My son has just realized he is not well and is very anxious and scared. He is in psychosis at the moment and I’m wondering if he’ll wake up tomorrow or next Wednesday (before the doctors appointment) and tell me that he’s fine again and doesn’t need to go. I dread this scenario. Help is on the way for him but it’s a slow process. Because he is not a danger to himself or others, Acute Care will not admit him, even though he now wants to be admitted.
1 Like
You seem to have insight, so that’s good.
Just remind him of what he said, Good times and bad times. SZ kind of lose sight of this and embrace the extremes like the other doesn’t exist
He probably will say he’s fine, and he probably won’t want to remember feeling otherwise. Just make sure he gets in with the doc. It’s all you can do.
1 Like
For me… psychosis went in waves… at the beginning and end of the wave… I could sort of get the gist that I wasn’t doing well…
In the height of the wave… I had NO insight at all.
I’ve been med compliant for about 3 and half years now… so when I’m slipping… I can feel it… I have better insight now… but that’s after three years of meds… therapy… and anger/anxiety management classes… and help in place.
Coming out of psychosis is sort of traumatic… it’s staring to wake up from a fog and not being able to figure out what your head is doing… It’s very confusing…
For me it was like two different lives crashing into each other… I was having a hard time figuring out which life was all inside my head… and which one was in reality… both seemed pretty surreal.
good luck with your son… I hope things get better for him soon.
2 Likes
I think my schizophrenia is in remission still. Maybe after in treatment for awhile I learned coping mechanisms. I’m not sure but I think communications with your son is vitally important. Open conversations that relate his needs and goals. How old is he? Maybe also try if he needs medication, to help to start a medication journal to see how different meds helped or side effects.
1 Like
Thank you for your comments and well wishes. Is what I’m hearing form you guys that he may lose that insight again within the next week, before his doctors appointment? I think a medication journal is a great idea but unfortunately my son is too disorganized.
1 Like
Will psychosis take insight away?
Only if the insight is accurate.
Hmmm. I don’t know if he will go backwards in regard to his insight. I was in denial when I first got sick; it took me several months of psychosis while thinking I was fine before it hit one day that I was really mentally ill. But once that realization dawned on me, it was permanent. I was in psychosis from 1980-82. After that, I became stable and showed improvement for 6 years, then I relapsed. But I knew I was sick since 1980.
That statement by mental care may be borderline manipulative. It’s just the pill’s sale’s pitch. Your son talking to self aloud or worries aloud about how some treat him could be interpreted to be ‘lacking insight’ as it doesn’t look normal. This is definitely the case if your son starts to follow orders from voices and you see some bizarre stuff but a lot is described in following paragraphs. My opinion, worrying aloud or discussing anything crazy said to me by a stranger just gives it more power…Better to ignore most of it and just keep functioning. In your case, working on ways to increase son’s attention span and keep him doing activities of daily living, plus socializing with a few people who treat him well. You may not even need to discuss his mental care and diagnosis publicly so your son has best opportunity to recovery in your community…
Best insight I can give you is a lot of strangers may verbally harass your boy because they are psychotic some of the time too – this is called thought broadcasting. This is called a social problem. Mental care refuses to discuss this, calling it delusional even if it causes the patient to get worse. This is way to motivate person to take meds. Mental care, even therapy will NEVER give any good coping information to deal with social problems. If you EVER get angry with the mental care, you will be locked up in mental hospital at your own expense for as long as the psych dr can justify…
With this in mind, you son needs to understand what care can do for him. There is nice drug called seroquel which will give him a nice sleep if you cut up the pills and take at bedtime. It doesn’t cause a lot of weight gain or sexual problems like other drugs. It is also affordable. I recommend 50 mg to start so your boy doesn’t feel like a zombie and brain numbed. The voices MAY stop after a while but I REALLY recommend you look at your son’s life for an unokay friend or threatening wealthy person he may have met or argued with right before the voices started. You just quit talking to these kind, do not discuss the dirty laundry, don’t talk to self aloud, do not follow orders from voices and voices will quit eventually. If he says a lot of people don’t treat him right or verbally harass him, if he is newer to town you landed in a sick place…A move of even 30 minutes can give him a lot of relief…Sadly, some of these psychotic people have become VERY disruptive and police are ignoring this so I recommend you do not share walls and choose a detached home so the weird behavior and noise from other people doesn’t intrude upon your boy. A lot of the part-time psychotics are a sicko and passive aggressive is normal so if you have someone new say hello to your boy in nutty manner, this is a part-time crazy but person may screw with him bad if you associate with the person. When your boy moves, he will likely have a lot of people acting like this toward him for a while to show him who in town hears it…Don’t respond verbally to anything unless person tries to have a conversation and just says something private about your boy person shouldn’t know. These kind are usually okay thought broadcasters and stable person who won’t cause problems for you.
Trying a drug that is not threatening like seroquel may make your son feel better about the meds. Understanding some people don’t act right is next step. Understanding what happens if your boy gets confrontational with mental care is absolute mandatory to be okay. Rest is up to your son…Mental care practices can be VERY upsetting for a new psychotic, even with some of the therapists not acting right. If your son has PTSD or some amnesia present, it can be REALLY hard to find a good Dr fit. If a doctor ever tells him these memories are false called ‘false memories’ this practice has gotten some people hurt very badly if they were told to look up someone who treated them wrong. You just need to assume your son’s returning amnesia memories are real and avoid the group/person these memories involve.
Sometimes mental problems are just starting for people who haven’t heard the voices yet in some locations…If voices just happen sometimes, take note of who is present or could be location oriented and just leave. Do not say anything…Do this a few times until you see a repeated pattern. If you don’t follow orders from voices or say anything aloud to anyone verbally harassing you, voices can stop after a while…
Will also add, it is almost always counter productive to give mental care any feedback or express anything negative about the care. You are best served by making appointment with another care provider and try them out, never keep follow up appointment with care that doesn’t meet needs…Govt clinics can be wild ride as they change staff often and some of these younger new hires are just too inexperienced and mal-adjusted to even help anyone else in a crisis, specially when the court uses the day program as holding cell for petty criminals and learning disabled. If you son feels confident in his understanding and symptoms seem mild, though govt clinic will take back any patient at any time. Even if voices do not stop for a while, eventually it will just be background noise and he can ignore it/function okay to work as long as he is not working with anyone mentally unstable in his workflow. Some college instructors will mistreat schizo students leaving some needing psych dr’s note and file with school disability support’s department to be treated okay by staff, do tests in different room without distraction and work on alternative assingment if group assignments don’t work out okay for him. Best policy is pay cash for 2-3 classes and attend in person to see how staff in his school will treat him…Best he never live on campus as seems to cause problems to worsen for some, little studio apartment away from the school isn’t as stupid. Online classes could be REALLY nice fit as staff interaction is monitored…Is real blessing to have online classes after seeing how some professionals will mistreat another.
If you are told a church may heal your boy, know the church probably has a dirty businessman giving mental orders to a lot of the people to do unethical things (anti-christ) and he may be mistreated even in a church. Can run like healing circus show, your financial resources checked and you both thrown back onto the street with more harassment, even at work for YEARS. If your son is on disability pay, the anger toward your boy will be a lot worse as some churches made recent push to verbally harass people on disability checks after mental care as ‘wrong’ – called cause stalking. I only recommend trying a church if you know several members well…If you are ever verbally harassed badly in any situation, I think it better to leave without saying much as this group will mess you up again and again, consider whatever situation toxic and terminate it…
Your boy may meet some people who seem psychic to him and they know a lot about local situation sometimes. He can learn a lot from day program or consumer run organizations like NAMI if he wants to try support group…I also think it really beneficial to stay on course of a normal so he can work on his attention span
Hope this helps.
Wow. Thank you for your replies. It all helps me to see a clearer picture.
Thank you so much 77nick77. My son has been in psychosis for about the same time as you were when you realized you were mentally ill. I hope the permanency of your insight will be the same for my son.
I found this on a website. I wonder how accurate it is?
‘Only about 10 to 20 percent of people treated for schizophrenia don’t experience a relapse, according to a review published in the journal BMC Psychiatry in 2013’.
Wow!! I am shocked. Something new I’ve learnt about Sz. Relapse at some point is quite likely. Hmm
1 Like
But medication and other measures can reduce that risk. I bet what makes that statistic jump up in numbers is the fact that as a group, people with schizophrenia tend to abuse alcohol and drugs.
I totally agree 77nick77!!!