My husband was just diagnosed

My husband is 31and was just recently diagnosed with schizophrenia two nights ago at the er. He had been hearing voices for about 10years and has family history of it on both sides,so we knew it was bound to happen soon. About a week ago he became very paranoid and started losing concentration at work and home. He also started having visual hallucinations as well as the auditory. He’s not yet on medication, but we are going to see a psychiatrist in the area tomorrow with the help of a good friend who was diagnosed when he was a child and has more insight into the situation. I just found out yesterday at our first visit to the psychiatrist, that he had been hearing his best friend’s voice since shortly after his death exactly a year ago today. They had been best friends since he was 12 and his death impacted my entire family greatly as he was always seen as a brother to my husband, an uncle to our children and a good friend of mine since I was 6. The psychiatrist said that the timing of my husband’s episode seems like a reaction to today being the anniversary of that loss.
Is there any advice for me as his primary care giver to help make this episode, future episodes and the medication and therapy easier on not only myself, but my husband and our children who are both too young to really know what is going on. Our son is 9 and lives with his mother during the week, but we have him most weekends and our daughter is 3. We have been together for 7 years, known each other for 18 and have been married for 6. I love him more than anything in this life and want to do everything in my power to help him. But I was just recently diagnosed with depression and ehlers danlos syndrome, so it is hard for me to do most things, especially if they are physical. Any advice would be helpful. Thank you.

Welcome to the forum @KitLynn.

These links may help:

http://www.leapinstitute.org/ - under resources are free videos on using LEAP
LEAP is a way of communicating to build trust. Listen-Empathize-Agree-Partner.

http://dramador.com/ - Dr. Xavier Amador is a clinical psychologist whose brother had schizophrenia. He is the founder of the LEAP Institute. Wrote the book: I’m Not Sick I Don’t Need Help! Can buy from his website.

Search Xavier Amador on YouTube for more videos

http://ourhealthyminds.com/family-handbook/communication/Building-a-collaborative-relationship-leap.html
Building A Collaborative Relationship “LEAP”

Treatment Advocacy Center - under problems you will see anosognosia
Anosognosia looks like denial but is different.

Bayes for Schizophrenics: Reasoning in Delusional Disorders - LessWrong - helped my understand delusions

(May 26, 2010) Professor Robert Sapolsky finishes his lecture on language and then dives into his discussion about schizophrenia. He discusses environmental factors as well as genetic characteristics that could apply to people who are affected. He describes schizophrenia as a disease of thought disorder and inappropriate emotional attributes.

http://www.nami.org/ - National Alliance on Mental Illness.
http://www.schizophrenia.ca/ - Schizophrenia Society of Canada

Can also find some very useful information here:

Early Psychosis Treatment center information in these two links

http://www.raiseetp.org/sites/
http://psychosisprevention.org/get-involved/education-center/finding-treatment/

Psychiatric Treatment Centers affiliated with Medical Schools in the USA

This link may help you find a psychiatrist in your area

Thank you so much for all of the links for information! I will definitely be looking into all of them during my research.

If your husband understands the diagnosis and accepts it and the need for medication, you have a very good chance of improvement. It may take some time to find the combination of meds that works best for him. But he knows what its like to function “normally”, and hopefully with support from you and the incentive of returning to a fulfilling life with his family, he will make a great recovery.

He definitely understands, but has always thought he could deal with it so he just ignored it despite me repeatedly telling him he needs to get help before things got bad. Right now he is bouncing back and forth between being willing to do everything he has to to get things back to a comfortable level and letting the paranoia take hold and refusing help. It took me a half hour to convince him to go to the er two days ago and he only agreed because I promised that I would be right beside him and talk so he didn’t have to. He knows he needs help, but when his symptoms are really bad he’s apprehensive. Not at all in a violent way. He’s just scared that someone is going to hurt him and he’s terrified of the stigma. The receptionist at the er didn’t realize my mother came in with us and said that she knew he had to have just taken a bad hit of acid. Of course she waited to say this until after we had gone back, but my mother was very upset by this and went off on the woman for the comment. It’s so upsetting the way people dismiss or misunderstand schizophrenia and only makes it less likely that people will get the help they need.

@KitLynn Hi and welcome.

Can I ask you politely to make spaces in your text. Me among many have a really hard time redaing walls of text.

Like this. Make spaces. Much easier to read. I’d love to know what is on your mind

@Comatose I apologize for that. I’m using my phone and it doesn’t always cooperate with me.

I will try to figure out how to edit my posts from my phone to make it easier to read.

Do you mean it was the er receptionist who said your husband had just taken some bad acid? If so that is shocking. If she did say that I would report her.

Yes it was the er receptionist. I would have reported her, but I didn’t get her name and my mother was so angry, she didn’t think about it at the time.

@Comatose I could not find a way to edit my posts, so I hope that a reply to you with the text broken up helps. Thank you for the polite request and I will be more careful about my posts in the future.

Welcome!
Sounds like you may have to get some help in there for awhile until you can get back on your feet.
You will need a lot of support. NAMI.org has some good info, and you should be able to find a local support group. The more people on board the better.
Just my opinion, but maybe just tell your kids the truth in a way that they can understand.
Check back here often.

My parents are actually a huge help with this.

They got up in the middle of the night and my dad stayed with the kids while they slept and my mom spent half the night at the hospital with us even though she wasn’t allowed back while he was being seen.

I don’t drive and he can’t right now, so they are taking us to all of his appointments and babysitting for us when we need it.

They are amazingly supportive and helpful, so I have the help when I need it. But they can’t always be here.

With my joints being awful and always popping out of place on me it’s just hard sometimes.

Right now we’ve just told the kids that he’s sick and our daughter has made it her mission to “cheer him up.” which has been incredibly helpful for him.

I will look into support groups in the area. Thank you!

Welcome. I have recently found this forum and it is filled with wonderful, helpful people who have experience with schizophrenia.
The more you learn about the illness the better you will be able to deal with the inevitable challenges. Family to Family is an excellent and highly recommend course that will help you identify all aspects of understanding, helping with decisions & advocating for your loved one. I have a daughter who will be 29 on Friday and she suffered with the illness years before she was getting help with medications.

Family-to-Family

I am so glad you were able to find this place and that it has been so helpful for you!

I looked through a few of the discussions before joining and saw how incredibly helpful it would be and it definitely has been for me since joining this morning.

I will look into the Family to Family course. Thank you for your advice and I wish you and your family the best. And a very happy (early) birthday to your daughter!

I have two kids. Kids take a lot of energy even if I love them very much. It’s very good you parents can baby sit as much as they do. Be observant of how your husband feels. If everything is overwhelmin your kids might need to stay at granny’s for a couple of days.

I love that you have so much support around you. :slight_smile:

I am really lucky to have such a supportive family to help. :smile:

I have been making sure that I give him a break from the kids whenever he starts getting overwhelmed.