So I won’t go into the entire backstory of everything just yet because it’s very long. A lot has happened in just one year. My mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and I believe a combination of bipolar. Not sure, we’ve only ever had my mothers permission for medical information release to the family once and that was with her first hospitalization that lasted for a week.
Anyways… This entire year has been complete hell for my family being completely unable to get my mother any help. I’m currently on anti depressants for situational depression and already suffered from anxiety before this started so I’ve tried so hard this last year not to unravel. I guess I’ve developed sort of an irrational fear of developing schizophrenia. My therapist and lots of others who have supported me through this says that my best outcome is that I have large amount of insight into the condition whereas my mother did not and does not. I feel like I’ve done enough research on genes and schizophrenia itself to know what it’s about, but I just feel like I have to create some kind of game plan for my loved ones in case something like this happens to me one day and I’m unable to have insight further down the road. How do you cope with this? This is also is not a daily fear of mine that effects my day to day activities it is usually just always resting in the back of my mind though 
What’s your age and gender? It happens typically at certain ages for males and females. It’s a neurodevelopmental disorder much like autism.
I’m a psychology student and I also have chronic paranoid schizophrenia.
@notmoses has bipolar with psychotic features or something like schizophrenia and is done with graduate school in psychology.
Here’s a good read about the prodromal inventory. Rather hard to digest for a non psych person but parts of it are just simply “do you experience these things?” on the second page. I can explain it in detail if you have questions.
Prodromal means you’re developing it.
**Your doctor is right. It is a crapshoot either way-but thats the way the world is. If you are worried, it might help you to go ahead and write out something "just in case" anything ever happened--like a will. that way, you wont feel so paralyzed and unable to do anything. Taking some kind of action always helps.
i am sorry about your mother. I was also put on antidepressants when my son was diagnosed. Glad you have some support. **
I’m a 21 year old female. But my mother is already 43, and she just got the diagnosis. I suspect that she has always had it lying under the surface but when the paranoid psychosis kicked in that’s when it couldn’t be hidden anymore. I actually am a psychology major myself, so I’m pretty familiar with these terms. I’ll check that out though!
you’re right, I think i’m just overanalyzing and should just go with whatever eases my anxiety about it. I have been debating on writing out a medical history for myself and my mothers medical history is already documented by me just in case I ever need to show the police. ( which happens quite often) Thank you, I’m very lucky to have as much support as I do. Too often, the family is shunned and the stigma behind the condition usually leads people who don’t understand to believe that it’s somehow the families " fault " that this is happening. Glad you got help, when your son was diagnosed. It was hard for me. I didn’t realize how depressed I was until I moved out of my parents house a couple of months ago. Our situation took a huge emotional toll on all of us.
21 female eh? You should be showing some oddities by now. Usually hits women close to 24 with funk leading up to it. In my experience, I had SERIOUS CRAP going on in my prodrome, then it went away for two years, then the schizophrenia hit me like a baseball bat. I was depressed and moody and agitated at 13, OCD 14-15, anorexic for six months at 16. Then from 16 1/2 to 18 1/2 I was ridiculously robust. I had crap like trauma as well from when I was a little kid.
If you have taken an abnormal psych class or psychopathology you should be able to tell if you are prodromal.
You probably aren’t.
I bet when you moved out, you had a chance to rest and think. probably just kind of fell out.
This disease is so hard for everyone concerned.
I know you are still processing all of this, but I hope through your rest you can come to a point of calm and rest. OO
Good Lord, why would anyone want to do that? Hahahahaha. Kidding aside, there’s a risk – especially at the undergrad level – of seeing monsters around every corner when one has some degree of capacity to see the monsters in others. I had to work through the contamination of my “new” mind by the anxieties in the “old” one.
The fact that you’re 21 and symptom-free is statistically positive, as you probably know. I will suggest trying to keep a damper on the autonomic stress and micro-inflammatory upshots in the limbic system I’ve seen in many who go on to masters and doctoral grinds. (In fact, I recommend going to a more non-research-oriented school – e.g. USC vs UCLA – to avoid becoming some research prof’s slave. Or at least knowing what the manipulations are all about at places like UCLA, UCSD and Stanford.)
Florid sz is heavily (statistically) influenced by stress during childhood & adolescence. Keep the stress to minimum, and one stands a better (statistical) chance of avoid the grim reaper. I know of numerous siblings who didn’t catch the crud because they were more “Type B” than “Type A” personalities, and/or just played better dodge ball in the family drama.