15 and diagnosed with psychosis + ranting about my ward experience

Oh my gosh @Ninjastar I’m relieved to hear you say this. I’ve had clinicians tell me “you don’t have schizophrenia because you’re doing so well.” I never understand that!! Also I still hear voices and have visuals just because they can’t tell it doesn’t give them the right to judge my experiences. Honestly I’m so happy I’m not the only person who’s had that experience.

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I see - negative symptoms are the ones bothering me right now.

There isnt any medication or anything that could help with them, is there?

Sarcosine is a supplement that can help with negative symptoms, but it hasn’t been studied much for pediatric use. Might be worth asking your doctor about, though.

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Oh, that’s familiar. The bummer is that I go psychotic and lose my insight whenever I try to stop my APs. I’ve had the whole gamut from, “you’ll never live outside of managed care” to “I think you were misdiagnosed, you function too well.”

Doesn’t do a lot for my negs, but that could be because I’ve got some powerfully ingrained habits now. I was getting 4000 steps/day last week despite being put on bed rest (just TRY and stop me, wankers!). It’s the cognitive bump from the Sarcosine I love so much. Take it away and I notice my edge is not quite as sharp. I swear by the stuff.

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Preach!

:+1: :+1: :+1:

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You’re lucky to be diagnosed at a young age. I had sz symptoms very young, heard sounds not there way before 15, I would say since my first memory so age 4. Voices started talking to me like insults saying I am the stupidiest, a cheater, a son of a b!tch, etc at age 14. Here you can’t see a psychiatrist without having an emergency situation or without a general Dr note, I think bcz health care is free.

I hide my symptoms from everybody except my family Dr. He ignored my symptoms and said its stress. Symptoms worsened and I started abusing alcohol to stop the voices. Voices got religious at age 17, saying I am God. At 20 y.o. voices told me to kill myself to prove that I am God so I did. Emergency Drs said I nearly died from liver failure after swallowing a whole Tylenol bottle. They said I would be dead if I came late to the emergency. I vomitted for 2hrs.

Its only after that that they let me see a psychiatrist which diagnosed me with schizophrenia.

The earlier they catch your schizophrenia the better the prognosis. I could have died bcz they refused to send me to a psychiatrist.

@cakeisverygood I’ve been told during my good times that I can’t be as sick as I actually am because I could hold a job and support a family. I ran my own business as a freelancer and supported a family of 7. A doctor told me I was too high functioning to need medication. It took going into post partum psychosis and near hospitalization to finally get antidepressants.

Then years later a full psychotic breakdown got me on antipsychotics. No one tells me I can’t be sick now, but I get a lot of laymen that can’t believe I am.

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I would hope you have a better experience than I did of community services in 2003 when I was 17, as things seemed to have gotten better since then, but geography unfortunately plays a part in treatment being a bit of a lottery on where you live.

Anyway. My advice to you is keep taking any support you get and work through this. I hope you don’t have a second episode, but time will tell. Keep going and build a good life for yourself.

It’s not inevitable it will come back. Even if it does, inner strength can play a really significant part in anyones recovery and functioning.

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as I said, I do not have schizophrenia. I am sorry for your bad experience with psychiatry, my worst experience was my forced admission to the psych ward. I want to vent more but im worried someone would judge me

Here is the perfect place to vent so vent as much as you want. I even spoke here about the horrible mental hospital I was in, prisoners, ppl walking nude into my room etc

I was first diagnosed with psychosis then sz. Its when you have more than one psychosis in 6 months that they change your diagnosis to schizophrenia.

Yeah I guess that adhering to the treatment etc has to do with the likelihood of symptoms coming back you know

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Whether you have schizophrenia or not, you experienced psychosis and are welcome here.

Did your doctor give you a diagnosis?

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not a proper diagnosis no, she just said i was psychotic and like gave me a temporary diagnosis

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That’s ok. People who experience psychosis are all encouraged to join and share. It’s called schizophrenia.com but we take in bipolar folks, people that have depression with psychotic features, etc.

I hope we can help be a support system for you.

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Psychiatry is unfortunately trial and error.

When I used to refuse community treatment they just sent me to the hospital as I wasn’t taking my meds. This cycle lasted 5 years or so.

Eventually I came to the realisation that if I do what I am told, even though I fundamentally disagree with the treatment, then I will be stable and stop the damage I was doing to my brain by having so many relapses.

I would urge you to take a fair few steps forward in terms of insight, as it just causes pain for everyone.

Joining this site and posting here is a good start.

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i think that i have insight already.
im just really scared of starting the new med because it can cause side effects and im always like that w/ meds

Which meds have they put you on?

I was on Risperdal and Abilify before but now the doc prescibed Geodon

We don’t have this in the UK, but from what I have read and seen through forum posts is that the side effect profile is kinder than most.

It’s a lottery to be honest, but good to know what you’re signing up for