Thanks for coming to this post. Definitely would be helpful as some, like my son do not have much insight, and hides how he is feeling and what is occuring.
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Yes, perhaps someone like him can start groups, for socializing some, it is so sad to se the isolation. My sons only friends are some computer gamers, and I think he might have lost those now, the last time he was hospitalized. I dont think they knew before of his schitzophrenia, but he may have told him this time he went to mental hospital and scared them away.
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Hello @Headspark,
My brother has had schizophrenia since he was 21. He is now 57. I just got him into a nursing home
because my dad died and my mom has dementia and can no longer take care of him. He has been non compliant with meds for the past 15 years. Now he is on 4mg of resperidal.
My questions for you:
Do the voices ever go away or do they just get more quiet. My brother was never high functioning like you are. He was able to hold jobs for the first 10 years of his life but not consistently.
I feel my brother has no emotional attachment to me at all. Is that the disease or can he be completely detached?
I cannot ask him any questions about what is going on in his head, or he feelings. He will just stop replying to me. Is that the disease also?
Are the voices mean?
Thanks for coming on this thread.
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Hello update on my daughter they did take her off of the medication that seemed to be causing some problems and even though its only been 3 days, It seems that she can stay in a conversation a little longer which is awesome. And she doesn’t seem to be crying as often, today she said she was having a good day. She hasn’t said that in a while. The medication was Welbutrine, she was only on it for about 5 weeks they upped it after 2 weeks and thats when it got really bad. So calling and talking to her case worker about 3 times did work.
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Now they have her on Zyprexa? She is acting kind of angry but its only been 2 days. She is also on 3 month shot of (my mind has gone blank) and Prozac. I hope the Zyprexa doesn’t make her angrier she is cussing out the world right now. I understand her anger and she doesn’t trust anyone at the ranch so she won’t talk to them. Its a mess but at least she has a group to watch over her right now. I work and would not be able too. My quest to you headspark is what did you find would help you get through things, Family, friends, reading, exercise, being by yourself or with others???
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Thank you for being here! I am realizing this with my brother. I can’t really 100% empathize with him because there is just a limit on my actual understanding of his experience.
I offer a lot of support to my brother by listening to him…would you say it’s helpful to just listen to his delusions or to try and steer the conversation on more practical things?
I realize it’s out of my control to “fix him”. He’s extremely smart and a genius musician. I think his diagnosis could be a great gift if he learns to channel it into more positive endeavors. Instead, he self-medicates by using meth and because he’s not in control of his delusions, he’s burnt many bridges, gets kicked out of housing/programs, etc for being violent and antagonistic.
I suppose my question is…what kind of support would have been most valuable to you when you were at your lowest point?
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Wow, your persistence is amazing. How do you keep your ambition and determination? I suppose that’s what I want to help convey to my brother. Determination to not give up. Did you always have that? Or something that you strengthened over time?
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My daughter is 22 a month and half ago she was living with her boyfriend and her 3 dogs she was getting her real estate online and was on a diet … she called me one night talking about going to jail and just not making any sense I thought she was on drugs which is nothing like her so I brought her home to watch her and try and bring her down from it but it was not drugs I spent a whole week with her and things just got worse she stop eating and drinking fluids no matter what I tried she stop talking and wouldn’t sleep I didn’t know what to do I took her to er twice but she is an adult and wouldn’t allow them to do anything finally I got a mental warrant for her to get help once she was admitted to a hospital they would not tell me anything she was released to her father and I have not seen her since he does not allow me to visit or call … but a friend saw her at store and says she is not talking and is medicated like she is lost … I’m scared she will stay in that state is that possible
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I think might be the diseace, thats how my one son is…sad…they may hide it…and its like a devil is talking to them and telling them to not trust us…my son when 12 said he saw devils in our yard always telling us to hush…then at 16 had psychosis , hearing voices, out of it…it does seem like a devil took them away…my son 25…im.worried about where he ca go if something happens to me…i
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Hello, apologies for the late reply. I have a new job, I have been busy. Lack of emotion is extremely common. It’s called “The flat effect”. I experience that a little, the meds can blunt emotions further. Don’t take it personally, it’s an unfortunate symptom schizophrenia.
For me the voices never went away or changed without medication. I also had visual and tactile (feeling) hallucinations, and I was delusional as well. I consider myself one of the lucky few who has become symptom free on meds. I use to be on Olanzapine but the side effects were bad. I tried switching to Abilify but it didn’t work and I started seeing floating ghost like heads. Later on I tried reducing my Olanzapine because of side effects and when I dropped the dose to low I became delusional. I had to get off Olanzapine though because of the side effects. I had 2 doctors recommend Lurasidone (Latuda) to me so I switched to that and lived happily ever after.
He may not want to talk about it for several reasons. Reliving these awful experiences by talking about them isn’t fun. In my experience, and this is the BIG ONE, when I tell people what I experience they write me off as a crazy person, the stigma around this disease is horrible, I’ve spoken to a lot of people about it, but I haven’t told very many people absolutely everything I have experienced unless I know they will accept me for me, and have the ability to recognize these were symptoms I had, but it is not who I am. Another reason is that he may not be able to fully articulate what he is experiencing, I know I had trouble trying to describe what I was saying in a way someone who has never experienced it could understand, for example, when I said earlier I saw floating heads, I can only describe them as seeing them out in front of me, they where translucent, the looked like the where made out of pure energy, but I saw them with my mind, not with my eyes, but it wasn’t picturing something in my head like a guided meditation, it was out in front of me. I also saw these ghost like images shoot out of peoples faces. I don’t know if someone who hasn’t experienced that can understand what I am saying, but that is the best I can describe it.
You’re welcome 
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I see you anonymized your account but I’ll answer for others. In all honestly no support would be valuable while psychotic. Everyone around me had a clue what it’s like to have the experiences associated with schizophrenia so all the advice I got was mostly useless because in order for them to help me they need to understand, even doctors, while they’ve heard these kinds of things hundreds of times, they themselves have not experienced it. It wasn’t until I was on meds that my symptoms went away and I felt better. After they put me on meds they kept me in the mental health facility for 5 months and there were daily classes were they teach you all about mental health, psychology and stuff like that. That was informative and helpful in understanding my condition.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) was a HUGE in helping me get my thinking straight, and then the rest fell into place. Once I recognized how I was thinking and how to fix it my outlook changed. I bought a self help CBT program. I took a course on how to be a CBT practitioner then applied it to myself, and I took an outpatient program at the hospital that discussed CBT. Others also swear by a related therapy called DBT but I never got into it,
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Sorry for the late reply. I got a new job and have been busy, Getting caught up with this thread now.
I can’t answer that question. I don’t think anyone can. The human brain is the most complicated thing in the Universe and so much can go wrong with it. They you start adding man made chemicals (medications) into it and trying to predict what will happen is impossible. I have had good and bad experiences with medications, and everyone is unique. No two schizophrenics have the same experiences, both in terms of their symptoms, but also in how they react to the various medications that are available.
It’s an awful disease, but it’s nobodies fault. Don’t feel bad about yourself if you can’t help her. Many schizophrenics are “treatment resistant” and in awful shape. It’s just one of those things you file under “life sucks sometimes”. I know it’s hard watching a loved one suffer but don’t burden yourself with it. If you can find small opportunities to help take them and just do the best you can, but don’t beat yourself up over it.
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Hello,
Wow well done on improving your physical and mental health so dramatically, that’s incredibly hard to achieve. My husband took olanzapine for a couple of years and it really increased his weight and physical health too. The health care staff kept saying it wasn’t the medicine and he needed to live a healthier lifestyle, but it early was the olanzapine from my perspective. He takes something else now.
I wanted to ask you a question if that is ok? You seem very confident describing your symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. My husband and I are currently separated and can’t seem to reconcile our different perspectives. He was hospitalised a couple of months ago for the second time and about 6 years ago the first time.
He can’t accept that he was extremely paranoid and delusional and is adamant he should bot have been in a hospital and blames me for it. His medicine is increased by quite a bit so he is stable and gets by day to day but still holds all his beliefs that to our problems. I guess what I am asking is, in your experience if stronger meds aren’t helping with the core issues, is this a lost cause. We just keep going in circles and having the same arguments but do love each other. I won’t promise him I won’t call the police again if I feel I need to but of course he doesn’t agree that they should have been called and that he should have gone to hospital.
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Those health care staff don’t know what they are talking about. It was definitely Olanzapine causing weight gain. if you visit the patient forum this website has there are a lot of people on Olanzapine and virtually all of them are way overweight… It increases appetite and kills your metabolism. I kept gaining weight and plateaued at 240lbs. Diet and exercise had no effect on me. I tried getting a gym membership, watching my diet, bought a mountain bike to ride around the neighbourhood, walked my dog. It didn’t matter what I did I remained fat. Once I started lowering my dosage, I was on 40mg by the way, I started losing weight. As I lowered my dose and quit my natural metabolism came back and the weight just melted away on its own. I’ve lost about 80lbs just from quitting olanzapine, no change to my diet or exercise.
Oh yeah, the weight gain affected my physical health severely. I developed diabetes and had really bad A1Cs of 8-9 (for reference a normal blood sugar level is below 5.5). If you know anything about diabetes, an out of control blood sugar level like mine can lead to a lot of different health problems. My cholesterol and triglycerides levels were very high which put me at risk for heart attack and stroke. I had a big fat stomach. My doctor said my fat stomach was putting stress on my heart which could lead to a heart attack. So it was actually a very dangerous medication to be on, life threatening. I live in Canada and there was a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer of olanzapine. We won! But I would gladly trade in the little money we got if it meant I was no longer diabetic. The only good news is that on my new medication, called Latuda, my A1C is in the low 6s or in the “pre-diabetic” range, and as long as it remains below 7 I should be okay.
yeah, sure, you can ask me a question.
It’s not necessarily about “stronger meds”, everyone reacts differently so you just have to try different ones and hopefully you find something that helps with tolerable side effects, or if you’re very lucky, no side effects.
Olanzapine is one of the strongest antipsychotic medications and I was on a very high dose (40mg), for reference the manufacturer says a maximum of 20mg. I believe I was over medicated to be honest.
I am now on 60mg of Latuda which is a weaker antipsychotic medication and I am doing much better. 60mg of Latuda is probably the equivalent of perhaps 10mg of Olanzapine, give or take a little.
When I was reducing my olanzapine, once I got down to 10mg my delusions came back, but I wanted to get off that crap because it was so bad for me. Both my doctor and my psychiatrist had mentioned Latuda so I gave it a shot and it worked out great.
I’m obviously proof that this notion you need “stronger meds” or “higher doses” isn’t necessarily true because I’ve done the opposite and improved dramatically. It’s about the right med and the right dose and the only way to figure that out is to experiment.
As for your husbands condition, there are plenty of people with schizophrenia that don’t recover completely, that is quite common, sometimes they only get partial relief from meds, and sometimes the meds don’t help at all, known as “treatment resistant”.
When I was last in the hospital I was delusional, but I was able to recognize it as a delusion. I told the psychiatrist that from a clinical point of few what I believed would be considered a delusion, but it still felt very real to me regardless. He was happy I had insight into my condition. The first time I was in the hospital I had no insight into my condition. I thought everything I believe was absolutely true. So I learned from experience. This was during the period when I was transitioning from olanzapine to latuda. I had lowered my olanzapine too much and ran into problems and ended up in the hospital. Shortly after that I started latuda and a few months later I was feeling better again.
I don’t know what his delusional beliefs were but I can tell you mine. I thought I was being mind controlled. i was convinced my mother was mind controlling me and others were using their minds to attack me with their psychic powers based on all the weird hallucinations I was having. And no one could convince me I was wrong about being mind controlled. it was only after I was on meds that my hallucination went away that I realized I wasn’t being mind controlled. But as I mentioned earlier when I lowered my dose too much I became delusional again, but this time I recognized it as a delusion even thought it felt just as real, only because I had already had the experience of meds solving the problem.
Your husband may be doing better, but because his problem was never solved completely by meds like mine was it may be hard for him to recognize his beliefs are not true. And that is why you are probably always getting into arguments, he hasn’t had a reprieve from it so he is still convinced he is right.
Even though I don’t have any symptoms, I can think back to when I was sick and remember everything. I don’t feel like I’m being mind controlled anymore, thanks to meds, but on some level that experience and belief will always be there, way in the background.
Delusional people can’t be rationalized with. That’s why they need meds. I doubt there is much you can say that will make him admit he has a problem. He has to come to that conclusion himself like I did. What doctors look for is “insight” and it seems like your husband lacks that. Without insight into his condition I doubt he will ever stop arguing…sorry to say.
You’re not in a unique situation though. If it makes you feel any better, or at least like you’re not alone, I got into a lot of arguments and fights with my mom accusing her of mind controlling me when I was delusional and until i was on meds, the arguments were ongoing. So what you’re experiencing, while unpleasant, is “normal” for someone with this condition. It was only meds that helped me.
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Thank you so much for taking the time to write this to me.
I just feel heartbroken because he will does seem to lack insight and he has been on three different anti-psychotics now. He refuses to anti-depressants to help with mood and sleep but does take an immediate anxiety relief if he needs it. Whenever he meets another person ( other than me) he needs one.
The healthcare workers here in the UK never really believed me after the first hospitalisation or seemed to think it was important when I kept telling them his delusions, beliefs and paranoia never went away properly. The things he believed changed and fluctuated day to day but were always there. I guess they only helped if he was in a ‘deep psychosis’ where he was causing problems with the public or voicing it outside private conversations with me. I spent most of my free time trying to act as his support worker / counsellor. His world is a scary place and he is always being persecuted by someone or something. There are always plots to sabotage or assassinate him.
Now I have left he is getting more help but I don’t know how it will last before they discharge him again. I just wish I could make him happy again and I don’t think I can. If he works it triggers psychosis and paranoid delusions about his colleagues trying to kill him, if he stays unemployed he has too much in his own head and becomes paranoid and delusional and at risk of internet scams. I even tried pushing him down the part time work route hoping for a happy medium.
I can’t believe this illness has done all this to the man I love it is so upsetting. Friends and family are frustrated as to them it’s either 1 you love him and stay married and put up with it or 2 you divorce him and have nothing more to do with him. People just don’t understand it’s more complicated than that.
By the way I am glad you all won that case. For some reason where I love olanzapine is still the first go to medicine when someone is sectioned. I think the health care staff know it make you gain weight but they all won’t admit it like some weird secret pact
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Hello and thanks for starting this … so helpful. I have a lot of questions but no one gave me an answer for one question: why my Son 15 years old laughing by himself for no reason, started long time ago before diagnosed and with out medications, when I ask why you laugh his answer was always " I don’t know" … all doctors said it is a symptom, even when he is on Medication… Can you PLEASE explain it to me if you know, please.
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I ask that to my daughter also she will just start laughing and I will ask her what’s so funny and it’s usually the voices she is talking to makes her laugh. She usually anymore just says, its because I’m happy. She doesn’t like to talk about the voices usually and to be honest I’m okay when she just says she is happy. But that is my daughter at bad times she will get this meniacle creepy laugh, I don’t like that but it is usually having something to do with the voices. Just listening to her tone and the cadence of her speech I can tell how she is doing anymore. She will get a certain rhythm in her speech when it is really bad episode. I hate it when she talks like that it actually will make me sick to my stomach because I know what it means. Sorry I made this about me uggghh! Is the laughing maybe a sign of mania??
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Thank you for sharing this.
Hi, my 21yo son was just dx with schizophrenia (finally after 2+ years of rollercoaster hospital visits and meds for all kinds of things). He had very severely traumatic abuse from his other parent as a child, around 8yo from what he’s told me, I did not know of the abuse until he remembered it over 2 years ago, that was when he had his first psychotic episode and hospitalization. What I’m wondering is if therapy will help him. He’s tried therapy in the past but would always report weird behavior by the therapist, but it always sounded more like his perception and not something actaully bad in reality. If he’s being treated properly for the schizophrenia is it possible that therapy may help him? It’s all a bit confusing for me.
He also is struggling with substance abuse and could use outpatient support in that area. This last episode just a few weeks ago he was drinking heavily and smoking lots of cannabis. He recommited to avoiding these during his last stay in the hospital and I feel very good about the medications he’s currently on as he snapped out of the relapse so quickly that even the doctor was surpised and shocked. I feel like the most important thing is for his schizophrenia to be stable, without that any therapy or outpatient rehab seems pointless. Don’t know if you can speak to outpatient rehab? In the past he’s been very suspicious of everyone involved. Before this last relapse he said everyone involved is only nice to him because they want to take advantage of him. Bear in mind he said that when he didn’t have a dx or treatment.
I have more questions.
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You wrote that you were on disability. I’m a bit afraid he may need to be on disabilty at some point. He’s okay right now and he’s almost always been able to work, but I have no idea what the criteria is for the disability but want to be aware in case it would be warranted in the future. Can you speak to that at all?
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Isolation: he’s isolated himself so much, and his siblings are a bit fearful and standoffish. I know they just don’t know what to do. Myself and his stepdad are the only two people he’s allowed to share in this journey with him. He seems lonely at times. He has made some friends at work this time, and this last relapse he didn’t ghost them and quit but contacted them from the hosptial and is allowing them to be a part of his recovery. They are so happy to have him stay and want to help him in anyway they can. Is isolating oneself a part of schizophrenia? Otherwise it could be due to the severe abuse he suffered from his other parent causing him to not trust others? Maybe both?
That’s probably enough for now. Thank you for any insight you can offer.
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Hi, I am new to this forum, my partner (who is 48 yrs old) was just recently diagnosed with Schizophrenia in the past few months. He has been having lots of episodes where he is hearing voices and I have been in/out of the hospital now 3 times over the past 2 months because of the condition. I don’t believe we have yet found the right Dr/medication to help get the situation under control. As of this minute my partner is admitted to the hospital and I feel like I am going to need to find a treatment center that he can go to for a few months. I believe that this may be the only way we can find the right medication and treatment that might have a good chance of succeeding.
Is there any recommended places here in the United States that is good and is covered by Insurance? I am feeling a bit overwhelmed because my life literally has been turned upside down over the past 4 months and I’m struggling to stay afloat here.
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