What do tell when they tell you about the voices. How they are telling them there are people
That are gonna kill them. Do you go along with it. Or tell them it’s not real ?
My roommate has adhd bipolar just last month out of the blue he started hearing voices. He thinks there’s sometype of implant in him that the voices can track him. We had to take him to the ER for an x Ray to prove there was no tracking device inside him. He is on Invega for about 2 weeks now. Not seeing a big change yet. Are there better drugs put there. ?
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Welcome @Patricktyler good questions! There are a couple of different types of Invega, there is a monthly injection I think and there are the pills. Most meds take 2 to 4 weeks to see any results give or take. Improvements are often gradual. The meds have to be taken as prescribed and they have to be at a therapeutic level. Some medicines take a month to even get to a therapeutic level because you have to increase the dosages very slowly for safety. For those meds it could be 6-8 weeks before results are seen. Many patients have to try more than one medication before they find the right one.
There is a thread on this website where we discussed how to talk to someone with delusions: Here is a contribution that I made on the topic, you might find it helpful. (see pdf link below)
Usually it is advised to not argue or reason with the person having the delusions. Better to empathize (even though you know they are wrong). Like with your room mate believing he “had an implant”. Saying something like, “that sounds very upsetting” “I wouldn’t like that” I understand that could be concerning" (<—I’m just making these up but you get my drift) anyway this article I found explains better.
Also in response to your last question: Yes there are many different drugs and depending on the patient, some better, some worse. Every patient is different. He needs a dedicated psychiatrist that will work closely with him to get him stabilized on the right medication and that takes time. Reducing stress also helps.
Does your room mate have family support??
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@Patricktyler, to add to @Catherine excellent response from a diagnosed perspective, here’s a few more things to think about:
There is no “correct thing to say”, just some responses that are better than others. Realize that what they hear is important or concerning to them, and they are taking a risk telling you about it. I’d advise keeping it in confidence, lest they distrust you should they learn you divulged the information without consent. Realize if you discount or dismiss what they say they may start to withdraw or stop talking about their concerns, but if you feel uncomfortable or exhausted when about talking about certain subjects at length, I think it’s okay to say so, and ask them if they can find someone else to talk to without suggesting therapy directly. In general open-ended, vague, feeling acknowledging and “brainstormy” discussion is better.
Intuitively they may get a sense when it is and isn’t safe to talk about such things, but if they don’t learn this coping skill events can escalate badly. For example my brother said the wrong thing to police, and it ended badly for him and my family. If you get a chance, rent or stream the 2008 film version of Horton Hears a Who (it’s “free” on Hulu if you have it) which demonstrates how things can escalate when voices or delusions (even if based in fact) are revealed without circumspection. Seth Rohan’s character Morton models a good friend to someone apparently hallucinating and delusional even if Horton doesn’t always follow his advice.
Another thing I’ll mention comes out of Dr. Amador’s work. When you get things “wrong” or upset your friend somehow or lose his trust, it’s okay to apologize. I’m adding a TEDx video of him which includes an illustration of these sorts of methods. I probably overuse it, but I think it does a good job of modeling the frame of mind of the delusional or hallucinating person, and some enhanced ways of communicating with them. A demonstration of anasognosia (lack of insight) starts at 8:44
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Thank you thank you so much for all this advice !!!
Thank you so much. He basically has me and his mom for support. But it’s so draining at times
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It can be very draining for sure. There is another good resource you can check out if you want to if they have a group in your town. They offer resources and free classes to educate you more on the illnesses and often you can find other people there going through the same thing you are. I took the Family to Family class and I learned so much and made some life long friends as well. Invaluable.
I also would advise that if you are in it for the long haul to support your friend and stay in his corner through the thick and thin of it , it’s not a bad idea to look into counseling or talk therapy for yourself. I say that because I have taken care and supported my younger son since his diagnoses at the age of 21 with schizophrenia and we still live together and he is 36 (and doing much better) -and not only did I find personal counseling for myself really helpful when trying to figure out my next move with my son but also I discovered the more calm and stable and grounded I approached him the better our interactions were.
Your friend is very lucky to have you and I’m glad to hear he has his mom too. Sounds like a good team. Here is the NAMI link. NAMI Family & Friends | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness
@Patricktyler, you stated “just last month out of the blue he started hearing voices”. Since your roommate is “new” to hearing voices, this is the best time to try to support him in any way so he stays on medication and hopefully tells his doctor about the voices. Often a person with bipolar or schizophrenia won’t admit their voices to anyone.
As @Maggotbrane said, “Realize that what they hear is important or concerning to them, and they are taking a risk telling you about it.”
Oftentimes the voices are their friends, or special beings that watch over them, or give them special powers, or they could be very negative, causing much stress… My adult daughter talked to her voices for almost 3 years before I could get her forced onto medication which stopped the voices (hallucinations) and strange beliefs (delusions). The unmedicated years or wrongly medicated years were full of her staying up all night screaming at (to) her voices until she could hardly speak, and even then she still tried to scream at them or with them when almost completely hoarse. Those people were REAL to her, and when the medication stopped the voices, she just thought her special beings had left the city.
It is very hard on you to have to deal with psychosis, but your roommate probably needs your support. It is great that you came to this site, read and comment and educate yourself. Knowledge gives power to help battle the psychosis.
The best thing to do is never to scold them, or belittle them, or put them down for their hallucinations or delusions. If you read that book “I’m not Sick, I don’t Need Help”, and put bits and pieces into use to help you cope with your roommate’s voices and odd beliefs, it can bring improvements.
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Invega is one of the best meds ( and expensive!). Not that our son has tried it, but the psychiatric nurse was looking into it for our son to switch from risperidone since the shot could be administered every 3 months but our son was very determined not to take anymore meds and was cheeking the pills, he had to take the oral pill in a low dose for 3 day and increase it for another 3 first, I think they look for tolerance and building it up first.
Meds take a little while to see the results, at least 6-8 weeks and our son always find a reason to not take them like the side effects; I don’t blame him sometimes, I don’t like the side effects of some antibiotics.
These days he’s a little bit more open about the voices and I ask him what they say but I keep my opinion, for him they’re real, I only say that I hope they don’t get him in trouble by making him do a stupid thing.
He had a ‘misunderstanding’ and he attached his father.
The other day my bf was out in the yard putting the hose in a box to store it. He came back inside very angry. He said he could hear the neighbors across the street “giving him shit”. I asked what they said. He said “They were saying ‘get that hose’ and laughing”. He went to a store yesterday and came back calling the girl who waited on him a bitch, etc. Said she was rude to him. I told him “Don’t bring that into this house” and he went to his room closed the door. Later he was calm and we talked about it calmly.
He has paranoid sz and always thinks he hears people in stores making fun of him, neighbors talking about him, etc.
I basically just listen and tell him to blow it off. He knows I dont want any stress in my house so he usually just goes in his room.
I think our son has paranoid sz as well from what I see, except he thinks is his father ‘following him’ all the time! Sometime right after he missed his last shot he was lying in bed with his neck on the air looking out the window as if watching for someone out of fear, another time he was sitting in bed resting his back against the head of the bed looking outside and I asked him if he was talking with his friends he knows I’m talking about the ‘invisible friends’ and he goes on to tell me that they’re good friends and ‘help him’! I only comment that as long as they don’t get him in trouble or have misunderstandings bc he has attacked his father on a ‘misunderstanding’.
As soon as he was discharged from the hospital last Wednesday he wanted to spend the night in a hotel and I let him, he asked me for his pills and that was fine, comes Friday (June 4th) and boldly said he was not going to take the abilify any longer, he was not sick and he didn’t need it. Yesterday he was going to spend the night at the hotel again; well, somehow he didn’t and he went over his friend, he came back home at 4am straight to his father’s room to look for money and took $400 from his dad’s wallet and left after a taking a shower, he didn’t sleep but 2 hours.
Of course I’ll ask about that money, we consider it his because his dad is his payee and we give him the money in small amounts; with meds he’s frugal but without them he can throw the money and leave a trail with it or just give it away.
It’s really a nightmare for everyone concerned!!!
I’ll try to use your approach regardless, though each person has their peculiarities.
Thank you for sharing what helps to you, it’s a window we can try.
Take care. 
Thank you for letting us know what would happen in these circumstances of divulging without consent. You are really make assertive comments, and I’m amazed at your ability to communicate these points that in any other circumstance seem of no importance.
It’s really appreciated!
Why we are so quick to dismiss the hallucinations as “not real”? What makes us so certain that our experience is the “real” experience? Absolutely everything in the Universe is energy and our brains are just interpreting that energy as this or that. Other peoples’ brains can interpret the same energy in a different way. Their interpretation is no less real than our own. I think any effort to help someone we have labelled with a mental disorder needs to begin with a recognition of the very real nature of their experience and go from there. (I am actually a little hesitant to post this here, but I have been thinking about it a lot lately.)
Living with Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery is a good book to learn about voices and voice-hearing. There are 89 groups in the Hearing Voices Network in England. The U.S. organization has these groups: http://www.hearingvoicesusa.org/hvn-usa-groups-list/list/1
What I’ve learned is that to recover, a voice hearer should: 1) accept the voices as coming from themselves and most likely resulting from a traumatic past event; 2) find support in groups and a supportive therapist (e.g. not a psychiatrist who ipso facto equates voices with schizophrenia and wants to medicate them out of existence, which usually doesn’t work anyway); and 3) change the power relationship to the voices, rather than trying to get rid of them altogether, which means to not be victimized by them.
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