I believe us on-line Sz types are not typical of the affliction. We’re the survivors. Many fall through the cracks and end up homeless talking to themselves on the street. But this is just a generality…an opinion of mine.
the schizophrenics on this site found it one way or another. I typed in schizophrenia and found this site that way over 15 years ago…been here ever since…I think we are lucky that we have this site.
A further study of people with a major mental illness in the United States found that about one-third use the Internet and about half of these access health information online .
I suspect the folks posting here belong to a very small, high-functioning cohort. My experience with face-to-face interactions with SZs has been so dispiriting that I mostly avoid them and limit myself to online interaction instead. It’s why I break out in hysterical laughter every time someone posts about how SZs are smarter than normies.
I think what you are saying is undoubtedly true in that people here are higher functioning than the average person with psychosis/schizophrenia. On an admission ward in psych hospital you get some (quite) high functioning people with schizophrenia, but if you end up on a medium stay ward, as I did for the last year or so of my last inpatient stay ,then you get some people who are not that high functioning.
As for being smarter ; although there are some highly intelligent sz the average sz is noticeably less smart than the average non sz.
It seems like folks who could benefit most from online support forums may not currently have ready access.
I wonder if there are any outreach programs to help people with mental illnesses that may adversely impact cognitive abilities, etc. learn how to navigate the internet. Also, it would be cool if there was a program to provide tablet computers for folks who could not afford them otherwise.
i know a guy who has a computer but he does not like forums like these bc he didn’t like trolls and things, i also think that paranoia puts a lot of people off, like when i started on the old forum i was very paranoid about things, after i changed my username i felt better though.
@Plumber You are of course right . I had forgot to click on the % tab on the calculator and was therefore using the decimal figure as the % .
What it does show however is that a very small % of people with sz/a post here. This,I believe,being the largest such community.
I totally agree with this statement! As an active paranoid, I would avoid internet entirely, too leery of potential hackers and those bots (that redirect traffic to malicious sites) to venture into cyberspace.
As a non-active paranoid, I still feel paranoid about surveillance albeit for good legal reason, but I am not so inhibited by my fears as to quit going online anymore.
I think that a lot of people who are here have insight into their illness, which is a trait of high functioning sz. Otherwise, paranoids who don’t think they have sz would likely avoid these forums like the plague, possibly seeing these forums as a subtle form of mind control aimed directly at themselves.