Have you had a good childhood? If so how’s your symptoms? If you had a less than positive childhood, how are your symptoms?
For me, I had a great childhood (wonderful parents!) and I did very well in school. My symptoms could certainly be worse, because my voices have rarely ever been mean, and they’ve never commanded me to do anything.
On all other fronts, I’d say I have it average or slightly above average (if you can measure it that way…). My symptoms are not daily.
So measure it by how severe your symtoms are and how often you get them if you want.
I’m just very interested in this topic, and sorry if it offends anyone…you don’t have to go into details or answer at all if it makes you uncomfortable.
I don’t really know how I ended up with the switch flipped on…
My parents are still together… I was raised in a pretty supportive family unit. My parents are both teachers and try to be supportive and understanding to others.
Budget was tight… but I don’t remember going hungry or without a roof…
My parents think my first melt down was when I was 5…
I had voices and hallucinations at around 7 to 10… (I just thought they were imaginary friends) 11 to 17 I was just off the walls… my parents got me to therapist… tried family counseling.
But I just kept getting worse and worse until 17… that was when I was involuntarily committed.
I had a pretty good childhood, even though my parents split up and my father was an alcoholic. I also developed symptoms really early, but still I was happy
I can see the seeds of my later illness in my childhood. There was some happiness in my childhood, but there was also unhappiness. The thing I remember most strongly is having these intense crushes on girls - from about six years old to about fourteen. They hurt. I thought about them constantly. One time I went swimming, and I was surprised to realize I hadn’t thought about this girl for thirty minutes. After I was fourteen I started to fall apart. I withdrew socially and got more and more into drugs.
After about seven yrs old I had a great childhood ,I have a brother but he lived with my dad so it was like I was a only child.
I was sexually by the babysitter when I was six and I guess I started showing mental signs of it.
I don’t remember a whole lot but my ma took me to a shrink and I told them about the abuse,and my ma tried going to the police but the girls family had like some big stake in the town because the police wouldn’t do anything about it , I think they payed my ma off because we moved to another town when my ma was working double shifts as a nurse just to pay the bills.
I think that my ma felt really bad about it maybe she blamed herself,after that my life was great both my ma and pop spoiled me up until I lost it and shut the world out.
I had a wonderful childhood, safe and secure with two parents who are still together, but I was a very shy child and when I was 13 I began to have panic attacks and voices and OCD tendencies. At 18 I was diagnosed with sz. My parents were always very supportive of me in my illness.
This post is really surprising me. Almost all of you seem to have had a rough childhood. I mean I was emotionally abused everyday since 10 to 19 by a sibling, but other than that I was soooo happy, no symptoms until I was 15. Also had horrible social anxiety in HS.
I’m just trying to find out if a rough life could lead to schizophrenia, or at least be correlated.
I had a pretty normal family life - I was over protected a lot from my parents, especially my father.
I had severe panic disorder starting as a young child - lots of fears, anxiety, night terrors, plus I had a very big imagination that blurred into reality.
I suffered from supernatural type delusions as a child - thought I had psychic abilities, see ghosts etc…
Nothing was normal about my childhood in that sense.
My parents got divorced when I was five years old. My father was abusive and controlling. He had OCD. My mother was overly emotional, overly religious, and overly empathetic. I was outgoing until I moved in with my dad at seven years old. That’s when I began to withdraw. I had no friends from that point until college. I had behavioral issues and was obsessed with video games.
I was an average student in school but an underperformer. I didn’t do well in school until I got to college. Before I got sick I had a great work ethic. I had social problems but pushed myself.
If I had to sum it up, I had a miserable childhood.
I got schizophrenia at age 21. I guess I had the prodromal stage for about a year or so. I think I’m above average for schizophrenia and below average for schizo-affective disorder. I don’t hallucinate but I get delusional and paranoid. My negative symptoms (possibly from medications) are the most disabling. I’m just lazy and I’m now becoming apathetic.
Yes, they are correlated. Basically almost every kind of mental illness you can imagine is correlated with trauma and stress. But it is unlikely that trauma or stress is enough to cause schizophrenia without at least some genetic predisposition.
It was pretty good until about 11 years old when everything seemed to go downhill. I was good at baseball, good in school, good with friends/girls, until I was 11 when I seemed to have traumatizing after traumatizing moment, until I entered my fantasy world when I was around 14-15. And then when I was 18 I began using drugs. Those didn’t help the cause.
I can relate to your experience in a lot of ways. My dad was also controlling. He just has serious anger issues and it ruined our lives. My mom is overly emotional and very religious. I was fine socially, I had a lot of friends though, did a lot of activity and was great in school. My symptoms started when I turned 23 and I spent one year of my life as a psycho. My childhood wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either. I don’t hallucinate but I do get delusional and paranoid. I don’t think it’s any better than hallucinating though especially because I have a lot of thought disorders. I also have a lot of negative symptoms but I have hope that it’s gonna get better soon.
I thought my childhood was all bells and whistles but it wasn’t. I have and had a emotionally and physically absent father and a emotionally absent mother too. Physically I’ve never struggled. I had many perks, but they were outside things, not the love that a person needs, because they can’t give it. My sister turned out like that too, emotionally distant, as I am now.
Man I had a great childhood, I really miss it. We were an immigrant family and my allowance was 5$ a month but it didn’t matter. As time passed both my parents found jobs and we moved into a great neighborhood with a tight community, we’d spend days playing soccer or riding our bikes around… Then came the teenage years and pot use and it all went downhill from there.
I thought I had a great childhood until I was 24, when I realized that a lot of what I thought was just “boys being boys” was actually regular sexual abuse by my older brother and his friends. Apparently most guys don’t sneak into young girls’ beds when they’re sleeping.
My parents were amazing, but my dad died when I was 18 and my mom took it really hard, so I ended up raising my younger siblings after that point. My mom used to have a hard time understanding my mental health issues, but she has made a huge effort to educate herself. I appreciate that.
i had an alright childhood besides my parents being seperated and experiencing sexual abuse when i was 8. For some reason my symptoms showed up when I was six they were alright at first but then as i grew older the voices got sinister and very frequent and so did the paranoia
I would have had an amazing childhood, except for that fact that my mother and my sisters’ dad continued fighting all the time - loudly & obnoxiously. Also, neither of them were fair or just when it came to punishing us.
When they finally divorced when I was 12, things started to go downhill for me emotionally. I just enterted into depressive phases and became socially withdrawn. I don’t look at that as a bad thing, though. I’m now much tougher and actually know how to live alone without any embarassing feelings.