1. Cobra3010

    Cobra3010 Member

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    Scihozphrenia

    Discussion in 'Research' started by Cobra3010, May 9, 2017.

    I've got 2 questions regarding schizeophrenia, please answer only if you know the answer for sure.

    Are there pills, treatment or any other way that can make schizophrenia bearable for people who suffer from it, can it lower intensity of hallucinations.

    And can it make people agressive if they get confused?
     
  2. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    yes

    On a wider point if you are writing about it you need to do a shitload more research - starting with spelling it correctly schizophrenia

    As with any mental condition portraying it poorly can bring a writer a world of hurt
     
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  3. dmp

    dmp New Member

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    what does bearable really mean? My brother has the condition and is unmedicated because he found the treatment unbearable. :(
     
  4. Cobra3010

    Cobra3010 Member

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    Big soft moose, yes I will research it, i cant have that big plot hole, plus, Im not writing it on English, I know how to spell it on my language ;)
    Also, I will try to delay in book the fact he suffers from it. Book will be like sf until I discover the fact he suffers from it

    And @dmp thats why i ask, as any other mental desease it is not well understood, i wouldnt like to missinterpet things, care to elaborate a bit, if you could be bettee insight how is it to live with someone who suffers from it
     
  5. dmp

    dmp New Member

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    I didn't live around him when i lost him. I was in the Army, stationed in Germany when I opened a letter from him - back in the day, we used writing implements called "pens" and marked on thin flexible 'sheets' called "paper" and we used the "Post office" to send these now-marked-up papers - called 'letters' :)

    The letter was straight forward; something like "....yadda yadda yadda...And what makes me not so happy is all the people who have tried to kill me since i was born. In fact, mom and dad tried to kill me lots of times because when I was born I could actually speak. They took me to a church because they thought I was the devil - and they tried to drown me in the baptismal. Then Dad shot me in the head and I was dead for only a few hours then came back to life. Hey - I was always wanting to know - where did you go when you left the family and that other kid came to live with us in place of you? I know mom and dad were fooled but I never was. I think you were about nine years old then..."

    I mourned my brother in nineteen hundred and ninety-six. I mourned losing a future with him; mourned what could never be because realistically he would never be my brother again except in biology. Realistically he was destined to become someone else. And that happened.
     
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  6. Cobra3010

    Cobra3010 Member

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    Wow, I'm sorry
    That letter... it was hard to read, filled with woe and sorrrow
    But thanks for sharing it, I appreciate it
     
  7. dmp

    dmp New Member

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    very welcome - it's been a wild ride.
     
  8. QueenOfPlants

    QueenOfPlants Definitely a hominid

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    Yeah, I suppose you can start by reading good ol' Aunt Wiki's lecture on schizophrenia and how to manage it.
    Then you can look up the sources they cite.
    You can also try to find a forum for people who suffer from it and introduce yourself, explain that you're doing research for a story/book and want to avoid portraying the condition wrongly, and politely ask whether there is somebody who would like to talk about their personal experiences with you.

    I'm so sorry! This is very similar to what I experienced:
    My older half-brother lived in England for several years (we're German), so we didn't see him very often. One day he visited his mother and they wanted to go on a vacation together, but before they could leave, he took his own life.
    We never found out what made him do that, but he had said things to his other half-brother and to our father that were odd. As if he had a some paranoia. But none of the two was able to recognize that. I mean - how? They were just two odd statements.
    But I explain it to myself that he might have suffered from Schizophrenia too. It's the only explanation that makes a little bit of sense.
     
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  9. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Welcome to the site!
    That depends on what they're confused about. Once in a while, you run into people like Herbert Mullin or Richard Trenton Chase whose delusions drive them to serial murder; but for the most part, not only is a person's mental illness not as likely to make them dangerous as other people think it is, but even when a person does become dangerous, they're more likely to be a danger to themselves than to anybody else.
     
  10. BogLady

    BogLady Active Member

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    My brother also suffers from schizophrenia. He was first diagnosed with epilepsy at only 6 or 7 months of age. He didn't speak until he was almost 5. By the time he was in his mid twenties, he had been diagnosed autistic and by the time he was in his early 30s, schizophrenia. He is now in his 50s.

    He takes medication regularly and has visits with both psychologists and psychiatrists. Finding the right medication has always been a crap shoot. One med may work well for some, but not others. Some meds have side effects for some people, some meds, not so much. Once a good medication is found, it may loose its efficacy over time and then a new medication must be tried.

    He has never been violent although he has had trouble differentiating right from wrong sometimes, especially in his younger years. We have found, he has become the victim of crimes easier than the other way around.

    He has never married but wears a wedding ring because he believes he is married and has 3 children somewhere. From time to time, he will have conversations with them. His view of reality is always somewhat different than mine and often he comes across more child like than you would expect.
     
  11. BogLady

    BogLady Active Member

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    I am sorry, but I was interrupted by my day job ;)

    To answer your specific questions, yes a medication can cause problems if it doesn't work well with someone's physiology, if it is taken incorrectly or there is a reaction between it and other medications.

    Can someone who suffers with schizophrenia act out in a bad way if confused? Possibly, although not in a way that is against their beliefs. If someone has an aversion to guns normally, they typically would not pick up a gun and use it if they are in a confused state.

    My brother on one occasion had not been answering my calls for several days. I finally went to his apartment. In a 3 day period, he had pawned every thing he owned, literally everything down to the last dish. He had closed his bank account and had himself a small suit case and back pack ready to go. A couple of hours later and he would not have been there anymore.
    He said someone had been watching him through the window at night. They eventually approached him in the parking lot and told him that he had until a given date to get them $10,000.00. He proceeded to do just that, as he sold things, he gave them the money. He emptied out his social security from the bank and gave it to them. He had run out of things to sell, so he was running away.

    I immediately took him to the police so we could file a report. He could not give the police any information because he couldn't remember what they looked like, how they spoke, what they drove, nothing. By the time the interview was over, I had come to the conclusion that I needed to take him to the hospital, not a police station.

    He was hospitalized for about 3 weeks. He apparently had quit taking some of his meds, doubled up on others, lost some....
    His social worker and I worked on getting him into a secure housing environment where he felt safer and there were others around him. We never did learn where all the money went though or if his story was real or part of his disease.
    He remembers none of it now.

    That is just a piece of his story. I spent many years as a volunteer for The National Alliance for Mental Illness in southern MN, another couple of years on their board of directors and almost two years as their program director. Sadly, there is way to much mental illness in my family. One in four families are effected by MI. I needed to get involved, and I needed to get educated.
     
  12. ELeFloch

    ELeFloch Member

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    This is a very hard mental illness for people to deal with, both those who suffer with it and those who are trying to help the people they care about. I worked at our local hospital in the Psychiatric Ward, and dealt with people with this condition on a daily basis. Some were not violent, and medication helped them. They mostly thought they had another life, or that I was someone else. Other people, who didn't want to medicate, sometimes, though very rarely in my experience, could be violent and threatening. Now, the difference is that in this particular situation, you are in a hospital, limited freedom until they are sure that you won't harm yourself or the public, but I imagine there are those who suffer with this and may at times be aggressive in nature, though maybe not violent. Some people don't like to take the medication because it makes them feel "funny" (direct quote from a patient I interacted with) and they prefer to just deal with the hallucinations. Hope this helps. :)
     
  13. Cobra3010

    Cobra3010 Member

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    Thanks a lot for sharing, it was very useful! I'm sorry about your brother, but I'm glad that you learned how to deal with such problems, it must be hard and sad thing to watch.

    Also thanks very much! It is very useful!
     
  14. lilytsuru

    lilytsuru New Member

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    1. Yes there is medication for people with Schizophrenia. For example you could use an antipsychotic/neuroleptic drug. Antipsychotic drugs work by blocking the production of dopamine at the synapses. There a several examples of these drugs that you can look up. Since you mentioned hallucinations I would just like to mention that auditory hallucinations are much more common that visual ones, in case it comes up in your story :)

    2. Sorry, I'm not sure if medication could be a direct cause of anger or confusion. However, a noteworthy common side effect of these drugs could be the development of Tardive Dyskinesia which is tremors and jerky movement.

    Just a tip in case it pertains to your story, for schizophrenia there is a rule of four, 1/4 people get better with no medication and live independent lives, 1/4 get better with medication and can live independent lives , 1/4 get better with medication but must be cared for by a home or caretaker, and 1/4 have no results to treatment and will most likely be institutionalized

    Hope some of that helps! Good luck with your writing :)
     
  15. Seren

    Seren Writeaholic

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    There are many different types of schizophrenia, so you should decide what type of schizophrenia your character is going to have, because the symptoms vary so greatly that when you look at all the types together that it's almost like they're different diseases.

    I know for certain that catatonic schizophrenia, undifferentiated schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia (what many people think of when you say "schizophrenia") residual schizophrenia, and disorganised schizophrenia exist. They may be others, but I've studied those five in very minor detail and never heard of any other types. Yes, schizophrenics can be aggressive sometimes, but it all depends on the type and the actual situation, such as if they think they're in a threatening situation. (E.g. They may have paranoid schizophrenia and think someone is stalking them, although I must hasten to add that not everyone with paranoid schizophrenia has these kinds of hallucinations.) But despite what the media will have you believe, schizophrenics being violent is actually very rare.

    There are also medications, although they are only effective in a small number of patients, and they never act as a cure. They just help the positive symptoms a little. (I forget if they help the negative symptoms that may be occurring, such as lack of empathy or being very tired.) I don't know the specific names of them.
     
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  16. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Nice overview here.
     
  17. marshipan

    marshipan Contributor Contributor

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    I see this thread is a little old...however my sister has schizophrenia. Well, schizoaffective to be exact. She is on a lot of medication (has been for decades) for a number of different things and at this point my family is unsure if the medication has actually been what has made her worse. I believe her and my nephew took antipsychotics for short times, but the side effects were hard to deal with. I've never witnessed my sister be violent. However, she has described violent moments toward animals that came about because of frustration. She is more child-like in her understanding of social relationships and controlling behavior. That leads to her casting everyone as the abuser. Like if she decided to not go somewhere with us but later changes her mind after we have already left. She then goes around to us and anyone who will listen talking about how horrible we were to abandon her. That is the extent to her nonphysical violence.

    My grandfather was paranoid schizophrenic but my knowledge of him is all secondhand. My mother has PTSD because of him though. He was violent in nature, but I'm not sure if he physically abused his family. He was verbally abusive and often did extremely dangerous things like playing russian roulette in his house (that resulted in a bullet going through my uncle's room while he slept). He frightened them and had lots of criminal issues. He self medicated, which undoubtedly made things worse. I don't know about his experience with prescription drugs. I don't think a lot of schizophrenics are very good with their meds but that is just what I hear.
     
  18. surrealscenes

    surrealscenes Senior Member

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    I will tell you to pick another mental illness. Any time one is told something is wrong with them, there is a resistance to medication. Most don't think it isthat bad, and most people balk at being told they have a litany of drugs to take daily, especially if the drugs change who they see themselves as.
     

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