Living with schizophrenia

Thank you @Sehnsucht,

I do accept your apologies, these topics are always difficult, and it is easy to get frustrated.

Hi @Appleblossom,

i totally agree with you that schizophrenia is not the same in every case. It is very different from individual to individual and I know this because I have a few friends with schizophrenia, all different. THe personality, the psychology of the person and their environment all come into play.

I agree with all that you say here, but I also note that you are a unique case and that you are able to help yourself, and this is really great.

You are absolutely right to say that schizophrenia is very debilitating. Nevertheless, some people are able to cope. I guess that the question now is why do some people cope while others do not?

My wife has two kinds of hallucinations or vision: those that happen during the day and fortunately she has control on these; and night-terror that happen in her sleep.

Now, many professional believe that the two are different, that night terrors are different from psychosys; but not in my wife's opinion.

Her nighterrors are so real that she gets up from bed screaming. And the screams are very loud that I often wonder if someone may get frightened and call the police. Lucky enough, the old neighbours that we have do not hear much at night.

Sometimes it takes me a while to wake my wife up from these night terrors. Unfortunately, she has no control over these.

I feel that both night terrors and psychosys are more related than people think.

Also, and this is something that @Silenus would agree with, our reality may be nothing but a dream, in which cdase we all have some sort of psychosys, to various drgrees. True, the colour that we see are not realy there, this is an effect of the light. THe matter that we see, like rocks, the sun, a sunny day, people, and so on, are not really as they appear to be. They are created partly by the light and partly by the mind. No one knows what these things really look like.

In addition, normal people can experience psychosys if certain areas of the brain are stimulated by tiny electrical currents.

And finally, I feel that some delusion, distortions of reality, distorted thinking, or similar things, are also related to psychosys. But that is my opinion and, as you know, I am not an expert.

@Appleblossom, @theaveragejoe,

What is like for you, as carers, as friends, family?

What coping strategies for yourselves, do you have in place?

What is a wonderful support on offer in the medical/community?
What is lacking?

How does one navigate recognising when a delusion has become unmanagable, and where do you seek help?


I ask, because, as a sufferer, a lot of the support I may need at any one time, is dependant upon me seeking it. Which is a bit backwards, if I am not well.... then why would I be seeking it? This thought scares me often, especially since having children. What does the community around me do in such a time?

Also, I imagine being a supportive person is an incredibly tangled and overwhelming role to take on, so I think it worthwhile that you have your say in this respect. How do you take care of you?

x

hi there @Sehnsucht,

it is not easy being a carer especially for me because I also have a mental disorder.

But things as not as complicated as we make them out to be sometimes.

For my wife, to help her, I make sure that she has the right support. It is mostly about support from some member of the community. But to receive help one needs to work well with the mental health professionals, to listen to them and to include them in their life not as enemies, or strangers, but as friends who are there to support and give some advice.

We have been blessed with the right mental health professionals. My wife has a therapist that she sees frequently and this therapist is also a good friend of mine. In fact, I see this same therapist but, because I have very vast knowledge in mental health we are almost like friends and we have some wonderful discussions.

I have always made sure that my wife had a good doctor, a good therapist, that she knew her hospital well and that if anything goes wrong we can talk to people, we know who to ring.

Lifeline offers terric services via the telephone. A person is always there to listen in times of trouble. Just talking to someone can be therapeutic and can be the difference between coping or not. When things are bad, always pick up the phone and talk to Lifeline, that is my motto. But it is also true that some people are unable to discuss their problems, they keep everything inside, secret. This is one of the worst things that can be done, I belive, because without discussing things it is hard to take the right course of action without some feedback. Distorted thinking, wrong decisions and all of that comes to mind.

For us it is

LIFELINE

Therapist

Doctor

Hospital if necessary (we know the people there who are also friends)

But we also take care of ourselves, I mean we would not drink coffee when we have difficulties sleeping just like we would not drink alcohol when we are depressed. It is to know your body as well and to know when is the right time to do something. Self control is the key.

Visions and hallucinations are difficult especially if these are frightening. But with some experience it is easy to recover and realise that the mind plays tricks sometimes. We go on.

We accept the negative stuff and welcome the positive stuff in our life. After all, life isn't perfect for anyone.

Beside, we all see things when we sleep, things that are not really there. But for some, dreams can be so real that they are more vivid then real life. The mind, amongst other things, produces ideas, visions, dreams, and so on. It should not be such a big things like we make out in our society. Schizophrenia may well have its place and srve a purpose. We need to find the purpose we need to find what could have triggered it and most important we need to take the stigma out of Schizophrenia. MAny important people have this condition and they work and function very well but our society does not want us to know these people, they dismiss them, because the believe is that people with schizophrenia cannot function well. I don't agree with this I have many friends that struggle, but function nevertheless. This is important.

Some people tell me: you know mental disorders are ereditary. But we forget that children imitated their parents, that is what humans do, and they imitate their parents really well down to the smallest details. How do we know if children do not also imitate the father's or mother's mental disorder.

?Can children imitate schizophrenia and come to believe that they have it? IS this possible? This is the question that scientists are now asking.

For if children can indeed imitate their parent's mental disorder, and come to believe that they have it, they may well develop it. Is this possible? This is another question that scientists are looking into.

I don't have hallucinations or visions, at least not as scuh but I do have synaesthesia which is the overlapping of the senses. This can also cause strange things to be perceived. Read it up, it is interesting.

A final thing is that while labesl can be helpful, I don't see schizophrenia as totally different from Bipolar Disorder or Chronic Depression. All of these disorders can have vision and hallucinations. I tend to think that mental disorders can vary along a continuum line or so that a mental disorder is a mental disorder without label for me.

All mental disorders have an 80% origins from childhood traumatic experiences and I believe that the percentage is much higher than that. In other words, if we were able to stop the parents of the world trumatizing their children mental illness would be declining.BUt it is also true to say that even traumas experienced in adulthood can trigger a severe disorder like schizophrenia. The mind has a breaking point but what is good is that the mind and brain have the ability to repair themselves.