal, impaired concentration, etc.) that are harder to recognize and treat. As others have suggested, the DSM is a good starting point, but talking to a qualified doctor about the latest research is just as important.
Two: Understand the treatment(s).
This is crucial. In North American society, we're raised to trust doctors implicitly. In most circumstances, this will serve you well. With mental illnesses though, many doctors are simply not aware of the most effective treatments.
There are two aspects to understanding treatments for schizophrenia:
First, you should educate yourself about the latest medications available. Compared to the older generation of drugs like Haldol (Haloperidol), newer drugs like Risperdal (Risperidone) are godsends (my oldest brother takes Risperidone now, but his doctor started him on Haldol). The difference between the two classes of drugs cannot be overstarted. While Haldol is still appropriate in some cases, the new drugs are vastly superior, with fewer and less severe side-effects, and some efficacy in treating the insidious 'Negative' symptoms. There are even drugs that are just becoming available that are superior to Risperidone (my brother's doctor is suggesting a switch). So in short, be vigilant. Examine all the available information about any medication that your sister will receive. I leave it to your judgment as to how much to share with your sister, but my brother finds it much easier to stay on his meds when he is provided with full information from a trusted source (many doctors are not used to providing the kind of information about drugs they prescribe to ease a mind that is inclined to paranoia). Provided you take due care, you can be such a source for you sister.
The second aspect to understanding treatments for schizophrenia is vigilance with regard to other medications. Many 'safe' medications are only appropriate for those with normal chemical levels in their brains. By way of an example, my brother was prescribed Accutane by a well-meaning doctor, who was unaware of it's side-effects on the brain. My brother was well on his way to a second complete breakdown when my family spotted a newspaper article warning that Accutane should not be taken by anyone with a history of depression or psychosis. Many common medications have these same problems, and it is incumbent on you to ensure that your sister doesn't receive anything that may not be appropriate. Again, it would be a great idea to make sure your sister knows this, and is vigilant herself.
Schizophrenia can be a beast of a disease man, as I'm sure you'll discover through your research, but it can be treated, often returning sufferers to states that their family and friends barely remember after years of undiagnosed symptoms. Good luck.
Cheers,
Kreiger
weird cant seem to edit the post. Well the title should offcourse be "my girlfriend".
Because, in addition to being legal experts and marketing geniuses, we're all also highly qualified psychologists and medical doctors.
If he takes slashdot anecdotes and advice as final medical advice he's a fool. I'm sure he's not.
Have you seen what some of the supposed "highly qualified psychologists and medical doctors" advise though? You absolutely can't rely on this without multiple opinions. I've had almost uniformly bad experiences with doctors (and no I'm not in a true 3rd world country though it feels like one sometimes. I live in Sydney, Australia).
I've seen a specialist advise my girlfriend to keep taking a medication that was treating some drowsiness/and very mild cataplexy and some headache, but causing seizures twice a day. He's obviously never experienced a seizure himself. (She's off the medication now. It was quite literally killing her, not to mention completely saping her personality and turning her into a bed-ridden zombie). Mind you the specialists didn't work out that it was the meds causing the seizures. No I had to research it and work it out. They hadn't even mentioned it could be the cause despite contraindications (this is anafranil/clompriamine and she had had a brain tumour removed - she should never have been on the stuff and alarm bells should have been ringing)
She's also repeatedly had operations to fix a shoulder that dislocates at the drop of a hat - trouble is its an posterior dislocation and they keep fucking doing operations to fix a (more usual) anterior one. She's also been turned away from an emergency room after waiting over 24 hours with a dislocated shoulder. She was told that it simply wasn't dislocated and treated like a basket case. Funny that the next hospital she went to was able to relocate the shoulder.
Make no mistake, medicine as it is practiced these days is no science. Multiple opinions and lots of research are your best options. Never do anything without a qualified opinion, but always be wary against poor medical advice. Sadly some of the most respected "experts" are nothing but educated money grubbing idiots.
As for whether slashdot is the right forum I agree this is a strange post to put here. Usenet would be a better place. Lots of support groups operate there. I commend this guy on caring about his sister as much as he obviously does.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The most important thing is to get the mentally ill person to accept this fact him-/herself. Most patients still insist that they are not ill, but everybody else is. There is no way of having a good relationship (neither doctors nor friends) to someone who is suspecting lies and danger everywhere. Certain drugs might help to start this process of understanding the disease.
After accepting the disease he/she will probably be "compliant" (take drugs regularly) which should help a lot for living a nearly normal life. But - as shown in A beautiful mind the patient should still be controlled from time to time because many of the stop taking medication because of the sometimes severe side effects.
first let me say that i am *not* a doctor - and i have not *read* much on the topic. but, i have experienced this disease via proxy. there are a couple points i want to make which i believe fully - but will also accept solid critisism of (like i said, im not an expert at all).
.. loose? but keep in mind that mental illnesss is also enviromental - it can be caused (or inflamed). i dont think, however - that schizophenia can be caused - it has to be there - dormant - first.
first of all - schizophenia is sort of an umbrella statement. this disease takes many forms and the use of this word is almost generic (saying "cancer" might be a good example)
second - *i* view schizophenia as something one is born with, but dormant untill some tramatic experience unleashes it. one might suffer from another mild/severe illnesses (manic / bi-polar / hoarding / etc) which may or may not need treatment but otherwise live a long life never having "exposed" schizophenia.
third - it is genetic as so much as mental illness is genetic. but clearly not similar to passing a "albino" gene - its much more
fourth - modern medicine treats the *symptoms*. that is to say that it makes schizophenia easier to deal with for the people *around* the subject. it supresses it - but does not cure it.
fifth - its important for you to put yourself in their perspective. thats not to say "pretend your mentally ill" but rather "pretend everyone around you has been told that you are". furthermore - understand that they may very well feel uncomfortable with the idea that they "have to take medication to be normal". this alone is a very ugly concept for anyone. let them know that you love and care for them regardless - unconditionally.
there is a sixth point i wanted to mention - a doctor whos been doing work recently but im unable to locate his name - i will post a followup later on this person.
A week after his meds ran out, he was threatening his neighbors with a large knife.
The Porterville police officers confronted him, and his response was to lunge. Their response was to put seventeen bullets into him.
If I had more time, I would point out that it is a bad idea to arm only one side of a conflict - because then the other side has no incentive to enact restraint.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
I continue to be impressed by the level of intellegent and thoughtful responses on Slashdot. I also find a fair amount of borish and careless posts as well.
In the case of this thread, I'm dissapointed by the number of responses that go something like "dude, not the right forum", and then offer no advice or insights whatsoever. Don't you think the author was aware of where they were posting? Is there such limited bandwidth and topical real estate that there's no room for any discussions other than those on tech/programming? Really, is there a trend of increasingly off-topic threads? I don't see it. And while I may not post much, Slashdot has been part of my daily reading for quite some time.
I prefer to see Slashdot as a community of people, not just a forum for programmers. Maybe it's just me, but shutting down a help seeker, on technical grounds, comes off very un-samaritan. If you haven't any help for people seeking it, fine. Move on to another article.
As for the current topic: I know about a dozen people who have been diagnosed with at least one mental disorder/disease. Several of these aquantances and friends have been institutionalized. I'll echo what has been posted earlier that taking the meds is an important part of recovery and treatment, especially for manics who definitely feel that they don't need them anymore. I've seen a couple people take the less traditional track of spiritually based treaments as well: meditation, chi balancing, certain types of yoga, breathing, etc. They have had marvelous results with these treatments, but included the medications in tandem.
I would beware of any treatment program that does not include medications. I also encourage an openess towards non-traditional treatments, which I believe can multiply the results given from chemicals alone. Whichever type(s) of treatment one receives, two things will augment any program's success, love and understanding.
-d
damaged by dogma
It is ironic because by posting an article about Schizophrenia, one can infer that Slashdot is not afflicted by this illness. Why can one infer that? Because people who have this illness do not recognize that fact and (arguably) believe that they are perfectly normal living in a world that's out to get them.
(Yes, I know that this is just one type of it. The point still stands.)
It's a hard subject to give advice about, but I hope this at least does no harm.
Some universities and medical schools have simulators, mostly designed to teach health care personnel a little about what Schizophrenia 'feels' like, and using one may help you or others in your family understand a little of what the patient is going through. They consist of short video and audio tracks and often computer systems to select and mix them. I was lucky enough to get to sample one. In particular, the effect of hearing voices is supposed to be very close to the experience of an auditory sufferer, with not just voices but many sounds, ranging from the threshold of audability and often hard to distinguish from a normal person's interior monolog to sounds so loud they cannot but be terribly destracting, coming from all sorts of odd directions and at all sorts of random intervals.
Also, for what it's worth, there's what sounds to me to be a good arguement about the problems with watching lots of television, which suggests Schizophrenia is a disease where you definitely don't want to use TV as a babysitter. Many TV shows will show persons talking at a distance, and use mikes to let the viewer hear what they are saying from farther away than would be possible in the real world. This seems to be too similar to delusional states where people claim to hear other people talking about them at similarly exceptional distances, and is often poorly processed by Schizophrenics with such delusions or potential to develop them.
Who is John Cabal?
The consequences to the life of the child if the parent loses control of their illness are much too severe. Even if they keep the illness mostly under control, the occasional slips can do far more emotional damage to a child than to an adult. No child should ever have to go through what I did.
You cannot help her, no matter how much you may wish to, if she will not first help herself. She does that by taking her meds, seeing the doctor, and going to the therapist.
When things go wonky, and they will, she has to go get help. Right then.
The truth hurts, but it's required. Anyone that is more than a passing friend should be told about it (by HER, not YOU) and asked to say something to her if things look "odd".
Never, ever lie to her. Ever. For any reason, about any thing. You can say, "I don't want to say.", but NEVER lie. If you are unsure, make sure she knows you are unsure.
When you can see the "voices" talking, talk to her. Doesn't much matter about what, but don't let the voices go on unchallanged. Tell her to tell the voices to go away, or what ever.
Isolating, or "decompensating", is a danger signal. Don't let her nest about. Get her out and about.
When you see danger signals, tell her.
Always care, but be prepared to refuse to enable her.
Find and join a support group. You'll need it. So will she.
Really, you will have to find your own balance with her. No one here, including people that have this problem, will be able to give you all the right advice. I was married for almost 20 years to my best friend in life. When she got ill, I hung on for another 4 years or so. She would stop taking her meds, go on a "trip" to the ends of the earth, leave the kids at the mall or somewhere, and run up credit card bills that were more than I made in a year with nothing to show for it. She would lose her car, I'd buy another. She'd abandon her clothes, keeping only what she had on her back, I'd buy more. The hospital bills were something fearsome.
After many, many hospitizlations for her, I had to give up, file for divorce, and cut all ties to save my own sanity, life, and living. Suicide was a frequent thought during that bleek, dark, and depressed time. (Thank God for kids, I think it was the only reason I didn't do it.) The week before I filed for divorce it hit me; I can't fix this problem, nothing I do will make it better. I did nothing to cause the problem, nor did she. I have to let go. It is hard, painful, and depressing, but one thing still holds true. You can't help someone else if you can't help yourself first.
Now go find that support group.
Psychology can be the study of behavior.
There is also clinical psychology. After a few years of my parents forcing me to go to various shrinks, my experience with clinical psychologists is that, in general, they are more interested in fashion than they are in the discoveries of their more research-oriented colleagues. This is why there are still Freudian analysts despite the fact that anyone with a vague understanding of logic and reason should be able to see all sorts of holes in Freudian thought, and why many therapists still use hypnosis to find "memories" even though research has shown that with hypnosis you are far more likely to implant a memory than to find a repressed one.
Psychiatrists are physicians who get to decide between pumping you full of mind-altering drugs (again, often according to fashion rather than reason) or tinkering blindly with your brain using techniques they learned from any one of myriad permutations on the "Dr. Phil" theme.
This isn't to say that all shrinks are quacks - after going through about 6 shrinks who didn't know what the hell they were doing, I finally did find one that helped me. You've gotta be careful, though - most psychologists and psychiatrists out there are using therapeutic techniques that were discredited long ago, or will only use their pet technique despite the fact that anyone who claims to study the mind should understand that different people think differently.
I'd like to think that at some point in the future this will go away as shrinks are held professionally accountable for their actions - that would make them care more about actually doing a good job. As it stands now, though, that isn't going to happen because the attitude most folks have (both within and outside of the profession) seems to be that if the patient gets better it is ALWAYS the psych's fault, and if the patient doesn't get better or gets worse it is NEVER the psych's fault.
An attitude which holds them to about the same level of accountability as faith healers, don't ya think?
I find Philip K Dick has painted in many of his works a rather accurate portrayal of schizophrenia, especially since he suffers from a mild form of it. Though he is a science fiction writer, I doubt there is anyone who cannot connect in some form to his often startlingly accurate portrayals of our modern, commercialized times and the stresses it puts upon the everyday man.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Maybe it isn't helping you, but it helps many others. And it helped me.
I suffered from schizophrenic type symptoms in early high school. I heard voices tell me to do things and all that jazz. I was utterly confused about reality; sometimes I would have to leave class balling crying because I was so confused. I thought people were talking to me subliminally, and heard other voices too. It really wrecked my life. My deliverance from all that crap was nearly instantaneous the summer of my sophomore year, and it happened when I placed faith in Jesus Christ and prayed to Him to be my Savior. That instant I knew that I was healed. It gave me an anchor of reality, of absolute Truth in a world of relative thought and morality, which allowed me to determine truth from fiction and "real" reality from inner thoughts or temptations. As I read His words and submitted to the Creator'sworldview, I was delivered more and more.
For some prayer may not work, especially when not combined with faith (which is deeper them simple intellectual belief, it goes one's core and effects their actions and morals). For some it may not work because God doesn't will it to work for whatever good reason He may have. Sometimes medicine is the only way to find relief. But for many, prayer has worked and continues to. Prayer has helped me in so many ways it isn't funny.
I also used to speak with such a terrible stutter (later on in high school, after becoming a Christian) that I could not even read to my classmates in school. After praying as directed by Philippians 4:4-9 (which is a verse I'd found in the new testament of the Bible) for a few weeks I was able to give my testimony and share my faith at a home for troubled boys and girls in front of 400 people. It went off without even a hint of stuttering. I was amazed. That night several other people decided who the Answer to their problems was and began to be transformed by Christ. And one I have kept up with to this day continues to find help and comfort through faith and prayer.
Prayer works. I'm 25 now and I have many personal experiences proving it through and through to me, as do many friends of mine and family members dealing with everything from depression to addiction. All I can say is it works for me, and many others.
And so I'll pray for you, that one day you might have a more open mind and more freedom of thought then you've shown in this thread.
Jay
I was just recently thinking of posting to ask Slashdot with the following question.
I have a friend who exhibits signs of paranoid schizophrenia. He is receiving disability and living in a section 8 housing unit.
I'm not sure if he is actually schizophrenic. He has been living in houses for mentally disabled people or juvenile offenders, since he was 13 or 14(when his parents divorced). I think anyone would have some kind of F'd up understanding of the world from that kind of upbringing.
Anyway, he is paranoid somewhat, thinks people are always talking about him, and he has some weird beliefs. He doesn't seem to hear any voices or think people can read his mind though.
The question is: Is it safe for him to go on the internet unsupervised?
He doesn't have a job or any hobbies, so he really needs something to do. He doesn't have any friends besides me and his brother and we can only see him once a week at most.
Some Psychologist declared him financially responsible enough to receive his own checks, so he can do whatever he wants, on his own.
I know he would like having games, music, movies and other stuff available for free on the internet, but he can't really be expected to make rational or logical decisions about what to believe. Does a person like this belong on the internet?
He really liked the web chat on his mobile phone, but he ended up paying over $100 for his phone bill. Would it be appropriate to turn him loose on IRC?
Is it a question of internet censorship, or protecting people with disabilities?
How would you handle this situation?
Since I was 21 to 26, I had several crisis of schyzophrenia. They lasted from three days to several months. I am fine since august 2003, knowing that it can happen again. First of all, let's give an exemple. I remember one of my first schyzo experience which occured while watching a movie. I hearded voices (which is a quite usual in our case), actors in the movie speaking of me. What could I do? I hearded those voices and they were as real as the sounds of the street outside. So I interpreted them, trying to give to it a meaning, the same way anyone naturraly gives a meaning to things he feels, heards in the every day life. The interpretation which occured was of course completely insane (I am the last inherited of a great secret family, etc, etc...). Knowing the disease and reckognizing to be sick, this interpretations movements are more limited, but the exaltaion it provocked is substitude by the presence of the insanity, and a huge feel of impotence. This exemple (excuse my poor english as i am french) may help you to understand your sister. Even if the process an the symptoms of this disease are very different from a patient to another, and that my case can not be generalized. Let's talk more generrally, and trying to give advices. During crisis itself. Not a lot to do: being patient, stand the fact schyzo is in another world (of suffer and nightmare, with need of exaltation that I personnaly felt as a sort of atenuation). How did crisis ended in my case? First time, a good sleep of 24 hours. Some times neuroleptics. last time change of place of living (in august it finally ended while i followed my mother in hollydays and went to a different city, with other people than usually in my home, in another house). About medecines. neuroleptics are the only sort od medic known. Its effect is quite easy to explain: it blocks the neurotransmettor (which are in charge of the communication between nerves). The problem with it is that if it is usefull to stop delirium, it makes the patient vegetative. If your psy is ok to give neuro limited times (to stop crisis, and a little while after the crisis ended), it's good. But most of them give neuro for very very long times, even where ther is no more symptoms, in a preventive purpose. In my opinion, this is no good. Even if a patient out of crisis and taking neuroleptics gives illusion of normality, it is fake, because every simplest thing of the every day life becomes very hard to do. Your brain is attached. Watching a movie becomes complicated, cutting the grass is hard. Neuroleptics are a big issue when speaking about schyzo. How did crisis occured. The first time, it began like a romantic delirium. But the disease well established, I think stressfull experiences provocked the crisis. A last thing: how the disease influenced my life. I could speak about how I lead my life so as the disease wont hurt me again, may be another time if what i said this time is helpfull. It is very simple, it breaks it. It is true that even before the disease people used to say of me I was a little different one. But, being more lonely than others doesn't make schyzophrenia. I lost friends, jobs, failed in my studies. My family helped, and at the bottom of the hole it was my only sociabilisation. You have to know it is a long and difficult experience as well for the familly than for the patient. But progress have been made: 50 years ago, it was still a disease with no hope of remission, know, some time you can cure. Hope it helped you a little. Pierre
The causes of schizophrenia are not very well understood at all. Rather than classifying it as a "brain disease" (suggesting some sort of biological/genetic cause), I would say merely that it is a mental illness the causes of which are simply not well understood. There are various theories suggesting biological, neurological, genetic, familial, or even environmental causes, but suggesting that any one study is more or less convincing than another is inappropriate at this point in my opinion.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
when i was arrested last summer for violent behavior when i stopped taking my meds, i got into an argument with the psych assessment officer that bipolars don't hallucinate. he said, "i've been dealing with the mentally ill for forty years, and only schizophrenics hallucinate." i didn't back down, and won't. i know better from first-hand experience.
........... kris
i have severe bipolar II, and for years before I was diagnosed and treated with meds I hallucinated like a son-of-a-bitch. people, voices, psychedelic imagery, the whole nine yards. the myth that only schizophrenics hallucinate is simply that, a myth.
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
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. 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.
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 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, 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
Request your free CD of my piano music.
bad advice.
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.
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
When my family situation had degenerated to the point that my father was considering divorce, he made one last effort to get my mother to go to a doctor for treatment. She went for one session and refused to go back. My father went back several times however, to consult with the doctor about what to do. He still loved my mother, and did not want to abandon her, but he could see she was ruining his and my lives.
The doctor told him two things:
1) By staying with her and supporting her, he was continuing to allow her to destroy his and my lives.
2) By staying with her and supporting her, he was enabling her to continue to refuse treatment, because she could (and increasingly did) just hole up in the house and wallow in her delusions instead of having to confront any reality. Divorcing her might feel like abandonment, but it was also a last method of forcing her to deal with the world, which could potentially result in her seeking treatment as a way of enabling herself to get work.
Ultimately in her case it didn't work, but the doctor was right - if my father had continued to support her, she would have just stayed home and deteriorated. Indeed, even after the divorce, she took the money she got from him in the divorce and just lived on it until either it ran out or she lost it (hard to say which, she tended to lose large amounts of money) before she made any effort to find work or deal with reality outside the home she rented. Even going to the supermarket to get herself food was a reluctant duty, and she tried to get me to do her shopping for her.
So, it was "keep her home and she'll just get worse and worse for sure, or push her out and maybe she'll have some small chance." My father chose the one course of action that gave all of us a chance. I know it was very painful to him, I know it was even more painful to her, but at least it wasn't a guaranteed failure like just supporting her at home would have been.
I would guess that is how we wound up with religion. Its kind of odd that most great religious leaders, founders, and followers could easily fit the schizophrenic mold in modern society. Actually, the really "gifted" scientific and religious gurus seem to be on that borderline threshold to the point of falling over the edge. Staying up working on a scientific theory for 4 days staight with hardly no sleep or food; fasting and self-denial in the name of a religious experience. These are hardly "normal" behaviors. They are examples of "focused" mania. Its the "uncontrolled" mania that places the label of "psychosis" on an indiviual. Perhaps it is just genius that has no direction.
Simultaneously the most and least appropriate thing to say. I hope hell is fun for you, I may see you there.
Why is anything anything?
I suggest you read the medical literature. Specifically, you should read Lancet, the New England Journal of Medecine, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and the Journal of Neurochemistry.
Yes, there are plenty of nuts on the Internet suggesting a link between aspartame and cancer, alzheimers, "Gulf War Syndrome", etc.. I'm not one of them.
Here are some reputable journal cites.
I'd be happy to examine any contradictory peer reviewed journal published papers you care to cite in return.
Thanks.
Aspartame. Review of safety issues. Council on Scientific Affairs. Journal of the American Medical Association. Vol. 254 No. 3, July 19, 1985
Department of Health and Human Services. Quarterly Report on Adverse Reactions Associated with Aspartame Ingestion. DHHS, Washington, DC, Oct. 1, 1986.
Johns, D. R. Migraine provoked by aspartame. N. Engl. J. Med. 315-456 (1986)
Drake, M.E. Panic attacks and excessive aspartame ingestion. Lancetii: 631 (1986)
Yokogoshi, H., Roberts, C. H., Caballero, B., and Wurtman, R.J. Effects of aspartame and glucose administration on brain and plasma levels of large neutral amino acids and brain 5-hydroxyindoles. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 40: 1-7 (1984).
Fernstrom, J. D., Fernstrom, M. H., and Gillis, M. A. Acute Effects of aspartame on large neutral amino acids and monoamines in rat brain. Life Sci. 32: 1651-1658 (1983).
Stegink, L. D., Filer, L. J., Jr., Baker, G. L., and McDonnell, J. E. Effect of an abuse dose of aspartame upon plasma and erythrocyte levels of amino acids in phenylketonuric heterozygous and normal adults. J. Nutr. 110: 2216-2224 (1980).
Fernstrom, J. D., and Faller, D. V. Neutral amino acids in the brain: Changes in response to food ingestion. J. Neurochem. 30: 1531-1538 (1978)
Oldendorf, W. H. Brain uptake of radiolabeled amino acids, amines, and hexoses after arterial injection. Am. J. Physiol. 221:1629-1639 (1971).
Milner, J. D., Irie, K., and Wurtman, R. J. Effects of phenylalanine on the release of endogenous dopamine from rat striatal slices. J. Neurochem. 47: 1444-1448 (1986).
Pinto, J. M. B., and Maher, T. J. Aspartame administration potentiates pentylenetetrazole- and fluorothyl-induced seizures in mice. Neuropharmacology, in press.
-- Terry
Thank you. I think you have helped me gain a little more understanding.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
And....the whole topic isn't off kilter? You will be alone in Hell, buddy...I know where I am headed.
I've been diagnosed with
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!
I've often seen disorganised thinking and behavior referred to, but I've never actually seen a definition of what it is. I could be looking in the wrong place, but it seems to be something that everyone's assumed you can understand straight from the words, but I don't. What are they?
Look out!
How will I be alone? The 'you' in my post was the parent, the AC who posted the joke. I said he was going to hell and I may join him since I found it funny. I also found it funny that you didn't get it. I would have thought you'd hear that sort of joke all the time.
Why is anything anything?
No, I don't really get that many jokes about it, and I thought you were refering to me as the person going to Hell.....Please pardon me, but I'm a bit paranoid at times.
Now that's funny! Really I don't mean to offend, I also laugh at jokes at my own expense (not that that's an excuse, but at least it avoids hypocrisy). I have no reason to think you'll be going to Hell with us, but I hear it has all the best musicians so you might look into it as an option.
Why is anything anything?
Do a Google search on "synthetic telepathy." This is a directed-energy weapon that uses microwaves in the 1.3GHz range to stimulate the auditory neurons in the brain. When the microwave's duty cycle is correctly modulated, the target will "hear" your voice in their head without any receiving equipment whatsoever.
I have schizophrenia which was diagnossed in 1997, actually schizoaffective which is schizophrenia and bypolar mixed together. Family members have told me that the symptons date back to when I was a child and especially mannifested when I got into my teens with some pretty close calls when it came to maintaining my life. I'm 24 now, the decease is still running strong but I am currently hacking my way through University and living on my own. The reason for my success would be caring family and having a strong support network to fall on when I get sick. My family has found going to schizophrenic society meetings benificial and taking on a role there. I do not personally go to the meetings, though my parents feel much better after these meetings and overall are a positive experience for them. Self Mutalation has been a major problem for myself, actually I burned myself just three days ago. I just take things one day at a time, think positive, and I mean positive. Anything that bothers me I focus on a positive aspect of it, and if there is no aparent positive then I make one. This focusing on positive points really helps, when I start to fall into a mood I often see it coming and try to get out of it, often successfully through medication. Appologies for writing so much, but I will end with my overall thesis that: find positive points to everything focus on those positive things if falling try meditating be careful in the situations you put yourself in if you have a prevailing issue that set's you off then seek councilling for it to avoid future mishaps take your meds! do hourly assesments on the state of your mind; or whatever timiing you think would be good, this is very valuable as you can catch problems before they start. I say this as a treated schizophrenic that is fairly functional 80% of the time, with prevailing things that I know are not real but cannot handle. Just remember when talking to someone with schizophrenia that they do not always see reality, things may be different for what they see, as much as I tell myself, you cannot read my mind, but when I'm talking to people I'm constantly censoring my thoughts as most of the time I think that the person I'm talking to is reading my thoughts, that's just one example, and I am 7 years treated with working medication, it's a long battle, be strong, do not be a stastitic.
Vitamin B-3, and the other B vitamins are supposed to help some people with schizophrenia. You can try a google search (try schizophrenia b vitamins) for some overblown claims about it's effectiveness, and some ideas on a dose level, but it seems that it may have some efficacy. Plus, vitamins are relatively inexpensive and easy to get as well. So that could be worth a shot.
what sig?
Schizophrenia has affected my life profoundly, as my wife has it, and my job (psychiatric tech.) deals with it. I knew nothing about mental health at the time my wife had her first break, and it was frightenning and heart-wrenching for both of us. With regular medication and psychiatric evaluation, a more normal life is possible - so there is hope. I became a psych-tech in the last few years.
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.
Check the timestamps:
Mad_Rain on Friday May 21, @09:55AM
Uber Banker on Friday May 21, @12:06PM
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Good luck Deli-x, there's forgiving, and then there is giving-a-wide-berth due to it being a waste of your valuable time.
:-)
With all the skewed and arrogant views out there like this it leaves little wonder why society is such a malevolent place.
It's good to see someone has picked their jigsaw puzzle up and re-assembled it into a normal life, it makes for a change for the better to all the sad stories i hear out there. The latest one i heard of was one of my mates being stabbed by his wife, who had stopped taking her anti-depressive meds and went, well, nuts. There's a court case coming up soon and i suspect diminished responsibility and so forth will have her walk outta there. But he's divorcing her anyhow, and i dont blame him for it, she just refuses to take her medication.
Anyway, i digress. Glad to hear that you've fought your demons and won, congrats on being a dad too
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
i recomend this aritcle for info about a similar (though not identical) disorder
I'll agree with you though on the commonness(sp),
When i first saw the subject i thought "a couple hundred responses, most likely stupid shit responses to a genuine question."
I am honestly suprised and a little shocked at the response that includes "it happened to me too!" responses. Im kind of stuck between "wow" and "i had no idea that society had malignment issues of this proportion".
Good luck to the people with the problems, and their family.
And as a sig or three i have seen have said "I don't suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
Disorganized behavior is pretty easy to recognize - like hoarding junk mail, and not being able to throw it out, to the point that the pile covers your bed, and you're unable to use it. (true story, one schizophrenic patient I saw was evicted from their apartment because it was a health hazard, despite their physical abilty to get rid of the mail and clean up...) You can see some other examples in the stereotyped "crazy homeless person" - having a routine that has no discernable purpose.
Disorganized thought is easy to spot, hard to describe. If someone would talk "gibberish" to you - that's kind of what it's like.
If you really want to see it though, there are a variety of places that you can volunteer at, and I'm sure they'd appreciate your help.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
You know, you're absolutely right. I anticipated, somewhat cynically, that the majority of highly moderated responses would revolve around misinformed remarks about mental illness in general. I have been pleasantly surprised by the majority of responses. Thanks for being an optimist.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
my sister was diagnosed with schizophrenia 13 years ago. She's now 32 (i'm 29). It has been a tough ride, lots of ups and downs. The problem we are dealing with is the incompetency of the state system and it's doctors, couple with the fact that one medication may work, then the body/brain gets used to it, and it is no longer effective.
Keep records of what has been tried and what hasn't worked and what did work, because you will undoubtedly be dealing with this illness for a long time. It helps to give the new doctors a history, so they don't start from square one again.
she is doing well now on her current medication (I wish i knew what it was besides Zyprexa), but occassionally she still gets these crazy ideas, like the other day she told me a childhood friend of hers is going to buy her a house. Someone she hasn't seen or spoke with in at least 10 years. I told her the only way she was getting a house is if mom and dad buy it, or if i become rich and buy her one. She did start to realize the absurdity of her thoughts, which is a good sign, because for a long time there, she couldn't distinguish between reality and abnormal thoughts in her head.
The worst time for her was when she was hearing voices. Hopefully, your sister is young, and they can get her on the right medications before things start to deteriorate. Also, if she's on a good medical plan now (like Kaiser), DON'T EVER LEAVE IT - find a way to pay the insurance bill. she will never be accepted anywhere again, and be subject to the state healthcare which sucks.
You sound like you come from a good family, this is very important to be active and supportive in her treatment. Join NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill), and take part in their local meetings. They usually have expert doctors speak who know the latest developments with the medications. A lot of the doctors who are out there don't know shit from shinola. Sometimes you have to push them in a certain direction.
I have been looking for some kind of SETI/FOLDING @ HOME type distributed computing projects which address schizophrenia and/or other mental illnesses I can take part in, so far I haven't found any.
They are making great strides in brain research. Just in the last 20 years, they've come a long way. The medication will only get better and better. SO there is hope.
Make sure the doctor tapers off a medication when ending one, and introducing a new one. We had a problem last year where the doctor outright stopped one of her medications one day, while introducing Abilify (Abilify is the latest med, that is normally supposed to yield amazing results) (Geodon is another good one), and it has taken over a year for her to recover from this stupid mistake by the doctor.
I also have been diagnosed by my doctor as schizophrenia when I experience somewhat similar symptoms of depression and paranoia (without the hallucinations). I'm taking a small dosage of Geodon which they claim has kept me in a healthy state of mind for the last year or two. I tried to talk with my phsyciatrist about whether or not I was really schizophrenia, and if I could go off it. But his response was pretty much once you have it, you are stuck (I think he's more concerned legally than anything). They are usually pretty scared to remove any medication if there's nothing apparently wrong. I was mainly concerned with the diagnose, because now i'm stuck paying the medical bill. I can't take the company plan, because if i loose my job, i will never get on another plan again, unless it's with a company. I still concider myself lucky to be with Kaiser. They are great.
If you want to talk further, send me an email:
motiv8x@yahoo.com
The Tyro: ...]
[... bipolar stuff
> (manics are the most dangerous of all
> psychiatric patients).
As someone with bipolar disorder, I find this offensive.
A good place to get solid information on bipolar disorder is: http://www.dbsalliance.org/ the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance
Jim Buchanan
If I had the time :) Maybe over the summer/christmas holidays (which occur at the same time here).
Look out!
She also believes that this special controlling entity is one being but also at the same time three beings. At some point, each of the three beings that are actually one may have taken human form, for one purpose or another. One of the three is supposed to have raped a woman once and left her pregnant. Another is supposed to have been tortured horribly and killed, and this is supposed to have served some very important purpose. The third part of this controlling being is supposed to have entered either every person, or alternately every person that believes in one or both of the others. She is not very clear on this.
She believes that this being (or these beings) created us and everything else, and that they take a special interest in our progress. Occasionally, they make magical things happen, mostly having to do with liquids and fish for some reason, though apparently bread is also involved at times.
She thinks that after we die we will go to live with these beings in a wonderful, magical place, and that what happens to us depends upon whether we believe in something for which there is no tangible evidence, or whether we do "good" things (though the exact nature of "good" is not entirely clear) or prhaps both. She thinks that dead people will come up out of the ground and walk, and that this will happen fairly soon.
Apparently, many people share her views. So many, in fact, that they form a significant enough block to vote to keep this whole business out of the DSM IV, and even to start wars in which people who believe in slightly different magical beings are hacked horribly to death.
The name she gives the people who share her beliefs is "christian", after the one of the magical beings who was hideously butchered for some reason.
If I could stop the screaming inside my head long enough, I might be able to use my M.D. to figure out the difference between a "christian" and a "schizophrenic".
Please, you awful bloody monsters, stop this hideous, widespread, pathological thinking before you destroy this planet and everything on it with your insanity.
Oops, too late.
Daina
I used to be bipolar, particularly very manic. I was the happiest person you ever met, which is why no one ever assumed there was a problem.
Through medication and self evaluation, I have returned to "normal". That is the most important part to remember. You CAN return to "normal". It's not an end-all. I have now been off of all medication for a year and a half, and I'm doing fine.
Sig.i>
The DSM-IV changed the criteria because it became accepted that bipolars hallucinate - but only while in extreme states of mood disturbance.
The DSM-IV distinguishes schizoaffective disorder from bipolar affective disorder according to when the hallucinations or paranoia happen: in schizoaffectives, these occur in the absence of mood symptoms.
I can get paranoid or hallucinate while my mood is otherwise normal, so I think that my diagnosis is still correct.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
If you havent got anything usefull to say about what I wrote, please dont say anything than. I think the above reaction is very childish. I leave it with that.
-
My Name is Michael, and I am an Ignorant Fool
Just posted to my kuro5hin diary.-- Mike
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I would highly recommend reading "Human Givens" by Joe Griffin & Ivan Tyrrell. It is an excellent way to gain an understanding about why psychosis happens and given an introduction to the human givens based therapy which is claimed to be effective.
Also see http://www.humangivens.co.uk/ for other info.
Your post is one of the many compilations of misapplied anecdotes on this topic vitriolically recited in complete ignorance. As much as I would like to address everyone, I don't have all day.
A) Are you suggesting that since homosexuality was considered a disorder until over 30 years ago, schizophrenia may not be a disorder, or are you more specifically referring to its Axis I status? The post to which you are replying did not acurately describe the difference between Axis I (clinical disorders) and Axis II (personality disorders and mental retardation). Regardless, the old idea of homosexuality is not indicative of the trustworthiness of the DSM. If you're going to knock the DSM, the least you could do is argue dimensional over categorical diagnoses.
B) You don't seem to understand the difference between psychology and psychiatry, and between different fields of psychology. There are many hard facts in psychology, revealed by extensive experimentation and research. I personally wish there were more when it comes to therapy other than cognitive-behavioral, but there are still a good deal. You say "fluff is the norm," but you don't seem to have any understanding of the field other than a couple of events.
C) Regarding agoraphobia: (1) If drugs are prescribed, the doctor is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, (2) Only a psychoanalyst (rare) will do psychoanalysis, which is extremely expensive and time-consuming, and would not address the presenting problem for years, (3) The known treatment for Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is usually effective with 6-12 sessions, and has shown better long term results without medication, so the client should have seen a CBT therapist instead of either a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst. (4) Don't read any 'testimonial' books, ever. They are anecdotal rather than statistical. 'Overcoming the fear' might mean graduated exposure or 'immersion therapy,' the first of which is appropriate for some clients, and the latter of which usually traumatizes the clients.
D) It's not important when was the last time I heard of a single person doing anything. I read peer-reviewed research articles for my information. If you want fewer people on medication, tell your congressmen that you want more psychologists on hospital boards instead of medical doctors. Tell your insurance companies that 12 sessions of therapy isn't enough, and that more therapy will reduce long term costs by reducing drug prescriptions.
InstantCrisis
A woman goes to the doctor and tells him she is convinced she is dead. Doctor says, "But you are talking with me, if you were dead you wouldn't be able to do that would you?" She says, "I'm very sure I am dead." So the doctor says, "let me see your finger." He stabs it with a needle and says, "see, you are beeding." Woman responds, "I'll be damned, dead people do bleed!"
Moral of the story... People with an altered mental status don't always play by the same rules that the rest of the world play by.
Math is like sex. People who get it are popular in class, people who don't are not.
Just because you need it, doesn't mean that I have to pay for it. Just because you're a poor student, doesn't mean that I have to give a shit about you. I was a poor student once, we all dealt with it - double up on housing, get a JOB, do something.
Fuck you, communist. Your ends do not justify seizure of my means.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Thank you for doing your part to ensure the continuing sexist atmosphere at Slashdot.
You cannot help her if she will not first help herself.
Now repeat after me: You cannot help her if she will not first help herself.
My mom has it, and while she wasnt under medication, she was afraid of anything related with hospitals, no matter what. More than once I suggested her to get some help (when she didn't knew about that illness), but always refused to get to hospitals or to see any docs.
Another point, if she says something thats wrong, do NOT say she's wrong. Saying she's wrong is like saying to an alcoholic that he's alcoholic. The best you can do in this case is to ackownledge (sp?) what she said and to not pay attention to that nonsense.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
Thats the first time I read something from an AC which is intelligent, respectful (is that a word?) and neutral. Great comment.
Altho I disagree with your point. Schizophrenia can be developped on people with families not having any relations with that ill (aka hereditary), and has more chances developping on people locking themselves at home with no social life. Just like some geeks may do. So i see that "Ask slashdot" question as well-placed.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
In my province (Quebec, Canada), the law says that a person may be forced to see a doctor if (s)he's dangerous (may hurt - kill) against other people or herself.
It doesnt matter is that person doesnt clean up his/her room. Doesnt matter is [s]he says anything that doesnt make sense at all. But once you're aware that person is hurting herself, seek a local lawyer if any laws like this one may force that person to see a doc.
Example, a schizo. person said to me "i was fixing those x-mas decorations on the top of the tree then **someone** came and pushed me and I fell on the ground"
other examples, from what I saw from a schizo person:
- Cutting power cables from radios. Seems simple, but what if the cables were still plugged??
- Cracks in the glass. One time i visited that person and I noticed there was a new crack in the glass of the window. Maybe she did it with her fist, maybe not.
- Food: seems that alot of schizo person thinks that some food is poisonous, then remove that food from what [s]he can eat. If kept not medicated, that person will have real troubles eating.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
I have a friend whom I have known since High School days, who is Schizophrenic. She developed symptoms in her early twenties, She also suffers from Bipolar disorder. When she takes her medication she realises something is wrong and has described the effect as "Slowing down my thoughts" She says when she is symptomatic, she believes the unbelievable and disbelieves the believable, she has a fuzzy perception of realty, and feels that she can or cannot change something that is happening to her, e.g. She says her feet talk to her while she walks and say bad things about her, This she cannot change, but sometimes she says she can seperate herself from things happening to her and be unemotional about things which would normally elicit an emotional response. On the Bipolar side she hates the mania, however when she is manic she feels good, does not realise anything is wrong, and feels as if she could keep going for days and days, and is proud of all she can accomplish while manic. Hoowever she feels the mania is worse then the depression in relation to the Bipolar, Because she is dillusional, The Schizophrenia is freightening to her because she has no control over what she can and cannot believe...some self doubt, but she has also described it as being taken out of her body and observing her life a if it were a "B" Movie...The emotional detatchment has probably been the most trying for her friends and family, especially the ones who knew her before she became symptomatic, When she is unmedicated it is as if she is a different person. If you are concerned I would strongly advise talking to a professional, there are several non-profit suport groups such a NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) which can provide assistance to both the patient and family members on what to expect. I hope this has been of some assistance to you
Keith
See this NPR link from awhile back. http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/aug/ schizophrenia/ Janssen Pharmaceuticals helped develop the .ram (they make Risperdal, an antipsychotic), but it's fairly accurate (the kind of paranoid thoughts portrayed occur in many non-medication related situations).
Best of luck to her, hopefully it's an episode rather than full blown schizophrenia.
You forgot www.m-w.com:
One entry found for agnostic.
Main Entry: 1agnostic
: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and prob. unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
Read the first definition. That's what I said.
http://xkcd.com/386/
First, let me say that I'm not a good choice to talk about the details of what I'm about to mention - I'm an engineer, but my father is a member of the Association for Behavior Analysis (abainternationl.org) and a bunch of related stuff.
Second, I'm not trying to advocate not being medicated. In my opinion there are lots of situations where a medication would be helpful. But in my opinion it's never true that changing your behavior and situation is not ALSO important.
Principly I'm just trying to recommend looking into a behavioral psychologist to help you out. The are distinctly successful (with data!) in situations where others are not. They've been getting a lot of good press for autism in particular.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
yeah, whatever asshat.
schizophrenia has nothing to do with diet, it has to do with a chemical inbalance in the brain.
The only thing that diet is good for is in avoiding cancer and improving mood, not psychosis.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
And so am I
If the person goes off their meds, you may sometimes have another option: I would assume that pretty much all countries have provision to detain a mentally ill person against their will if their illness is dangerous. In this country the phrasing is "a danger to themselves or others", and it's called "sectioning". Sectioning your friends is about the least fun thing you'll ever do, but it can save their lives.
My closest friend walked out of a mental health ward on a day pass and was never seen again; he almost certainly took his own life that very day, but it's hard to give up hope altogether.
Xenu loves you!
Go and read about the menstrual cycle. It's quite normal and applies to nearly 100% of adult women. It is very difficult for a man to empathise with. The best we can do is read and understand and make allowances.
Stick Men
If you want some insight into mental breakdowns, read the books listed in the section "Understanding Your Inner Self" at the bottom of the article Read the Recent Great Books.
The book, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis
by Arthur Janov is especially helpful.
You might as well be making the argument that Chewbacca was a wookie, and since wookies have nothing to do with this, then aspartame must not affect dopamine.
i ?C MD=search&DB=pubmed
You are arguing anecdotally, citing your own postings.
Redismissing the rampant Internet misinformation does nothing to invalidate anything I've presented, since I'm not parroting the misinformation. In fact, the only one bringing it up is you.
The reason for the age of the journal articles is due to me only doing a cursory search, and then intentionally editing out references which were not directly on point, rather than trying to "throw everything and see what sticks".
Let's get back on point, and fix that omission on my part.
Take one of the metabolic byproducts of aspartame that you admit to, phenylalanine, and do a PubMed search on it and schizophrenia. Here's the URL for the NIH PubMed search engine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcg
Please enter the terms "schizophrenia phenylalanine".
You will get back 258 articles, of which about 17 are relevent to our current discussion. Of those, many demonstrate a positive correlation between phenylalanine and increased symptoms in schizophrenia.
If you are willing to ignore the relevancy scoping I (again) self-imposed, you will also notice that the vast majority of the 258 articles returned indicate dopamine antagonism by phenylalanine.
In fact, if you drop the schizophrenia term, and change the search terms to "dopamine phenylalanine" instead, you will get 7226 results; of the ones that examined any potential correlation, most of them agree with me.
So much for your statement "Aspartame has no effect on the dopamine receptors."
-- Terry
You can't do even the simplest math that would show that phenylalanine levels don't change significantly with aspartame.
Try doing a PubMed search on aspartame and blood levels of phenylalanine. Then actually read the articles instead of their titles.
You have in no way addressed the fact that
a) there's no indication in the literature that aspartame interferes with schizophrenic medications,
b) there's no warning on the medications that aspartame interferes with schizophrenic medications
c) lithium isn't used as an anti-schizophrenic medication (as you claimed)
d) your anecdotal evidence doesn't even make sense.
There's so many misunderstandings on your part that trying to teach you about them would wind up giving you a graduate level biochemistry course or two.
Believe what you want. I don't have the time nor the inclination to educate you.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
I didn't notice you say much about your sister other than the fact she shares my phsycriatric predisposition-Schizophrenia. I won't go into tirades just to use the word HORNY on /. , or go into mindless speculations about "his" diagnosis.
I was first diagnosed with it in 1992. I had all my life suspected there was something different about me. When they first diagnosed me I was vindicated of all my failures as a highschool and college student, and as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army. Yes I had difficulty-I got a GED(90 percentile), I only got 27 credits(after dropping-out my third and final time), I only made it through 18 months(now I'm a Veteran-go figure!) of my three year term in the Airborne. But probably like your sister accomplished some good things(not all bad). I've been in treatment at a state veteran's home for 14 years now and recently went back to school at Veteran's Upward Bound. With the help of Olanzipine I stopped sleeping 18 hours a day and stealing food at night to eat. Your sister is in for alot more of a life yet especially with the new psyche meds,early diagnosis, and someone who cares for her like you do.
If you're not cheating you're not trying.
Before you listen to this guy, keep in mind he is not a doctor. Neither am I, but a friend of mine is schizophrenic, and I do know that schizophrenics sometimes stop taking their medication because, since they feel better on their meds, they deem themselves "cured" and stop taking them. This usually results in major problems because they aren't cured at all. My friend told me that one day he decided he was cured and stopped taking his meds. The next day he was literally ripping open his pillow to find the bugs that the CIA had planted during the night. He said that it was rather difficult to get him back on his meds. While he is on his meds though, he is fine, if a little forgetful.
:/
Marijuana and other drugs exacerbate schizophrenic psychoses. Statistical studies have shown that marijuana use might be linked to the onset of the disease. I'm sure there are few, if any, diagnosed and medicated schizophrenics who smoke marijuana. My friend, who has been on his meds for I think 10 years, and who used to smoke marijuana heavily, tried it again (still on his meds of course) while I was at his house one time. A couple puffs later and there was a man sitting next to us spying on him (there was no one there, and he was saying things out of nowhere "to distract him"). He didn't have that much, and when Star Trek started to send him secret messages he thankfully still had the presence of mind to just go to bed. He hasn't smoked again since then.
By all means question psychiatric philosophy if you want, but don't give out bad advice.
The reason I thought it was rhetorical was because the blood levels were non-zero, after doing the math.
As to your specific points: Correct. However, the literature supports that metabolic byproducts of aspartame do interfere with schizophrenic medication. This is invalid logic; cigarettes didn't have warnings for years, either; did they only become dangerous only after the warnings were affixed? There are plenty of compounds classified as food additives or nutritional suplements that have dire interactions with medications, and which are not listed on the label of those medications.
We can conclude nothing about aspartame from the lack of warnings on medications. Your statement is incorrect. As one example, please see paragrph 3:
NAMI reference on Lithium Carbonate and its use in the treatment of schizophrenia
I understand that my original posting was largely anecdotal, in that it referenced my personal perception of my observation of events which occurred circa 1984 with chronically mentally ill patients in programs involved with Weber County Mental Health, in Ogden Utah.
I'm sorry that it doesn't make sense to you, but I was not posting it for your benefit, I was posting it for the benefit of the lay-person who posted regarding the diagnosis of his sister. For information to be useful, it has to be accessible to its intended audience.
-- Terry
They were non-zero prior to the consumption of aspartame and (except in the case of a phenylketonuric) the consumption of aspartame does not significantly change the baseline levels - even after an extreme consumption. The values seen are within normal physiological variation and well within those caused by other normal foods.
Clearly, you completely missed the point, which is that there's not enough of a change in the blood levels of phenylalanine to cause any effect that would not normally be seen without the consumption of aspartame.
Your statement is incorrect. As one example, please see paragrph 3: NAMI reference on Lithium Carbonate and its use in the treatment of schizophrenia
That's an article for laypeople. What they are actually talking about are the situations where schizophrenia and bipolar disorder exist concomitantly. They are two separate illnesses caused by two separate biochemical mechanisms. Lithium acts because of a defect in a membrane sodium ion channel. Schizophrenia is a collection of illnesses caused by problems with dopamine in the brain - problems that are unrelated to the sodium ion channel involved in bipolar disorder. Now, if some poor sap happens to have both go wrong...I feel sorry for them, and yes, they get lithium, but so would someone with antisocial personality disorder and bipolar. It doesn't mean ASPD is treated with lithium.
If aspartame interfered with lithium (as you claim) the major comment would be that aspartame screws up those being medicated for bipolar disorder. Given that the effective dose of lithium is fairly near a toxic dose, it would be almost impossible to increase the medication (as you claim was done).
With both schizophrenic and bipolar patients, the major problem with medicating the patients is simply getting them to take their medicines reliably. Aspartame consumption is not known to be a problem. My wife began working as a psychologist in 1990. She's worked in emergency psychiatric intake as well as clinical practice during that time. At no time was the consumption of aspartame a problem. Given that aspartame is far more common today than back in 1984, and that you are relaying second-hand information.
Having taught medical professionals how to deal with psychiatric emergencies (from 1987-1996), I also would have come across something like this. My specialty were oddball problems - neuroleptic malignant syndrome, consumption of fermentation products by MAOI patients, etc. I used to search the literature and pick the brains of the psychiatrists, looking for "fasicnomas," which (because they are unusual and thus easily remembered) make it easier to get students to remember the basics.
Aspartame never came up.
I just checked with Poison Control and the on-duty House Officer at the DEC (emergency psych intake facility). Both denied that there was any problem with aspartame and neuroleptic medications.
Call the local psych and poison control facilities in your home town. Pardon me for not listing the numbers of the folks I just called - neither Poison Control nor the DEC are there for public "question and answers." I get away with it because I have friends in both places. I'd like to have them stay friends, which I suspect they wouldn't if they got slashdotted.
I suppose that there could be some giant conspiracy by the makers of aspartame and the pharmaceutical industry to cover up what you claim is an obvious and extreme reaction to aspartame by those on neuroleptics and/or lithium. But frankly, that sounds like something a paranoid schizophrenic would say.
I'm out of here.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Here's a link to an informative video about schizophrenia from the Schizophrenic Society of Canada. http://www.schizophrenia.ca/reachingout/quicktimel arge.html
It's not "anti-pot propaganda" do some frickin' research into the subject. My friend is schizophrenic and he used to smoke heavily. He stopped when he finally got help on stayed on his meds. I was with him and a friend smoking pot one time when he decided to "give it a try" again and had a couple of puffs. Needless to say, it wasn't long before he was trying to distract the imaginary man sitting next to him. He didn't have that much and so still had the presence of mind to go to bed when Star Trek started giving him secret messages. He hasn't smoked since.
It doesn't sound serious. And it sounds like the bothersome part is mainly when you get caught! I'm not a doctor, but I guess it could be a mild form of ADD?
"Take these, these, these... and these."
"Thank you doctor"
"Oh I'm not a doctor"
Everyone's different, and not everyone reacts the same way to anything. I know a guy who acts that way when he takes cold medicine, but I don't go around telling people not to take cold medicine.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I have to strongly protest here.
First of all, I do not believe anyone here, theist or otherwise, would say she does not believe in reason. For that reason alone, such an assertion is completely meaningless, leading to a pointless argument like the pro-life versus pro-choice one with interestingly enough no one being anti-life or anti-choice, fighting about semantics while confusing the meaning of words.
But that is not what is most important here. Much more importantly than being merely meaningless, the implications of the assertion "atheists believe in reason" are simply false.
Believing in reason (whatever that is supposed to mean, whether believing in the existence of reason or in the power and possibly superiority thereof, if so then over what, etc.) is by no means a necessary condition of being an atheist, nor is it a sufficient one.
I can very easily imagine a complete moron who is an atheist because the poor simpleton is just too stupid to understand the very idea of theism, which clearly shows how the stupidity itself can directly lead to atheism.
This is very important: atheist is not someone who believes in reason.
Atheist is someone who is godless (from Greek atheos), i.e. someone who does not believe in the existence of any deity, no more, no less. Reason does not necessarily have anything to do with faith. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few atheistic cretins and Mensa membership card holding theophiles, as well as godless geniuses and God-loving idiots (not even counting fundamentalists, mind you).
Now, the atheism having been slightly clarified, we now have to define God which is hardly an easy task...
Choosing pantheistic definition, we can define God as meaning the universe and the universe being God. This is a perfectly valid definition. Assuming that the universe itself exists, which is in my opinion quite a reasonable assumption, it means that therefore God must exist. Period.
So, is the question answered? Of course not, because a pantheistic God (i.e. the universe) does not have to contain any supernatural, omnipotent supreme being, which we usually mean by God, possibly being even consistent with materialism, secularism, and indeed atheism.
We could choose panentheism (in the form of pan-entheism or panen-theism) which is a little bit less extreme in that it does not define God as a synonym of universe, but as the material universe plus something or someone supernatural and transcendental. It is, however, still not very helpful, as we are reasoning about that very transcendent which is hard enough without the inclusion of the rest of the universe, upon the existence of which I hope we all can agree.
Let us find a better definition, like the deistic definition of God, for it is remarkably clear and consistent. God is an absolutely transcendent creator of the universe who made it a perfect self-regulating mechanism which he does not intervene with since then. Of course, it inevitably leads not only to apathetic agnosticism and in fact even strict, closed agnosticism, but it also means that all prayers are unanswered and there are no miracles and revelations whatsoever.
For that reason I doubt such a definition would satisfy many theists, or even many atheists for that matter, as the hypothesis of the existence of such a deity is absolutely unprovable and unfalsifiable, rendering it thus quite meaningless and irrelevant from the scientific standpoint.
But if it is not the case and there is a deity who is even remotely less transcendent than a deistic Divine Watchmaker, being somewhat immanent, then by definition there have to
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
This is just theodicy and the problem of evil. The original poster despite declaring atheism indeed seems to have chosen maltheism. In any event, even possibly being a theist, he/she is most definitely not a theophile.
See also my other post in this thread.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Dude, if the guy is hallucinating and thinks he's being spied on and thinks the tv is sending him secret messages when he takes cold medicine then I'd wonder what the hell was in the cold medicine or if he's got some other problem.
h tml
I'm not saying "don't smoke weed," I'm saying, if you're a schizophrenic, don't smoke weed. Weed is a psychotropic drug, cold medicine is just alcohol.
From cannabisnews.com:
The Okayama report confirms the results of a 1987 study conducted in Sweden in which higher incidents of schizophrenia were discovered among army conscripts who had used marijuana.
The Swedish study showed that the incidence of schizophrenia among conscripts who were "heavy" and "chronic" users of marijuana was six times higher than it was among those who had not smoked.
Marijuana, however, has only been linked to schizophrenia in those who are already genetically prone to the disease. There is little evidence to suggest that it poses any such risk to those not genetically predisposed to schizophrenia.
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/13/thread13350.s
Actually, I think it was the DMT that did it to him.
Not sure about that though.
http://xkcd.com/386/
If your sister is lucky, she will find a doctor who can manage her symptoms with medications - it usually takes an assortment. Clozaril is still the gold standard. Geodon is good, and now Habilify is out there. Med management will let her live a more normal life than anything that was available in the past. She could even get a non-stressful job, like working in a library. Actually, in old age the symptoms usually go away.
alphababble
I have found your account on my fans list and have read quite a few comments and journal entries of yours, where I have even found a link to one of my older texts--you might also find this one interesting--and as much as I usually like your reasoning, this one is sadly based on not a particularly strong argument, I am afraid.
Nevertheless, I find your comparison of organized religion to a bus terminal quite intresting. Also, I generally like your masturbation analogy (no pun intended) however its strength might be questionable.
Despite many interesting similarities, I usually take offense when someone tells me about either of those activities in somewhat different situations and for quite different reasons. More precisely, the question whether I want to hear about someone thinking of me while praying depands almost entirely on the subject, reason and purpose of said prayer, while with the masturbation it is almost entirely dependent on the person doing it, the reason and purpose is usually the same, the subject notwithstanding.
For example, when someone tells me she is going to pray for my health, I will take offense (and in fact I will get terrified) if that is my doctor and I might get irritated if that is someone who prefers praying instead of physically helping me. If someone tells me she is going to pray for my soul, implying that I am evil, I will always take offense. If someone just tells me she prays for me because she likes me, I might be very happy with it, like if one would say she thinks a lot about me. It might be a manifestation of feelings and emotions, or even some dependence or submission. Of course it all depands on whether one indeed is going to literally pray or is just using it as a rhetorical figure, for the strenght of my reaction, positive or negative, will be usually proportional to the time and energy one actually devotes.
My reaction to someone thinking about me during the prayer is rarely dependent exclusively on the person in question without considering its subject. Quite to the contrary with masturbation. The subject itself seems usually irrelevant or at least secondary to my opinion regarding the very person who tells me about it and the sexuality thereof, subjectively perceived. It is also interesting to note that people tell me about their prayers at least twice as often as about masturbation. But the most important is not the frequency but the very reason of my reaction.
(Of course I might be committing a genetic fallacy mixing argumentum ad hominem and argumentum ad verecundiam depanding on the subject of my ipse dixit reasoning, but I believe one might consider it perfectly justified in the subjective matter of sexuality, or at the very least I do really hope so.)
For that reason I wonder whether your analogy, while certainly interesting and intellectually entertaining, might indeed need some better introduction and further explanation, for it might seem weak for some people with similar experience as mine.
It is very interesting nonetheless and undoubtedly deserves some serious analysis. I will think about it more thoroughly.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."