How to get a virtual community going to support my son

Hey terrific people,

I won’t ever give up on my son. He’s isolating himself and isn’t going to support groups. Yet he has gotten off marijuana so baby steps… Has anyone thought or know of a site for individuals with mental health issues where the individual can decide to build out their own virtual support team? It would need to be confidential and maybe I could summarize the key take-aways from books to allow them to be reused. Your thoughts? Thank you :slight_smile:

Facebook has a variety of closed support groups. Postings aren’t visible to Facebook friends, unless the friend is also a member of the group. Then of course there’s the other side to this support group, forum.schizophrenia.com.

Nicehat - Yes, I know that about Facebook but my son is so paranoid but I’ll try it with him. It’s sort of like the movie beautiful mind… if he could talk about what he thinks with friends or family that he can trust, maybe they can collectively be part of his support community? No I am not high. Your thoughts?

My thoughts are

Please talk to the pdoc about the paranoia your talking about, medication should eliminate that. If it’s not, the doctor should know.

I thought it was helpful to use the forum.schizophrenia.com for learning that Sz has all similar paranoid thoughts. Like one common paranoid thought is to think someone has poisoned your food. Everybody seems to get that one for example. Post those paranoid thought in the ‘unusual beliefs’ on the forum and see how many others have that same thought and ask which med they used that worked to eliminate it.

I know it has been more helpful to use social media with those with my same condition. Talking about poisoned food was eye opening for me.

My family doesn’t really understand and I have alienated them trying to explain what a psychosis is, so using social media to talk about Sz with people who aren’t Sz probably won’t be too helpful. Talking about another hobby outside of Sz might be.

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I’ve often wished that my daughter would join the sz.com online community but she is too afraid and paranoid to discuss her illness with other people. The other day she screamed at me and told me that she does not have a mental illness.

Does your son accept his diagnosis? Because my son doesn’t, he doesn’t want to participate in anything that is mental illness related.

Nicehat,

This is so helpful and I agree with everything you said. I was hoping it would just be an opportunity for our son to talk with close family members not about sz but just catching up to reconnect with them. We do need to urge for him to get on this to talk through sz thoughts with others to see how to deal with it.

Thank you so much for your help!