At NAMI they told we might not recognize the stage changing to residual when it happened. As though we would look back over a period of years and say “that’s when it started lightening up- about two years ago”.
Many seem to call the medication controlled stage “remission”. Some will not have psychosis again and some will have meds increased or changed over time.
My son has maintained cognition so far. I don’t know how odd that is, they all present so dofferently with the symptoms.
The flat effect is hard on us isn’t it?
Mine’s cognition is what would really get in the way of having him get court ordered meds. He would be able to make quite the case for himself.
He has maintained a transplant for several years which requires a constant medication compliance. He uses those meds to confabulate his justification that he should not take additional meds. It’s really about the anosognosia, but his point is valid:(
So he does have anosognosia but his cognition is intact? Isn’t that interesting … I know many people who have Sz are very capable, as your son is. My poor boy has a hard time with conversation. Me asking questions, he giving one-word answers. He never goes anywhere.
Mine spends his days hiding in his apartment because he is terrified that all the people yelling names at him want to hurt him. If he sees people he hears them calling him names threatening him.
His scz is paranoid based, terrible way to live, frightened and anxious all the time. His congnition is wasted, he can’t access it most days.
If he has a lighter day, he is more dangerous. He will confront people - he fully believes the other people started the encounter and he thinks he is defending himself.
Your son sounds like the exact storyline of my newly dxd son. The things he threw out or moved around in the house, the odd clothing choices , leaving the classroom and not returning, taking the car without asking, etc etc. My son is 26 and we had to force his hospitalization on Dec 17 last year. He was dxd in 2014 with social phobia by a Psychologist and with GAD in 2013 with psychiatrist. All those years we (my husband & I) struggled to get the correct dx - and finally we have it . It’s been a whirlwind ever since the dx trying to get a handle on things- so thank you to everyone that is helping me here to cope and understand.
I totally understand where you are coming from. My husband had actually “adapted” from a stable environment for over 30 years. No one had told me (his family) that he had had episodes in his late teens that included hospitalization. A year ago the 29th of this month he tried to kill himself in a paranoid state. He had had an episode in December the previous year as well. Now he is doing “ok” I guess. He cannot handle change in his environment or wrote habits (he can go to work, do things he has done for years etc but if you change it, he freaks). I just make sure that things don’t get changed without me telling him ahead of time what is going to go on, how he is going to be cared for etc. His therapist stated that it was a necessary aspect of SZ, the stabilty of always knowing what he was going to be doing. This is hard for me, I’m a very last minute type person sometimes…hope things work out for you and your son.
I can relate to the clothing issue… my husband will only wear sweat pants, a polo type shirt, and an under shirt and they all have to be black. The only color he wears is black! He told me it is the universal color and there is nothing wrong with it. His clothes are so worn out and he has new ones (black) but won’t wear them. During his psychotic episodes, he also throws things out. When I see him with a bag in his hand heading to the garbage can outside, I always have to check it later on at night. One time, he took all of my clothes and put them in the trunk of my mother in-laws car with absolutely no explanation whatsoever and I did not know where he put them until a few months later. I do not know what drives such bizarre behavior, but it is hard to live with. I feel I can’t leave anything around of importance for fear it will end up in the garbage. I can also relate to the “surprises” and the way they change his behavior. My husband never liked surprises and now if anything changes, it can tip off an episode. I need to have my knee operated on and I am going to be out of work for about a month and he keeps asking me everyday how my knee is and I tell him it hurts but its fixable, but he seems to be stressing over it. Even though I tell him it is no big deal, he stresses over it like its major and its not and I can’t seem to reassure him. I don’t know…
Wow, my ten-year-old did that a couple years ago. All of her clothes just disappeared. We looked high and lo and then suddenly she confessed - she’d thrown them all away. Now, weird things disappear all the time. Silverware, dishes, socks. I wasn’t sure it was possible that could be a symptom. Thank you for sharing!
Blockquote Isn’t it funny how we can look back on some of the little things that at the time we did question but dismiss in some ways.
I agree with this! I look back on the last 8 years and it seems so obvious. And I keep asking myself how did I not realize something was wrong with my child? How did I keep justifying and pretending my child was “normal”? Of course, the medical field is no help - they’re trying to diagnose my daughter as bipolar despite me sending them 10 typed pages of evidence listing incidents matching all the symptoms of schizophrenia. But now that I know, I can’t “unknow” it. I feel like I’m beating my head against a wall trying to get psychiatrists, therapists, and nurses to understand, most of who have never even witnessed a child with SCZ before, they’ve only read about it in a book or talked about it in a classroom. So frustrating!
One of the first things my son threw away were his set of Harry Potter books. I pulled them from the garbage can and donated them. He threw away a room purifier also. Seems like there were a few other items too. He hasn’t done that for awhile or not that I’ve noticed.
I have tried and tried to figure out what maturity level my son is at - he has life skills but where is his maturity level? My instructor responded that she will respond, she wants to check her old FtF manuals. She is quite thorough, she taught for many years before retiring to care for her son with scz.
She said it has been helping her to help me. She is grieving the loss of her wonderful son. She hasn’t taught the class in a few years. Their lives had moved on to that wonderful recovery place of nearly normal due to clozapine.
I have witnessed this in my 10-year-old. It started when the school said that she was acting like a five-year-old child and meowing in the classroom. She also frequently spends time with children much younger than herself and seems more comfortable with a younger age range of peers. She is also incapable of many tasks that a child her age should be able to manage and is very far behind both in maturity and cognition. It shows in her performance in the classroom as well as at home. Things she struggles with heavily include chores, homework, managing executive function requiring tasks, concentrating on a task, interpersonal relationships (lots of conflicts) and her responses to normal situations. These behaviors are way outside “normal” behavior and are more evident in the group style setting at school for us. For example, one boy caused a conflict in the classroom which caused a reaction throughout the classroom. My daughter hid under a table and was the only child to do so out of 25 kids. There were reactions across a spectrum and then there was her behavior which was significantly different.
When Jeb was in the hospital having his kidney transplant at age 27, the staff there wanted me to know that they were concerned that Jeb had “regressed”. They told me it was normal due to the stress of being ESRD -end stage renal disease. End stage meaning the obvious. I said "I KNOW he has regressed, he’s back to age 14, back in “I hate Dad” stage. Jeb had gotten past that stage years before as boys usually do. He and his dad had enjoyed each other’s company since late high school. This being rude to his dad hadn’t happened in years. Jeb actually ordered his dad to leave his hospital room at one point.
It was very difficult to get Jeb through the transplant process. He was not cooperative, slept during interviews, holed up sleeping in his bedroom at the hotel in between all the testing and appointments. The transplant people were puzzled as his kidney function numbers just weren’t that bad, bad enough for a transplant, but not sleeping all the time bad. They had to get me to sit with him through one of the interviews, they couldn’t sign off that they had given Jeb the info if he was asleep in the chair.
So, when Jeb had trouble at school his freshman year of high school - the first time ever he got grades lower than a B, was that “onset”? He was sleeping in class and couldn’t stay awake. He said the poor teaching was the problem. We switched him to a more challenging school with better teachers and he went back to good grades, hard work and being awake in class. Probably a coincidence, right? Maybe back then the bad cycles were just further apart.
This is hard for me, I’m a very last minute type person sometimes…hope things work out for you and your son.