Meaning social interaction. I guess they could make you less withdrawn and more willing to engage but I’m not sure they help you socially interact more successfully. I’m on regular depot. Have been for nearly 9 years with 97% or so take up rate. I still find social interaction difficult. Never made much progress with it. Then again I’m not particularly driven to socially engage with people. For sure meds can’t help you with initiating conversation and making small talk,knowing when it’s time to speak or listen,subtle cues of interaction. For some of us to quote Ringo Starr “It don’t come easy”
1 Like
Meds do their job and you must do your job. You must do your part. That’s what my pdoc said to me many times.
4 Likes
I use to go to groups for social interaction. I sat away by myself quiet but after a couple months started to make a few friends. My meds do their part and my psychiatrist says I have to do mine. It can be tough being I struggle with paranoia…
2 Likes
My anxiety is less on medication but I still can’t do social situations.
1 Like
I am not a mingling person. I don’t know how to really initiate communication even with some famly members. It is very difficult to feel like the odd person. i go to group and have no problem communicating when they call on me to talk, but other than that I just dont. I am 54 and been like this since high school. I dont really think meds help it. I have been on many meds.
rchard54
1 Like
Well, you have certain factors like negative symptoms to take into account. Antipsychotics can exacerbate those, and every negative symptom takes a toll on your ability to socialize. As for cognition, a domain called social cognition is recognized on a test called the Matrics Cognitive Battery which is often used to measure the effectiveness of new drugs. So an inability to engage due to an inability to read social cues may be a feature of cognitive impairment in sz.
Zoloft helps me and my wife ( she also takes it. ) socialize. However it doesn’t turn you into a social butterfly. Just makes most situations tolerable. I think because it takes away the anxiety.
Yeah, have you ever taken the MCCB @firemonkey?
I think its used more as a tool for drug trials.
APs don’t help at all with the social side, in my experience. Abilify did help with my moods a bit which made me more amenable to sociability. I’ve only gotten worse over the last year or so, to the point that my hands sweat at even normal interaction with strangers.
1 Like
I’ve never taken it. The closest I’ve got to a cognition test was counting down from 100 in groups of 7 and repeating back numbers. At a latter point I seem to recall a proverb test.
Social interaction has always been difficult for me even before overt signs of mental illness started to kick in. I am not one of those who had a good number of friends only to lose them as the illness started. I had one friend between the age of 8-18 who on hindsight may not have been much of a friend. I found him on twitter recently only for him to block me!
The truth is I don’t really get it when it comes to social interaction.
I did Games With Words: Mind Reading Quotient and scored badly for social language ie 47% . Out of every 10 people I’d score better than 0. I really struggled to rank the replies.
My situation is complicated by possible ASD(definite traits)/probable non-verbal learning disorder both of which also affect social skills.
1 Like
Rexulti might help a little bit. Zyprexa and Clozaril, especially Clozaril, were so sedating that they made socialization more difficult.
I believe meds can do there part and then we have to do our part:)on other hand it’s good to try and take baby steps to being social. It’s taken me a while to learn this and now I socialize alot more often then just staying in my house all the time. Meds do help. Then the rest is up to us.
Antidepressants help making me more social, AP on the other hand make me unable to interact with other people, I mean they make me sleepy, I can’t think fast or come up with stuff to say when I’m on AP, it’s really shitty, when I don’t take Ap for a couple days I become so more creative and interesting
1 Like
They just zone me out and make me sleepy reducing my zest for life. So having a laugh etc is not the same anymore. I feel extremely guilty saying its the AP cos it could be the illness itself so I say it’s one or the other or both. But then again I’m not hearing voices so that makes social aspect different too
I dont think they help. I have had many antidrepressants. They just give me energy to multitask. This way I can have suicidal idealations, as their called, while getting the shopping and chores done at the same time.
Created a monster?
I do well interacting with strangers, I think. I appear friendly. I smile at people, catch all social cues. I just don’t know how to make/ keep lasting relationships with people outside my family, and I only have relationships with them because they’ve been around forever. I don’t know what to say to people after a while. I think it’s because I don’t do anything, so I don’t have anything to talk about. If I went out once in a while, things might be different. I do like people though. I get lonely. I want friends.
That’s definitely a problem for me too.
I think if your problem is bad shyness you have to work that out by getting used to talking to people you don’t know.
But I’m way more social in comfortable situations on Rexulti which has little or no sedating effect, than Zyprexa or Clozaril.
Edit:
Oh I already said that, my bad. Too loopy to come up with anything else.
I think a couple of the ssri’s are supposed to help some people interact socially. I just started taking Paxil. I’ll let you know if it helps me socialize.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.