Did you get your intelligence back?

A question for those in full recovery. I feel like after sz that I have had to basically learn who I am again, and I get anxious about how it has affected me long term. Did you just pick up where you left off in terms of going into education and in general get how smart you were back?

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I’m way dumber but that is a small price to pay. I have my moments still its way better than living in fear from paranoia and good to sleep without racing thoughts.

It really is a balancing act but you can win.

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To be honest, I lost my applied intelligence when school got boring and I used to skip classes, and eventually never went back in them - favouring drug taking.

This started at a very young age. It was noted in my Autism Assessment that in primary school they thought the work wasn’t challenging enough and they needed to stretch me to prevent me becoming disruptive.

One teacher at high school who took an interest in helping me said I had the intelligence, but I was choosing not to use it.

As soon as I finished school everything came crashing down with psychosis, and problems with the law.

After I dealt with all that I did a highly creative but less than mentally taxing job for 8 years.

I then tried to access my intelligence again by going back to college, and using my mind eventually lead to burn out and stress that led to more psychosis and being diagnosed as SZ.

I did graduate still with a 2:1, but would have been a 1st if my mind was engaged in the course in the final year.

Over the last 6 years I have been bouncing between relapses whilst working and developing into a highly skilled and creative IT job.

It used to be supportive, and they used to allow me to work in my own way as they were getting good quality work from me, even if I was a bit odd.

Once that safety net fell apart last July, things went to ■■■■ again.

I am now open to new opportunities for the first time in a long time, and it’s kinda scary.

Sorry for the long story, but this intelligence question is very complicated for me, as I have some ability, but teasing it out of me has been a challenge for all the people in my life who have been trying hard to support me.

I thank all the people who tried and failed. Now I just think I have enough wit and application to get by.

TLDR???;

SZ never took my intelligence away. It was like putting my brain into hyper-drive when I was psychotic, and my hands came off the steering wheel.

I am sure it has broken a few parts of my mind, but it’s yet to finish me off.

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Since making a recovery, I do feel that I have lost some cognitive functioning. I always have trouble trying to find words or with finishing sentences. My memory isn’t as good as it used to be. It is upsetting. However, I don’t give up. My aspiration is to go back to uni and complete another degree. But first I’m gonna support my partner who will be going back to uni next year to complete a teaching degree.

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I had my first and longest episode spanning the last semester of my undergraduate studies, did not affect my grades. Then I went to do a masters and had a minor episode during that and this did not seem to have affected things much either, some anxiety with presentations at first seemed all. Then I had a relapse after graduating and did not need to apply myself as much as during my studies, so no real test. I feel like it declined since then, I definitely have memory issues. But then again I felt like that with my earlier episodes too and when tested it did not seem to make much difference. I still manage to do academic writing as a hobby and am satisfied with how that is going, so I guess I’m alright. There can definitely be an incongruence between what we feel we are able and what we actually are able to do.

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I could go through college on the Haldol shot, but my performance was lackluster. One thing I like about Geodon is that it doesn’t dull my mind. I’m sharper on Geodon. One thing I really hate about all ap’s is that they weaken me physically - dramatically. I used to love to go backpacking, but now that I am on ap’s it would not be smart to do that. There is a lot of things I can’t do on ap’s.

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recently i’ve been noticing my memory is much improved. i could potentially be book smart. although i don’t know how much of a trouble shooter i could be to solve unexpected problems. im probably not quite as smart as when i was younger, but there isn’t a noticeable drop in intelligence. most of my memory problems were from binge drinking and weed use, i think, and now that im more responsible, i have healed some and i remember daily conversations and can study again.

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I’m doing OK in most of my online classes. Some A’s. some B’s, some C’s. And some F’s.

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Schizophrenia is a brain fryer for sure

Before it I felt smart now my mind feels basic after all is said n done – I’m not getting better

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Lets talk about a treatment for negative symptoms before talking about one for cognitive symptoms. Positives are the worst, then negatives, then cognitives.

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I can read complex philosophy like Hegel without interruption

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No, I gave it to the dry cleaners and they claimed they lost it.

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Yes it is perfectly possible to get back all your cognitive abilities. Practice makes perfect is a true saying. I keep practicing on reading, and studying. I struggled at work for 2 months initially then I finally stopped making careless mistakes. I worked with fixed income securities in finance dealing with bonds, options, futures, etc. I would say my job requires much more intelligence than majority of jobs out there.

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I didn’t know you could fully recover from sz

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The only mental health problem I have at the moment is social anxiety. All my positive and negative symptoms are gone. I think it is something like 25% of people recover.

I got my intelligence back as soon as i was on the ap’s for a couple of months. There was some benefit in being ignorant tho - now im aware im crazy, it almost scarier.

Being able to be more self-aware sometimes is helpul tho when i get positve symptoms.

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I’ve done very little of an academic nature since my 1st hospitalisation in May 1975. The exception? A brief history A level correspondence course end of 1975 to beginning of 1976.

There have been attempts to get me to do college courses, but I’ve steadfastly resisted doing so . Part of that is due to severe social anxiety, part due to memories of being bullied and part due to fear of failure(common in those with ASD). The latter being connected to probable learning difficulty for which I’ve never had any help and support.

From 1975-1996 I had little intellectual stimulation . My wife was worldly wise/ had lots of common sense, but wasn’t intellectually minded.

Getting online broadened my intellectual horizon . In the last 6 months or so I’ve joined the following http://www.prudentia.club/ http://secretsociety.mysxl.cn/ https://www.thisiqsociety.org/ https://starintellects.org/ I’m also a member of another site that is currently down for repairs to be done.

I am listed at https://psiq.org/home.html http://ultimaiq.net/list.html https://topiqscores.weebly.com/iq-scores.html

Having said all that-apart from money management ,I could write details of my practical skills on the back of a small envelope. I’d say at least 90% of people posting here have better practical/daily living skills.

I get quite a lot of support from MY stepdaughter.

fFinally- @anon98459728 If you’re going to,or are planning to go to, college or uni I wish you much success.

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I was dx’d at 14 and kept my intelligence. I made the merit role probably at least 3x before HS and one of those was after DX.

In fact, I scored very very high in cognitive ability on the Iowa tests. If you scored a 50 you were equal or better than 50% of the country. If it was 60 you were equal or better than 60% of the country. I scored in the 70’s.

Admittedly my teacher was furious with me when I got burned out and started putting random answers down. She forced me to focus and redo part of it.

I could do weird things I can’t even do now.
I could watch a TV episode and read I think Jurassic Park or Andromeda Strain and do a good job of following the book and a decent job of following the TV show. I was reading at a decent pace.

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They say trauma increases your chance of getting schizophrenia threefold.

Maybe I’m an odd outlier that would have only had barely noticeable schizophreniform personality disorder but for repeated traumas.

For the first twenty some years nothing helped my positive symptoms.

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