The schizophrenia stereotypes are plentiful - I swear to you that so many different people, yes including my therapist does not believe that I have schizophrenia. She sees me as “intelligent” “interesting” she tells me that I am a “nice guy” - I think that because I have these qualities, I cannot possibly have schizophrenia?!? - this is her big mistake, and she is not the only one - but she should know better she is a clinical psychologist!
Too many people have this preconditioned idea that all people afflicted with schizophrenia are always rude,incoherent, make no sense when they talk, constantly paranoid - many feel that we are unintelligent as a group -many feel that we go outdoors in public without our clothes on! That video @SurprisedJ posted on Johnny Benjamin? said it all - we are human first and foremost and we sometimes display our symptoms to the public,but not all of the time - our symptoms fluctuate.
Even some family members do not believe that I have schizophrenia - The truth is without my antispychotic or if I am on the wrong one - the world will see my SZ symptoms - but I take the meds so that I can semi function - without them I would not - period. I really wish that the public starts to see that we are human beings living with a brain disorder - We can be smart, interesting, educated, and productive like everyone else.
Has anyone doubted your schizophrenia diagnosis? or does not believe your diagnosis - based on your presentation?
Yes, my own family have doubts. Or should I say had doubts before I slipped into a bizzare episode recently. Didn’t go psychotic but went a bit manic. That’s what it took for them to believe me. I function pretty well but I owe that to the meds. I learned that the hard way.
I’ve only had one person doubt that I have sz. It was one of my first psychiatrists. He said that because I graduated nursing school second in my class, and scored 148 on his IQ test, that I was too high functioning to have schizophrenia. He told me that I had ONE psychotic break and that I needed to “just dust the cobwebs out” of my brain and move on with my life. No matter what I said, he didn’t believe I had sz.
Obviously, I found a new doctor who listened to my history and current symptoms and properly diagnosed me.
I think its terrible when even mental health practitioners stereotype and doubt their own patients. It shows a lack of education and experience.
Blessings,
Anthony
Sometimes my mother, sometimes my husband - and sometimes me, but mostly they and I accepted it.
Yes, I also think that because I am on an antipsychotic that is actually working for me - I am not displaying outward visible positive symptoms to her - some people diagnose on what they see in the present moment. clinicians have to get the sense of the whole picture, including past history and background information, not what is happening in the present moment only. I really believe that many therapists especially do not have the experience that many psychiatrists have. My psychiatrist current and past - understands schizophrenia.
When I was on Abilify, it was not working for me - so my positive symptoms were more visible
My family accepts Schizophrenia as an illness. My father wants me to overcome it. My mother heard of Schizophrenia before I was diagnosed and new it was a serious illness. My sister takes it as an illness.
I do have some extended family who don’t believe the diagnosis.
But the people who have been with me through the worst… my family who’s seen my decline… My Doc who remembers the 17 year old punk who got drug in under restraints and spent hours screaming about the kidnappers… My therapist who has put up with me accusing her of inserting thoughts and listening to my thoughts… they don’t deny the diagnosis.
But I guess if some one new were to meet me now, they might think I’m too high functioning. But the one thing no one can deny is my meds work too well. Seriously, just a three days with no meds and you can visibly see me start to shut down and loose it.
I think I am the same way - the people that know me best, know my SZA diagnosis those ‘new’ people may have a difficult time understanding - my current meds do a good job stabilizing me - when I was on Abilify in the past I was more destabilized -and it showed more
my evil mother still does not accept it, but that is because she is a narcissistic malignant sociopath.
good post i enjoyed reading it.
take care
i wasn’t coping 5 years ago , i went to the local doctor and said i had been diagnosed paranoid sz and i just wanted to know if there were new drugs on the market to help me, i was in a really bad way.
he looked at me arrogantly and said ," your not sz ".
the conversation went down hill from there…so i know how you feel.
take care
With my medicine I appear normal but shy to others. My wife, having never seen me without medicine, believes that I don’t have schizophrenia. It can be very frustrating at times when I try to explain my feelings or behavior only to have her deny that they are related to my illness.
I think I would be much more open with her if my experiences seemed real to her. It makes me sad (we’ve been married for 22 years) that we could be much closer without her denial.
I used to belong to this group on MSN for a while, it had nothing to with the illness. I tried explaining it to them and they tried to claim that “everyone has negative thought” but I couldn’t get through to them that it was more than just negative thoughts in my head. It was thoughts I couldn’t control. Thought’s I couldn’t shut off. I could control how I react to the thoughts yes, I do this with my medication treatment, but I can’t not control the thoughts from coming or control how long they last.
none of my family thinks I have any sort of mental illness - that I am just overreacting to normal things
my dads sister took a class and became a theta healer(yea we gotta wonder who the real nutjob is) and decided I have no mental illness at all that my problem is intolerance to food
also sometimes I get so frustrated
cause then I begin to doubt myself and my thinking
why should I have to work so hard to convince people I am not well
it just leads to bad places
My problem is that the ones that do believe I have the disease are afraid of me. The others think I am trying to get out of working.
I’m afraid I allowed myself to fall into this for a little bit. In the beginning I had no idea about sz and when my son was diagnosed I accepted it. No questions. Then he came to live with me. I got him away from daily weed use, got him stable and started questioning the diagnoses. Psychosis NOS or drug induced as he wasn’t displaying any positive symptoms and other then lack of maturity not really showing any negative ones either. I have had to re-evaluate my thoughts on this lately as it’s not using weed regularly and being med-compliant that is controlling the positive symptoms.
I am lucky in the that my son’s treatment teams have been pretty understanding of me and my ideas. Being stable doesn’t mean the sz is not there. As a parent I guess I wanted to belief that he wouldn’t need medications for the rest of his life. My own resistance will not help him to come to terms with it.
@Wave Good posting Rob.
I have some who doubt my diagnosis. Part of the reason I think is because I become more reserved and isolate myself more when things are not going well. Only people living with me generally get to see things at their worst…sometimes the medical people too but when things are bad, I end up basically vanishing. People who only see me under better circumstances I guess don’t get it.
People still have this perception that a person with schizophrenia talks to himself/herself; walks the streets yelling absurdities, have no sense of boundaries…the list goes on. When I told people my ex had Schizophrenia, people would actually doubt me, like I was trying to fabricate it; but he’s so smart, so friendly, so handsome, so capable! And he was all those things…but he also believed he was Jesus sent to save the world from the evil birds, which were sent by Satan to spy on us and bring the world down. Among other things.
But it’s the same with other mental illnesses; a person who has depression must sit at home crying all day. A person with bi-polar must go from happy to sad 1000 times a day…even in the medical profession, it’s hard to be taken seriously and some people go as far as inflating their symptoms to get professionals to listen to them.
I’ve been singled out becuse I’ve told people in the past about it, and even though they didn’t believe me, I got shunned later on. The police know because I was assaulted and it got brought into the case. Now it’s as if I did something to warrant them knowing which bothers me extremely.
Back when I was first diagnosed my friend Sara refused to believe I had schizophrenia. It made her very angry that I had let myself be diagnosed. She would say to me “You’re NOT crazy! You’re just different!” She was different too. In part she was right, I wasn’t crazy, hadn’t gone crazy yet and when I began to finally go crazy she ditched me like yesterday’s garbage, became really cruel to me.
I think she, like a lot of people, thought she knew what I’d be like if I truly were schizophrenic. I’d be like the people in the movies or like the local nutcases who wandered downtown…