I had severe functioning deficits in lots of areas for all of my teen years, after Psychological Factors and quite persistent very early hallucinations
This article is well explained
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Specific psychological models of the mechanisms involved in the onset and maintenance of hallucinations have been examined. However, evidence for these models in children and adolescents is sparse. The cognitive model for positive symptoms of psychosis by Garety and colleagues40 asserts that higher hallucination severity is associated with higher levels of emotional disturbance, cognitive biases, and negative life events. This has also been found in children and adolescents.41 Cognitive biases such as jumping to conclusions,42 less positive schematic beliefs about self/others,43 and metacognitive beliefs44 are all associated with hallucinations in young populations. Metacognitive beliefs44 were also shown to be associated with unusual perceptions in adolescents from the general population, but more studies are needed to test the metacognitive model for hallucination proneness.45 More recently, social cognitive mechanisms such as impairments in theory-of-mind or mentalizing have been proposed as potentially key in the emergence of hallucinations in children and adolescents.46,47 For example, Clemmensen et al46 found paranoid delusions but not hallucinations to be associated with hyper-theory-of-mind. However, Pignon and colleagues19 did find deficits in theory-of-mind skills in children with hallucinations. Perhaps the difference in age (and thus developmental stage) between these 2 studies can explain these different findings. The identification of psychological mechanisms that are associated with the emergence and persistence of hallucinations in children and adolescents may inform indicated preventative strategies in the future.
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I had sz symptoms since 15y.o. but was diagnosed with psychosis NOS at 20. I stopped all meds at 25y.o. to 27y.o. then got hospitalized and diagnosed with sz. The Dr who stopped my meds told me that if I relapse after stopping meds diagnosis will change to sz.
My onset began at 12, was officially diagnosed at 14 while hospitalized. I had an awesome child psychiatrist who said telling me was one of the hardest things he had to do.
i had symptoms in my teens already but i was diagnosed later in my 20s… i struggled a lot of years with stuff and it got worse and worse till i couldn’t function anymore.
They say that the later the onset, the better your prognosis, and I tend to agree with that.
My onset was at the age of 20, which is considered “classical” for schizophrenia.
In hindsight my first foray into mental illness probably happened around 19-20 but it was mild and I didn’t recognize my problems as being related to mental health, mental health wasn’t even on my radar. Things got progressively worse as the years went by and I was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 26.
My prodromal phase began my freshman year of college (2010), but I wasn’t formally diagnosed until 2017 with schizophrenia. I went 7 years with no clue what was going on, but knowing something was wrong at the same time. I self-medicated with alcohol a lot during that time.
Psychotic symptoms started at 15; that also was the age at which my depression became more prominent. I think I had mania or hypomania as early as 11 or 12 years old, but that’s hard to say. Idk when PTSD started, but that’s another dx for me now. The majority of the trauma occurred prior to turning 11.