Does my best friend have a mental illness?

My best friend is a really nice guy, but for some reason he talks to himself all the time.

He doesn’t have any delusions or hallucinations (as far as I know).

But all day long he talks to himself and laughs to himself constantly. He can still have conversations with you. If you ask him a question he stops talking to himself and answers. But if you don’t talk to him he will talk to himself incessantly.

He’s completely independent though. He works a job and rents a room in an apartment. He knows how to take care of himself.

Is this an illness? Sometimes I think he should try taking meds and maybe that might stop him from talking to himself. I don’t think he would want to though because he doesn’t really mind talking to himself.

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Might be ecentric…might be prodrome schziophrenia who knows

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I dunno. He’s been that way for years without any delusions or hallucinations, so I don’t think it’s Schizophrenia.

I talk to myself virtually constantly but only when alone. In my case, it is related to MI because I am talking to my audience. I believe I am always being monitored and watched. I looked up ‘talking to yourself’ on the internet recently and could find nothing negative about it. It is, apparently, harmless. Maybe he just has kind of an OCD where he needs to talk out loud. Like I said, if he were talking to people that aren’t there (like I am) it might be a sign of a MI, but everything I read said that talking to yourself isn’t unhealthy or abnormal. Just my.02

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Well maybe he has a slight autism.

Yeah it’s pretty harmless. I don’t think it’s OCD. He doesn’t seem to be totally aware that he’s doing it. Although he’s told me before, “How would you like it if you were constantly talking to yourself?”

If he wishes he could stop and can’t, then it is an OCD. If he could stop but doesn’t want to, then it isn’t. That question sounds like he wishes he could quit, though. Maybe not.

He definitely doesn’t have any control.

Oh well then maybe it is an OCD. There are resources on the internet I ran across for people that want to stop talking to themselves. I looked them up for myself. In my case, my delusion is directly related to my talking. Delusion goes down, talking goes down but there are resources for people that constantly talk to themselves and want to stop. Just Google it.

He might have other problems you don’t know about. Can you get him to agree to see a professional? i.e. A psychiatrist?

I don’t think he would want to, but I could ask.

Some people really don’t like going to a pdoc. I used to be that way. It took things getting really bad for me to finally realize that I needed to see a pdoc.

Plus he doesn’t have much money and I’m not sure if he has insurance.

I’ll google it!

Maybe he is like that dude in A Beautiful Mind.

Then what’s the harm?

You don’t have to put a label to it, there are some people that like to talk to themselves that’s all.

Maybe it’s because of an organic issue.

I wouldn’t be so concerned.

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We’ve all got problems! Maybe that’s his way of coping with the insanity of day to day life. I lose my ■■■■ and think people are poisoning me, your friend has full on conversations with himself but no delusions. There’s a lot of different forms of being crazy, we’re not the only ones with this dubious honor.

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This is the best quote I’ve heard all day!

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Why thank you. I’m glad I could say something profound enough to capture your attention.
I do believe that to be the truth.

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And I totally agree!

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Yes, well unfortunately having a psychotic condition is sort of the “royal Flush” of disorders but if you look around you will see that there are all kinds of ways to struggle on a day to day basis.

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