This is for anyone who is diagnosed who might be able to provide insight, as well as for family members who could share observations.
My son has been on Geodon for a little over a month. He has been responding better to it than several other medications that have been tried. Initially, he seemed to stop talking about any delusions or paranoia. Now some seem to have crept back. However, I think, I HOPE it is significant that I haven’t heard anything about aliens since he started on this med. His concerns seem to be restricted to the military, and his paranoia about them monitoring him.
Can I take this as a good sign that one of his delusions seems to be gone? And can I hope that as time continues that others can also diminish?
If he still has these delusions, will he be able to reach a point of recognizing them as delusions? The problem is not really so much the delusions, but how frightened and angry he becomes because of them and how much that disrupts his social interactions.
I’d say this is good news… I can understand the military thing… it seems like we’re on the verge of WW3 with Russia, Ukraine, ISIS, Iraq, Egypt… The news is saturated.
I have help and work hard on staying med compliant and I do notice that a lot of my false memories and sneaky brained thinking has been going away… but for me it is and always will be kidnappers… where there are kids… like my nephew and small niece… there are kidnappers in my mind.
I don’t think anyone is out to poison me anymore… I don’t think there are cameras in my bathroom anymore… but if my sis is late home from work? The word kidnapper starts getting louder.
I try to stay calm, I try to fight this one… but it’s in there and will never come out… but it’s how i deal with kidnappers… do I panic and run and let my mind expand on the million horrid possibilities? Or do I take a breath, calm down and talk it out… maybe call my sis and check on her and find out traffic is bad.
Knocking down some of the other delusions is a good sign… you know… he just might function well but still have this one last thing stick deep and then just learn how to work around it.
I would strongly consider taking him to his psychiatrist and seeing about getting his meds upped or changed to take away the delusions completely. He sounds unstable.
I haven’t had much experience with delusions. My son’s delusional thinking is geared more towards what I call wishful thinking. I want there to be a job so therefore there is a job… I’m mad so therefor mom must have done something to make me mad… Minor things in comparison. We aren’t surrounded by military, alien or conspiracy theories in our family life so it hasn’t been an issue even when he is being paranoid.
I would think that on a scale of how delusional that being less delusional is better however he may have just transferred his delusional thinking onto a different subject matter. When he was believing in aliens was he also delusional about the military? Still I think there is hope and that you should continue to have hope that the longer he is on the Geodon that even this delusion will start to fall away or become more manageable.
I was pretty bummed when I had to go into the hospital recently, because I have been doing so well. My symptoms were manageable, but I crashed and burned pretty quickly. Something this last stay has taught me is that I will always have hallucinations and delusions, it’s when I am consumed by them that there is a problem. For weeks I knew I was having delusions, but you can have all of the insight and knowledge in the world and still believe your delusions. My brain would tell me something fantastic and I would examine the thought and say yes that is a delusion then my brain would say “yes, but it is true because…” Geodon is a good med. I’m on that and Seroquel and get ECT. As long as his delusions aren’t affecting his daily life, so what if he believes in military power or aliens. A lot of us will always have symptoms, it’s when they get away from you that it’s a problem.
i used to believe the cia had to be so secret that it was training me using nanotechnology because other methods werent secret enough to foreign enemies. oh how far ive come though sounds silly to think about now. the thing with my brain was the area of the mind that determines what you believe is either triggered to believe or not believe what the voices or surrounding environment tells you. so basically might not be a good thing he doesnt believe in aliens because when i had psychosis, the voices would shift and say they were just kidding about “this” part of the training as a test, but what they really meant was this other part of the training, and somehow it just made sense back then to believe them like i said i couldnt control whether or not i believed something based on facts it was like regardless of how obsurd some signal in the brain automatically believed some things the voices said over others.
This is all good information. Such a strange disease that can put unshakeable, false ideas into someone’s head.
The doctor didn’t want to increase his meds. We kind of talked in code, since any mention of delusions or paranoia makes my son defensive - since, as we know, it is completely real for him. Instead we talked about worries he has. The doctor said that some ‘worries’ are very treatment resistant and wanted to hold out on raising the dose at this point, as an increase would max him out.
Got a call from the living center today requesting I talk with him about getting blood drawn. It is just standard levels checking, I don’t know why he is refusing.
