Whatever emerges from the ashes of schizophrenia, it must provide better ways to help those struggling with very real experiences.
"Schizophrenia" has been dying as a concept for at least twenty years that I've been following it.
Kasich killed the whole research office I was working in at the time.
Otherwise, they probably would have solved it by now.
Nitpicking just the second paragraph, what's with the assumption that if mortality isn't decreasing, it means we misclassified the disease? Like a million things need to go well between classification and outcomes improving, and in mental health these are especially hampered.
WELL ACTUALLY ankle sprains are given grades based on severity. So my latest MRI shows I still have a sprain just not as bad a one as the MRI a year ago showed, so the foot-ankle specialist I just saw is referring me to a surgeon. I suppose I could say things about schizophrenia too but sprainsplaining sounded more satisfying.
Holy moly, your ankle has been sprained for a YEAR?
Isn't the thing with "spectrum" disorders that it reduces stigma by indicating levels of severity, functionality, and treatability?
My ankle has been sprained for 14 months, but it's been a year since the first MRI. I'm hoping we can go right to surgery because one of the alternatives is six weeks in a cast to see if any more healing is possible when I'm completely immobilized and that doesn't sound like any more fun as a single parent than the surgery part. My consult is in two weeks, so it's at least theoretically possible it could happen before my deductible and out-of-pocket maximum restart in January, which I would definitely appreciate.
8: Do the medics consider the finance piece? I mean, it's a really critical part of the patient's well-being.
9: I don't know. I'll probably mention it and it can't hurt but that getting an initial consultation takes two weeks makes me wonder whether six weeks including holidays are likely to have open non-emergency surgical time. The good news is that my other surgeries have paid off and I'm no longer horribly sick with recurrent sinus problems like this time last year or bleeding excessively and anemic a quarter of the time like much of my adult life. So perhaps this too will have a happy ending! I like those!!
Competition for the title of "resident expert on ankle pain" is getting pretty stiff at unfogged.
Mine is getting better, slowly. I still can't jog without anti-inflammatory meds.
I can walk long distances without them, which is a recent improvement. My doctor didn't see any problem with long term use of anti-inflammatory meds because he didn't consider how they interact with regular alcohol use. In my doctor's defense, I may have lied about how much I drink.
In my defense, I only started lying about drinking because when I was (nearly) honest, he said I was fat because of drinking.
Very topical for me, as I'm currently shacked up with someone with schizophrenia. I think it does make sense to consider it a spectrum disorder since the symptoms can manifest in varying degrees.
In my GF's case the drugs are working miracles. The bit about childhood adversity strikes home. Her mom told her throughout her childhood that she was ugly and nobody would ever love her because of it. Great parenting.
Happy to hear things are working out well togolosh.
I was diagnosed bipolar, though it's the type that includes delusions and hallucinations, which might have fallen into a different category in another decade, and requires anti-psychotics. The drugs seem to work, though I'm left with the possibility that I'm missing out on fantastic telepathic communications which everyone else is able to enjoy while functioning in life, but which always turn nasty for me, and prevent me from holding up my end of IRL conversations.
the possibility that I'm missing out on fantastic telepathic communications which everyone else is able to enjoy
Don't worry, it's massively overrated. Like having twitter trolls in your head.
which everyone else is able to enjoy while functioning in life, but which always turn nasty for me,
Some article I once read including first-person accounts of auditory hallucinations (that is, hearing voices), included a story from a woman who started acting out violently in a grocery line while hearing voices. When asked if the voices were telling her to hit people and throw things, she said that no, actually they were trying to talk her out of it.
I really liked that. Sometimes, the voices can have good advice!
Probably too flippant for the thread but I remember some comedian's routine where he said the problem with the Son of Sam isn't that he hallucinated his neighbor's dog ordering him to kill people but that his immediate reaction wasn't "bad dog!"
Yes. I hope they put the dog down for encouraging murder.
I don't know if I think the neighbor who owned the dog should have been tried or not.
Like having twitter trolls in your head.
It's been a lot like twitter in my head, but I could never quite figure out how so many identities could be involved in the telepathic conversation at once without it turning into sheer bedlam -- as thoughts tend to just come out, there would be no practical way to keep everyone from interrupting each other. This practical concern has kept me sane.
Sometimes, the voices can have good advice!
Most recently mine have told me to take my meds. They're not overly concerned about maintaining their existence.
There do seem to be some people who hear voices occasionally without having all of the other issues - poor hygiene, delusions etc. that would be classified as schizophrenia.
I think that psychotic spectrum is meant to refer to the spectrum of disorders that produce psychosis.
When I worked in a state hospital, there was an elderly woman whose first treatment pre-dated the DSM. It was Dementia Praecox. She had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but I don't know how you could tell, since she was almost completely non verbal, She smiled a lot, lay down in the hallway, would say santa Claud from time to time and coffee. I think my OT friend connected with her enough to get her to go on some outings and she was able to move into a group home for medically- ill individuals after decades of hospitalization.
She did love coffee and had been known to lunge after a cup of coffee left on a counter, even tackling someone to try to get his coffee.
26.1: There are lots of people who hear voices without having all the other issues. They mostly don't tell people they hear voices for very obvious reasons.
@21
you should check out a book published in the 50's called Operators and Things. It's a narrative of a working/professional woman's rapid (warp-speed rapid) schizophrenic break and her subsequent experiences/recovery.
very good. maybe too good in that it might well be partially fictionalized. the author wrote it using a pseudonym if i remember right.
27: Yes! There was a group in Europe that was more open about this, and they've done some studies among college students in Boston.
I don't have a source handy but I read somewhere (maybe it was here?) that while hearing voices is pretty much the definition of schizophrenia, and is pretty much universal among people, what the voices say isn't. In Eastern cultures the voices tend to be more supportive of the person, whereas in Western cultures they aren't.
Pretty much universal among cultures or countries or whatever.
please to enjoy thread while I ignore all comments to care for my sick kid and try to avert work crises. TIL applesauce can treat fever. Or possibly it was the Tylenol. I hope neither one induces psychosis.
I read voices all the time, but I'm pretty sure they're real.
I used to think I was hearing voices, but then I discovered that it was other people talking.
I reasonably often hear voices. I sometimes seem to take dictation when I'm writing, although at other times the feeling is much more one of trying to hear distinctly a voice I can't quite catch. But at a couple of crucial moments in my younger life, I would hear a completely distinct, calm voice, not mine: it gave excellent advice which on at least two occasions I disregarded with catastrophic consequences. In another culture I wouldn't hesitate to identify it as my guardian angel. Sometimes I think it went off in a huff because I wouldn't listen and I regret that.
Otherwise I notice that my earworms often have a fairly obvious message, if I trace back from the music to the words or the title. For instance, now, at a time when I am vastly concerned about my mother, I can't get the guitar solo from "Take out your gold teeth II" out of my head, not that I'm tryng. And although that break is of course wordless, the lyrics of the song suggest the idea of gambling with something valuable and painful which is exactly how life feels at the moment.
But in general I trust the voice that emerges from my fingers much more than the one that comes out of my mouth.
36.1 is fascinating and I would love to hear more.
I've busted out of the not-ok corral and am at my inlaws! my meds are seeming really solid and I hope things are going to be ok. being mere-schmear bipolar I never...wait, very rarely hear voices (and hi text!). I'm going to bed but I'll tell you guys more tales of mental illness summer camp, confidentiality permitting. I second 37.
Very happy to hear that alameida.
I think the phenomenology of voice-hearing varies a fair bit. Like many people, I've experienced intrusive thoughts, that wouldn't be that much of a stretch to interpret as voices although I was fully aware at the time it was just my own inner narrative getting out of control, and it was a symptom of stress/depression/lack of sleep, rather than some chronic underlying mental health condition.
I went to an interdisciplinary conference once, with psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers on mental ill-health where, crucially, a lot of clients of mental health services were also invited as participants.
So, you had philosophers quizzing people about the phenomenology of their voice-hearing, etc. It was fascinating.
Also a bit disturbing to hear one very eminent psychiatrist admit that in 40-50 years of practice, he'd never asked those questions.
I sometimes seem to take dictation when I'm writing
This, too. Although that doesn't feel like anything not-me, or alien. It's just that when I'm thinking/writing I'm unspooling an interior monologue and I'm listening to it/participating in it.
It was also a tremendous bonus in time-limited writing situations like exams to basically stream of consciousness it onto the page.
44 is a very good description of the feeling. It is quite distinct from the "guardian angel"voice
Hi Alameida! Very glad to hear that the not-ok can corral you no longer.
I think when I wrote as a younger person something similar to that described in 44 was going on, but the voices, which are more like intrusive thoughts, not a fully auditory hallucination, are on a different level of remove from myself--they really seem to come from elsewhere--to the point that when I have tried to write with the voices going on, there has been a constant battle to maintain attribution, with the voices offering quite often better phrasing which I must reject, else create the appearance that I can't actually write my own sentences. Though sometimes this forces me to reformulate the sentence a third time, which is an improvement on my initial offering, in which case the voices are actually forcing me to be a more careful writer, which is perhaps a good and necessary thing, though of course insane.