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Schizophrenia Experiences and Suggestions?
Jagercola asks: "My sister was recently diagnosed with Schizophrenia. It's a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disease that we don't know a lot about. The movie, A Beautiful Mind, paints an accurate picture of how the disease affects someone in a best case scenario. I would like the vast audience here to help me understand the disease through experiences and that it might help me aid my sister. If you know someone how has the disease, how has it affected your and their life? How have you been able to cope with it? What are the long term implications for quality of life?"
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.
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
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.
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
Because, in addition to being legal experts and marketing geniuses, we're all also highly qualified psychologists and medical doctors.
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.
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
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 am a firm agnostic. As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to religion, I start by assuming everyone's wrong (even me).
With that in mind, they are starting to be scientific studies that show the power of prayer and how it helps. People who set out to disprove it, end up getting data that actually supports it.
I guess the bottom line is: Why degrade any form of positive support?
Ok, I give up, why you?
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.
- 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."
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?!'"
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.
I'm getting this second hand from my wife's oncologist, but there's a lot of evidence that positive thought by the patient has a significant effect on the treatment of cancer. A big contributor to positive thought is the knowledge that your friends and loved ones care. So when someone told my wife they were praying for her, even though I'm a stone cold athiest, I shut the fuck up. The last thing she needed to hear was "Prayer? That's superstitious crap. If they cared, they'd have brought you some cobalt-60". As far as I'm concerned, as long as you aren't foregoing proper medical care for some kind of faith healing, prayer can't hurt and almost certainly helps in some non-mystical way.
I don't know if it would help with schizophrenia or not. I don't know enough about how the body's healing mechanisms deal with mental illness. Still, food for thought.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
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
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.
On Google Answers there was once a guy who asked a question that alarmed many of us researchers...
It started off innocently enough; a question on how to block radio waves in his home. An odd request, sure, but... Faraday cages and such were being talked about, and someone asked in passing if there was some particular frequency he wanted to stop...
He basically stated that there was a group near him that was using some sort of broadcasting equipment to play thoughts in his head in an attempt to brainwash him. He didn't know what the frequency was, so he needed to block everything.
In addition he stated that he had been recommended to various psychologists, but since they were a part of the group doing the broadcasting he could not accept their diagnoses. I think the final answer to that question was a detailed explanation of radio physics, faraday cages, and also a caution suggestion that radio broadcasts can't be received by the human brain directly. I hope that guy, whoever he is, found some help...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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.