Is there anyone else like me where your psychotic symptoms started as a child or teenager? I was hospitalized for psychosis and some severe depression when I was 16 and got diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was 17. It seems to me like it the symptoms begin when you are older than that age but is there anyone else who got it earlier like me or even earlier than that?
1 Like
I’ve had psychotic symptoms for as far back as I can remember.
Yes, it began when I was a freshman in high school. The jarring transition between middle school and high school I think brought it out as well as childhood trauma a few years back and teenage drug use.
I turned 18 and had psychotic episodes my first year I was moved out of my home for my freshman year of college.
I heard it’s common for women to have their first episodes in early to mid 20’s, but mine came at age 18, the whole insomniac paranoid delusional quasi-hallucinating self.
However, I became very withdrawn, socially isolated and morbid around age 13-15, I think that was my prodromal stage, pre-psychotic episode. I think I also believed some delusional stuff but never at the level of my psychotic episode. It was just “weird thinking”, but it didn’t really interfere with my everyday life (i.e. telepathy exists and I have that, the gov. has a huge file on me because they are obsessed with me, etc…).
My first hallucinations were at 4, and then the demons arrived when I was about 13. My son also has sz, and he began hallucinating at about 13 as well. Whenever I see the “facts” about sz and see the typical age of onset, I wonder, as with other “facts”, how much research has actually been done, and how much information is out there.
1 Like
i heard voices from time to time since i was little… starting seeing things at 14 after dabbling with lsd
Actually, I believe it is more common for women to become ill in their late twenties and early thirties. '
For men, it is late teens-early twenties.
No way! Wow, then I really was an early developer of schizophrenia! My brain fritzed right out the gate, lol. 
I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was 19. Years later I was talking to my dad and he said that he noticed that I became withdrawn and weird when I was in seventh grade. But nobody dreamed that I would become schizophrenic. In my mid-twenties my mom told me that she noticed something was wrong with me when I was 16 or 17 but she couldn’t figure out what it was. I actually functioned pretty well in my own weird way until I was 19.
2 Likes
I’m about 90% sure of what I wrote.
1 Like
My first memory something in my head told me to not reust the dr i was seeing and to say nothing since everything i would say would be used against me. Then i had so much psychological pain and attacking “thoughts” that would make me scream non stop until i feel askeep as a kid. Happened all the time. I suffered anxiety, depression, irritability, ectreme reactions and other things. Also i would think everything anyone said was negative towards me even more so than other kids. I had a really harx time. I still do. I dont even know what normal is ive never ecperienced it.
1 Like
you’re correct 15151515
The closest i got to knowing what normal emotions was during my acting class where i felt healthy emotions for my character. It came as a shock and it was a nhce breath of fresh air. It dodnt feel all consuming like how i usually feel all the time. I wish i was a normal kid i really do. I dont want to have issues.
1 Like
I think that their may be different causes of illness and different genes that cause it. So it could make a fifferwnce for age of onset if it is the hereditary kind or the random comung up kind. We assume their the same but what if their are differences like two different kinds of cancers. Both cancers but still differences.
1 Like
by the way, i meant no way as in that way valley girls say no way like “you don’t say” or “omg i can’t believe i’ve been wrong” i forget some people don’t hear my tone of voice through the internet!!
i know you’re right 
2 Likes
Seeing shadow people and cats, floors breathing and undulating, Alice in Wonderland syndrome all started for me as a child.
Thought broadcasting and believing I was a demon started for me as a teenager.
Paranoia kicked in in my twenties, delusions of guilt in my thirties.
Female, psychotic depression, for what it’s worth.
First psychosis at 19 here too @77nick77 , and yes I think I was changing when at least 17, more depressed etc. hard to tell cuz we all go thru weird stuff in teen years
Yes, that’s very true. Smoking tons of marijuana was not good for me, it probably didn’t help my mental state.
I had it as a small child…they have always been here with me…
1 Like
Yes I hit the weed hard at 18, I blame the developing sz (prodrome) for making me dependant