How can I know what someone who is living with schizoaffective really wants if they aren’t on medicine?
How can I tell the difference if my spouse is lying or if it’s just his disorganized thought process?
He says a lot of things that contradict and I get confused trying to figure it out.
How long does it take for delusions to go away? He has has some of these delusions for a very long time.
I think it’s more important to focus on how he feels and use the details of his delusions to find ways of empathizing with him to gain trust which can be leveraged to move toward measures to improve his life and your relationship.
Details of delusions have a tendency to shift, because delusions are often reactionary thinking. A voice might say one thing, and then another, or he might hear something on tv or radio or you said or who knows? It’s a bit like a detective story where the detective follows the evidence and the plot shifts as he follows the “evidence”.
Delusions may never completely go away, but may fade or go dormant for a while, but then pop up again. I like to say it’s a bit like squalls or storms in the weather or music with recurring themes with variations that fade in and out or repeat or recur. When talking to my brother and he’s stressed, I say he goes through his “greatest hits”. In my case, my delusions faded or evolved over time, but sometimes returned in times of stress or periods of poor medication compliance or some other trigger.
For me hallucinations and delusions faded as my real world became more interesting and compelling. One thing pushes out another. Medication can help in these efforts, but it takes work to pull focus away and avoid the mental distractions.
I have a feeling that violent people with sz have also psychopathy, in other words, violence is is not part of sz, it’s a character trait. Treatments help with sz symptoms, but very little with psychopathy traits.
At Nami’s Family to Family they teach that the best predictor of violence with scz was being violent before (without) having scz. I think they agree with you- it’s a separate issue that can cause problems when you add scz into the mix.
My 21 year old son was hospitlilized a year ago in august for hearing voices, tactile and auditory hallucinations. Since he has been released he has been taking his medication that is prescribed. they have changed it several times and although he doesn’t have tactile hallucinations he still hears voices. He has been intherapy for a year. I am glad he is following all the things he needs to follow but the voices are still there and he still just spends most of his time at home and is getting very discouraged about his progress. I am looking for suggestions to help him. Will he always have to live with the voices or do we need to find new therapy for him?
It’s good that your son is adherent to his therapy. You don’t say what sort of therapy he is engaged in, I’ll assume it’s likely antipsychotic medication and little else. While this can reduce hallucinations and aberrant thinking, it often does not completely eliminate it.
I would consider CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) if available to you, or other supportive directed talk therapy. I’d also look into psychosocial therapy— I pursued art and music and eventually became involved with musical and other theatre. Regular physical exercise, especially exercise that involves patterning and mirroring of movement like walking, running, aerobics and dance has many benefits. I found taking voice lessons helped with listening skills and honed my concentration skill in conversation.
Activities in social settings in measured doses builds up tolerance for the stimulus of varied environments and builds social skills. This is difficult to do during the ongoing pandemic, but where possible face-to-face communication has benefits.
Disclaimer: While I am a part-time caregiver of my brother and father with SMI, I was diagnosed with SZA over thirty years ago. I’m an advocate of appropriate drug treatments for SMI, but I feel they are incomplete treatments and additional CBT, supportive talk and psychosocial therapies are helpful where feasible. Any drug advice is from personal experience or research and not a substitute for qualified Psychiatric care.
I’m pretty sure this has been discussed somewhere here before and I apologize for that beforehand if it’s repetitious.
I’m curious if anybody who suffers/has suffered the disease experiences memory loss of crisis incidents. Do you remember later on what happened during your crisis phases or episodes, or when somebody recounts events for you are they simply not in your memory bank?
I remember pretty much everything, I even took some notes afterward for my shrink. I definitely have a different perspective than other witnesses, but we agree on the basic events.
Granted this is a sample of one, but from what I’ve read on the DX forum, most of the people who post about such things have similar experiences. For me it’s a little bit like watching yourself as if you are part of or in a movie. Then again, I’ve similar experiences when drinking or stoned. I rarely forget such events unless I’m unconscious. My brother often forgets events, but he’s an alcoholic so he’s usually black-out drunk during events.
I know other forum members report that some of their charges forget events, but I’ve never experienced it or had other people with straight SZ or SZA report otherwise. Many are embarrassed by some of the things they have done, so there’s a possibility of feigning amnesia to save face.
My son’s dilution is to live in the wilderness “off grid” he calls it. We live in the desert so it is quite a hard feat and not very realistic. It is hard to let him just load up and wander around. He won’t take his meds and says we are the mentally ill ones. We are going on 4 years now since he was diagnosed and put in a mental hospital for 9 months. He did good while on his meds, but it has been 1 1/2 since he has taken them and is just getting worse. Any suggestions on how to steer him to get help? When I mention it I become enemy #1!
To start, stop talking about getting him help and start listening closely to your son, how he feels the way he does and why. Do not contradict or “correct” him. Tell him you care about him, and that you are concerned about his safety “off-the-grid”. If you prefer to have him at home medicated or not, tell him he’s welcome to return home should he leave.
It’s not uncommon to want to live this way. If you are familiar with the story of “The Spitfire Grill” that’s a fictional example, and there are plenty of real-life examples. A likely motive is a change of environment away from society will reduce stress and thus his symptoms and society’s reaction to them (stigma), but the reality is he’s just trading one set of stressors for others.
I had a period a month or two before I returned to live with my parents and started my recovery, where I spent a couple nights in the desert near an urban area. At the time I thought people were following and surveilling me, and getting away seemed a way to control the situation, but it didn’t last. I also lived a truck for many months prior to this and concealed it from my parents. This was in my prodrome, before I was florid. It’s a bit like the trope of the adolescent running away from home. I used to dream about living in the woods in high school to escape society and my problems which seemed intertwined. I came to realize that problems only get bigger this way, and an elemental life on the fringes of society is lonely and difficult.
When the pandemic eases, I suggest you join NAMI if you aren’t a member and attend the Family to Family course. In the meantime, read Dr. Amador’s book about communicating with loved ones with anosognosia (lack of insight or awareness of the disease). The title is “I am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help“.
Once you finish the book, attending online LEAP training helps cement the concepts. The question and answer section is probably the best part, so it’s best to have specific questions ready before you go in and take notes. There are new sessions scheduled in September and October. See the LEAP Institute web site for details: https://lfrp.org/online-trainings
There are some introductory LEAP videos on the site, but the following TEDx video is a good introduction:
Disclaimer: While I am a part-time caregiver of my brother and father with SMI, I was diagnosed with SZA over thirty years ago. I’m an advocate of appropriate drug treatments for SMI, but I feel they are incomplete treatments and additional CBT, supportive talk and psychosocial therapies are helpful where feasible. Any drug advice is from personal experience or research and not a substitute for qualified Psychiatric care.
@chieraj89, voices are a tough one. My son takes meds (or did, he became intermittent about meds and got psychotic) and still hears voices. I’ve taken it on as a project to find out what it’s all about. How does it happen neurologically? Does anything other than AP (anti-psychotic drugs) work?
People, from what I’ve learned, do live long-term with voices. The voices can be supportive, but often tear the person down. I don’t know how people live with this. If I were hearing voices yelling at me 24x7 I’d certainly not be able to function.
In my case, I took ego stands with my “voices” and negotiated with them. They weren’t “allowed“ to follow me to work, and for the most part they kept up the bargain. With practice you get better at dividing your attention, as I got better at it I generally only had trouble in noisy environments and environments where foreign languages were spoken.
In my case, they don’t yell— it’s more subtle than that. It’s like trying to listen to a program fading in and out on an AM radio at night when distant stations overlap because of “skip”. And they aren’t 24/7, of course, unless things are really really bad and we can’t sleep, which means a hospital stay is imminent. You really have no choice but to adapt as best you can.
@Maggotbrane, is this what it sounds like: What's it like to hear voices? - YouTube ?
In my experience not so much. Far too many overlapping voices. Most simulators are overly dramatic, same with most movie depictions.
There’s a good review of such simulators here:
Disagreed. Different schizophrenics have different levels of severity of hallucinations and delusions. During my onset, I would say the schizoophrenia simulation was pretty accurate. They died down a lot when I am on anti-psychotics but I would still get a lot of whispers during breakthroughs. I do get supportive/grandiose hallucinations and delusiosn also.
@Maggotbrane, @Lirik I think you both confirmed the schizophrenia simulations reviewer’s main point about the simulations – that they had some truth about them, i.e. the intrusive voices are real, but are generally not as intrusive and loud as what was depicted.
Some of the videos showed people in the midst of psychosis and 99% of the time it’s not nearly that bad.
Probably people who are medication compliant find life better – i.e. not as scary – being on meds.
Edited to remove my experiences with LSD because that would simulate psychosis, which is not the general state of mind.
@caregiver1 bear in mind the reviewer is diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder as I am. Our experiences may be less pronounced than others.
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