Do you think you were always mentally ill? I was depressed for a little while at 5 years old after I finally told my parents the next door neighbor boy was molesting me. I felt suicidal at 9, 13 and 16. I became chronically depressed starting at age 12 when we moved to a new neighborhood and my old support system was gone and I was left with just abusive parents and new friendships that weren’t close. By the way, I finally don’t feel depressed on Geodon, which is part of the reason I’m afraid to switch meds. It’s working so well. Once I graduated college and was working I had crippling anxiety and paranoia. I worked full time anyway, but I was miserable. I really was in jobs that were bad for me. Anyway, I didn’t hear voices until I was 37, which eventually led to a schizophrenia diagnosis, but I think I had schizophrenia long before I started hearing voices.
Yes. I was severely abused and neglected since infancy. I was emancipated at 16. I was ill as a result from infancy on. I’ve been through an unbelievable amount of therapy to deal with it all. But I am better than I’ve ever been thankfully.
I’m still paranoid etc. but I’m not depressed or suicidal. Just very high anxiety and paranoia.
I suffered with severe panic disorder since I was a kid, also developed agoraphobia at an early age.
I also suffered with awful night terrors early on and was a bed wetter till I was 11 years old.
I also had nighttime visual hallucinations and developed paranoia early on.
Also suffered with depression and mania early as well.
I can see the seeds of my later break with reality when I was very young. I hallucinated once when I was about three or four. It was displaced fear. But my childhood was pretty good, for the most part. I did a few things when I was little that I still feel a little bit bad about many decades later. I remember getting our first report cards in the first grade, and this one girl got very bad marks. I was yelling at people that Mary Dale (name changed) got these terrible grades on her report card. It must have been humiliating for her. I thought she got the bad grades because she was lazy, but I think the reality was that she had some kind of learning disability. A few people have gotten their verbal punishments in on me as time went on, and I think it might be retribution for the rotten way I treated Mary Dale.
I don’t know. I mean, I had some difficult days. Saw a lot of stuff. Most of the time I did what I could to put on a happy face, but in reality I wished I was somewhere else, someone else.
I suffered from pretty bad emotional neglect/bullying from peers as a child then started having trouble with school attendance in middle school. I eventually became mute and had horrible anxiety in high school and dropped out. At this point I suffered from crippling anxiety/moderate depression and had a feeling that things would get worse for me.
My mom didn’t have adequate supports/resources to take care of me she was a single mother with unmedicated SZ, I had a learning disability, and we lived in poverty. It sucked.
Anyway, I had my first psychotic break at 19 and well, I was actually kind of relieved to have received the diagnosis because that’s when I started to get help.
According to my mental health professionals, my illness started when i began being sexually abused at age 2.
I had symptomatic patterns for as long as I can remember. Both with hallucinations, paranoia, and delusional thoughts, as well as my severe dissociation. I also had bulimia in the form of laxative abuse between the ages of 13 and 23.
I was diagnosed with DID in September 1993, when I was 22, and bipolar sza in addition to that when I was 44. Neither of my parents are professionally diagnosed bipolar, but my sister and I are sure that they are, so there is a genetic factor as well as environment/nurture.
I think mental illness for me started around the age of 11. I was in a car accident and was traumatized, though of course no one understood that at the time. What followed was my teens spent between sometimes being part of the pot smoking crowd, and sometimes being a complete recluse for weeks and months at a time.
I was tough as ■■■■■■■ nails then, but kind of a sensitive sort. There was so much mental anguish, and so much emotional turmoil inside, it was a very difficult period of life for me. I lived in a dream, that I would move to the Yukon and become completely self-sufficient. Living off the land, or learning a skill that was salable. That dream was my salvation, it got me through the horror that was Ontario housing. I saw a lot of ■■■■ that kids shouldn’t see, and experienced my fair share of ■■■■.
I always thought I was "strong enough’ not to become mentally ill, but I realize now that the roots of my current illness began at a very young age. Mental health issues have been popping in and out of my life all along. I just didn’t realize what it was
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I started going south in Senior highschool but had thought problems for as long as I remember. I was destined to get sz but somehow managed to survive till I was dxed and psychotic at 29.
Yes. I was abused at home and abused at school, and bullied heavily throughout childhood and adolescence. My parents never understood my mental illness and they still don’t. They pretend that everything is alright. I’m sure that I felt miserable since I was very young.
I was a socially weird toddler. My mom would put me in a room with other people and i would stand frozen like a statue and not interact. It makes me wonder if i’m not really autistic.
My mom says I was sick because I heard voices as a boy but who knows, they might have been real spirits. My mom told me my uncle who killed himself when I was very young thought God was talking to him so I never entertained the idea. I had a window into another world of imagination and I still do today but see it as phenomenon incredible.
I was told I was always “different” all my life, I look back and see a lot of my behavior was prodromal even before I was decades away from full blown psychosis.
IDK, from my earliest memories I was always different. Now this past year, I’ve discovered how much. I have a normal side to me for sure but I’ve always been an observer to “life” and always on the outside looking in. All I can say in my defense is that I was weird ever since I can remember, but I’ve done a lot of normal stuff in my life and had good friends.