Just reaching out, please share stories

I just wanted to introduce myself and maybe get to know people in similar situations. I’ve been alone about this for years now, so would be good to hear some other stories.

I’ve been with my husband for about 8 years and only recently got to know that he has Schizophrenia.

Before this, he told me he suffered with depression. He decided to come clean a couple of months back when I found him during an “episode”.

I always thought before this that Schizophrenia meant that you had unique personalities disconnected from one another, but learned that this is not the case. It’s more about very different emotions, which somewhat forms personalities (his own words). He’s described 4 personalities to me. This was an eye opener to me. This explains why he was so different and changeable by day or even hour sometimes. It’s been very hard for me, as he could one night infuse about doing something the next day, then the next day he’d seem angry if I mention what he said the day before. Sometimes even “forget” things he said and then he’d blame me (I assume because he was trying to hide this).

He’s been seeing psychiatrists in his past, which I knew about, but he told me it was about his depression, in reality it was about his Schizophrenia.

Most didn’t understand him or help him, he found one in the end which he liked, but my husband retreated from seeing him eventually as he felt this person got too close. He has also been on drugs for this, but he stopped taking them due to him feeling like a shell of a human being. He told me all this a couple of months back.

I am still trying to digest all of this.

Would love to hear your stories or how you cope with having a loved one dealing with this.

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Hi Elena—
I have a son that was diagnosed with sz. He does not have multiple personalities—but hears voices and has a lot of different delusions.
Sounds like your husband stopped his medications due to side effects. This is common.
Take a look around this sight-check out some other threads here.

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You may have learned that SZ affects 1% of the population. So you are not alone! There is a lot of information on this site from varied perspectives. My first suggestion is always to try to locate a National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI.org) Family Support Group in your area. Then take their Family-to-Family class if available (many should be starting soon) offered without charge. (This is the best thing I have done.) Or at least look at the information on their website. There are other good sites for information, also. Some I use are: Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, Treatment Advocacy Center, PeteEarley.com, National Center for Biotechnology PubMed (this site has excellent medical articles that you can search for on any subject using the PubMed part of the site).

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