My husband has been having up and down delusions and has been making all sorts of accusations for the last couple of weeks up until this morning but now he seems to be back to his normal sweet self but he is blaming watching too much tv and gravol for his delusions (he still is not on any medication and is not getting any kind of therapy). I was just wondering is this normal and how long does the lucid state last before the episodes return? I still love him very much and it is hurting me to be separated from him but i cant go back to a situation where i am scared for my life. Any advice please
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What is “normal” is highly individualistic for serious mental illnesses. Are there moments of clarity or remission for some with psychotic disorders without treatment? Certainly. Guessing how sustained and substantive these changes will be is difficult to tell without a detailed look at his history. Psychotic disorders usually get worse without treatment. Even with treatment there’s often a steady decline after multiple incidents to a residual level of functioning.
My experience with recovery from psychosis is a bit of a best case scenario. After a year of talk therapy, I had sporadic improvements and declines culminating in hospitalization. Months later, I added neuroleptic (drug) therapy and it took a year or two to recover to a point where I was living independently, and years more to get to a point where I could sustain a relationship, much less a partnership.
My gut observation, since you’re asking for “urgent advice” is you may have unrealistic expectations of your husband’s prognosis. Progress is measured in months and years, not days and weeks for psychotic disorders. I’d advise considerable skepticism that your husband’s apparent progress will be sustainable. It’s extremely common in times of remission to blame circumstances, environment, all manner of people places and things, governmental agencies, supernatural forces, aliens or gods for your symptoms. Stress certainly plays a role in the severity of symptoms and they can appear to go away as stressors diminish without treatment. But it’s extremely difficult and/or undesirable to lead a stress-free life with or without a partner.
Were I in your circumstance, I might consider returning to live with him after 6 months of sustained remission if he started and continued treatment. Without treatment, a year or two or perhaps never. As a longtime caregiver, even moments of remission or recovery can breed considerable anxiety as you never can trust that recovery will last and you’re always waiting in constant fear the other foot will drop and your life will get turned upside down, yet again.
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Also, to add to what @Maggotbrane said, the more relapses into psychosis there are, the worse the brain gets. So your husband should realize that a reason for taking medication, aside from functioning better, is to prevent relapses so that the brain can heal itself. A psychiatrist would know all about this, so I’d recommend that a condition for getting back together is that he see a psychiatrist.
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The only thing i would add for your questions of lucidity and return of symptoms are possible contributing factors to the mental illness.
Along with the other comments advice and the unpredictability of psychosis, and difficulties stabilizing, is if there are things in their life that exacerbate symptoms.
In my situation there could be much more clarity when abstaining from certain things, and then extreme worsening when they were occurring, that usually had a predictable effect.
The things that would lead to a worsening of symptoms were caffeine, self medicating with anything that creates a high and drop, including alcohol; it created chaos and increased lack of insight since they were bouncing around mental states each day (when there is already a struggle to think clearly with the illness) and the impact that has on neurotransmitters/ mood, and also when they were not sleeping it would absolutely worsen.