After I was diagnosed I gained insight rather fast. For me it was just as matter of months of being in denial before gaining insight. No disrespect intended but obviously lack of insight is not permanent for everybody as plenty of people gain insight. But I have heard of people going for years without insight. But I am pretty sure that there is no set time for everybody, it can be a different period of time for everybody; from one day to ten years and everything in between.
It can be hard not to resent the medications. They weaken you dramatically. In spite of my vast experience there is still a little voice that tells me I don’t need the med’s. I think it is that way with most sz’s on med’s. However, I have seen enough people get off their med’s and mess up to know I have to take them. I’ve messed up enough myself to know. Still, there is that little voice in my head …
I have been put on medication in hospital as well 4 or so times.
It is the only thing that ever worked.
I have no idea what can make people compliant apart from realising that one has schizophrenia and taking meds to stop it.
i had to get very bad and be hospitalised for a long time especially because i was bulimic, it took a long time and i needed injections to get better.
I was throwing up because i wanted to lose weight. so the meds needed to be injected as a depot.
I also went off meds because i wanted to be better than this illness. accepting it completely was such a long hard road, i just had so much self stigma and didn’t want to accept it.
insight always came for me if i got well
Oh yeah, I definitely have that little voice. Not like a hallucination, but just a rogue thought process, telling me I’m fine, that I don’t need the meds, that all my symptoms are my own doing and I could stop them at any time. It’s really bad when I’m having a rough day and my friends and family have to keep me safe and relatively stable, because there’s that little voice telling me that I’m making it all up. But I understand that this is fairly common among people with sz and other mental disorders, the brain just can’t accept that there’s actually anything wrong with it. So I ignore that voice, stay on my meds, and try to keep myself healthy.
Medication and therapy are both important to gaining insight. In my experience, it is very difficult to notice when perception and thinking changes, but quite easy to notice in hind site after treatment has done its thing. Everybody is different, but it’s certainly not unlikely that your loved one will gain insight at some point in his or her treatment. Stay strong!
Cheers
With my daughter sometimes she has good insight about some things, and other times she doesn’t. The most interesting thing is that she can be VERY insightful about other people-which gives me hope that there are factors there that contribute and will contribute to her gaining better and better insight about herself. If I bring something about her to her attention, sometimes I have to tell her what I think multiple times, or in different ways before she “gets it.” For example, with her frustration-she could not even recognize or admit when she was frustrated, which was often and explosive. Once I finally got her to recognize it she could take steps to correct it, and she never “forgot” it. She also never realized she did the whole “flight of thoughts” thing either, but when I pointed it out now she is aware and tries in conversation to follow a more linear path.
One does not have to have sz to have trouble with insight of course. I have had so many “duh” moments in my life,like “How could I have not seen that about myself?” Other people go through their entire lives without insight in a way that is almost schizophrenic, and that’s called denial. I do think like anything else, practice makes perfect, and some can learn over time or gain better insight, or to hold onto gained insight over time.
I think it takes time to get insight. SOmetimes months, sometimes a year, sometimes quicker but it does come. Much Love. Karl.
Thanks everyone. I wish each and everyone of you the best. Knowing our loved one, still has no insight has been heart breaking. It would be nice if there was a time period. This cruel illness takes away everything for the ill and their family members . Knowing that there is no cure is the worst feeling when my family member is so young and the worry is always going to be there. If it was any other illness the person would willingly take medication. Sending positive thoughts to everyone.
you should take a holiday if you can for a week or so to help get some recovery time and peace. Trust me schizophrenics are able to look after themselves. In my opinion they have great survival skills. Take a holiday if you can.
The only reason this makes me smile is… there have been times I’ve listened to people in my support group and was able to tell them that they aren’t making sense, they aren’t doing well… they have all four wheels off the rails…
but then when I am starting to slide and they say it to me… I’m shocked. What ever do you mean? It makes perfect sense… how can you not understand???
I hate to say a lot of my insight is hindsight. I’m better now then when I was… but I have a lot to keep working on.
The contrast from Schizophrenia should actually exercise your intellect to eventually becoming more insightful than you had been previously.
Also, there is a little truth to everything. Not all suspicions are ‘paranoid’ but they can be grossly overexaggerated by your imagination. You’re friends may not ‘all be out to get you’ but at the same time they may not be as there for you as you would like to think.
Everyone has their own type of crazy. Don’t grow too emotionally dependent and on any living person during this existence. The various insanities have made more people flakey and wayward than what you would realize.
At the beginning, had insight; I knew something was terribly wrong with my thinking, but then after being mistreated and two big breaks later, I can’t detect when I’m going to get sucked in by my delusions andstart truly believing/ living them. But I remember when I regained insight, and could participate in therapy, it was about four months after going on my current medication. I was very confused, I had a deadline for one major delusion that I formulated in hospital, it didn’t happen and then, I started listening.
I went two years without adequate medication, I was on meds, but atypically don’t work for me. The doctors didn’t believe me, until my current nurse did an assessment and it’s obvious I’m schiz in those five pages, I hate reading it, seeing my minds work in a few pages. So I think that’s contributed, to why I can’t see loss of insight coming,
It takes time, I think with time and my nurse helping me to recognise when I’m becoming too stressed or showing early signs of losing insight. There are ways. I’m learning them.
I med compliant, when I last went off them, I didn’t sleep much for about a month and a half, I became too close to hospital or suicide, it was my last straw. I don’t function enough on meds, so off meds, my world became too dark, I can’t even describe it, it’s like going under water and only seeing/hearing horror. I got tired so I’ve been med compliant ever since.
It takes something to make you compliant. The last time I went off meds is because I thought it was society forcing me into its rules when I don’t belong in its rules, I got angry that I had to take meds so people think I’m normal or make me act normal. It’s hard. It has to come from you, everyone telling me I had to take my meds or I’d go to hospital didn’t work, in the end I came to the conclusion I didn’t want to live that way, and give meds a chance “maybe they will stop this” is what I repeated to myself before taking a dose, that’s what worked for me, I still do it as I take my evening pills by myself most of the time now.
But to answer your question shortly; no I don’t have insight about 60% of the time but there is 40% insight; I make the most of it and challenge big time 
.
Take care,
Meg.
How ill were you?
My friend has been in involuntary treatment for a week now. They have nit properly started a treatment yet since they’re investigating what is wrong.
He is sooo delusional. He thinks he is a big person, that god has made him so. And he basically thinks this us a set up that he is there, someone is messing with him and he is un no need of treatment and that there are cameras in his room.
He seems to be very cheerful believing all of this. He is not paranoid or show signs of fear.
I pray to God he will reach insight.
@Solid I was delusional and paranoid as hell. I believed I was Jesus. I thought that everyone was plotting against me. Everyone was following me. I believed that there was a tracker fit to my vehicle. I believed that there was hidden cameras everywhere. The story goes on and on. At first I also wasn’t scared and tried by all means to catch these people red handed. I also installed hidden cameras everywhere. I drive a different route home each day to make it difficult for them to follow me. I really don’t want to go through all the detail. I finally landed up in my pdoc’s office. I just couldn’t take the emotional agony anymore.
No. Medication stabilizes emotions via reduction of pounding on the autonomic nervous system. Insight comes from psychotherapy. BUT, if a pt. is psychotic, psychotherapy should not be attempted until the pt. is medicinally stabilized.
Suggestions:
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Get a copy of this book and read it. Have your family read it, too.
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Schizophrenia-6th-Edition-Family/dp/0062268856 -
If he or she needs a professional intervention, tell me where you live, and I will get back to you with leads to those services.
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Get properly diagnosed by a board-certified psychopharmacologist who specializes in the psychotic disorders. One can find them at…
Find Psychiatrists, Psychiatric Nurses - Psychology Today -
Work with that p-doc to develop a medication formula that stabilizes your symptoms sufficiently so that you can tackle to the psychotherapy that will disentangle your thinking from reality effectively. The best of the therapies for that currently include…
DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing -
the even newer somatic psychotherapies like…
SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia -
or standard CBTs, like…
REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
Standard CBT – http://www.beckinstitute.org/what-is-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/About-CBT/252/
But you reached insight. He is there now, he went by though. I just hate the fact he has no insight while being in there. Breaks my heart and makes me anxious thinking about what is to come. Will they just let him go when lacking insight and refusingto take meds, will they force him in outpatient testamente like give him injections, will he come out and be better or worse? Lord have mercy : (
I menat
*Force
*Treatment