Some people have had recovery from negative and cognitive symptoms. Although meds are not available at this point, people do improve through cognitive remediation therapies. Improvements can even be visible on brain scans. And since that’s without meds, it goes to show the inherent plasticity of the brain.
Like @anon9798425 said, we don’t know who will recover and who will not. There are only factors that play a part - some of those are resilience and persistence. I’m not blaming people who are not recovering because a) that would be kind of arseholish of me, and b) we can’t possibly know what’s going on with them. But since we can’t control other factors like age of onset and gender, the best we can do is be as resilient and persistent as possible.
There are some good recovery stories out there. Maybe someone can post some. I remember watching part of a video of one guy who got ill when he was 10. He still has sz, but he was doing pretty well.
This is true in some cases far_cry0. I agreee both with what you said and how you said it. Some don’t recover because… and here is the tough part… recovery requires support, it cannot be done alone without a reason. You have to want to recover to believe it a possibility that is attainable. That does not mean there is a cure or that there is not, it means we have to accept ourselves and what is given to us and press on against the odds… even if it is just one supportive friend… it gives us strength. Like those of us who have parents, there are some without parents, without blood relatives, yet… we the suffering have compassion for them as we are the forgotten and abandoned.
It is possible to try to get better.
What will happen only God knows.
It is possible, it is our duty to try to get better and use all the available means to get better.
I recovered one time from meds and I will say that many of simptoms that I thought was from illness wasn’t from illness but from meds and the severity of the real illness was 1/10 with really not negative simptoms I was always with friends and enjoy the life. I became full functional working 10 hours a day and living indipendently for 1 year
I am wondering if people (self included) have been “brainwashed” by their governments disabilty determination services?
By this i mean, most people in the usa are told we only have severe disabilty if we can not recover. They will puposely wait up to 3 + yrs to grant it. During that time we are to try to recover best we can.
It is confusing after having that drilled in to my mind. I had to re-read you post about 4 times.
I didn’t know that’s how it worked over there. Here, they give you disability if you have a serious illness or injury and treatment isn’t likely to improve your ability to work in the near future. You also have to attempt a job which the government provides for you before you are granted disability. There’s no explicit rule that you have to have a lifelong condition, your doctor/psychologist just needs to say that recovery is unlikely to happen soon.
The vast majority of people with schizophrenia respond to treatment and live normal lives in the community. Statistics on people ten years after their initial psychotic break include:
25% of people have experienced recovery
25% are much improved and living independently
25% are improved but require constant support
Children and people over 45 rarely get schizophrenia
15% are hospitalized
yes. a little the same except they give us no benifits until we have already tried several medications (over the 3 yrs) and failed to improve enough. Then they will pay.
I am thinking our government considers 3 yrs to be near future. They do try to keep us working by requiring an attempt- to-work too, in most cases.
A doctors note stating we will not recover soon is often rejected unless the person has something like lived 6 months in a state mental hospital, has had a very terrible accident and is home bound, or a diagnosis for terminal cancer.
They do not have to neccassarily be disabled for life. They dont say that, but the person does have to be in such bad shape even after 3 yrs. of treatment in order to get benifits. I t is strongly implied.
That is a lot stricter than here. And we get benefits while waiting for disability / not being currently able to work too. Not that much less than actual disability benefits.
Erez you’re way too young to know whether you’ll have illness for life or not. I would encourage you to keep working on your mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing and be proactive with your care team in finding meds and therapy that work well for you.
The Medicaid determination interview asked me questions and said since I’m still sick I should get food stamps and Medicaid still. I don’t know how SSI determines eligibility.
My brother has autism, adhd and bipolar disorder with psychotic features. He claims the use weed cured him
Speaking for myself, i was much happy you decided to go to the gym the other day. You took back part of life. If only for hour or so, you did what you wanted to do, not what the illness wants you to do.
That is freedom. I encourage you to try to get more freedom by taking back as much of your life as possible. Reclaiming what you can do with your time is important. Create more opportunities to do this.
Can you do something simple today? can you get a just a bit of money and walk to a shop and buy yourself a tiny treat to enjoy? If you can, you just took one more step to getting some of your time for you(and not the illness).
Just judging from statistics it’s not a significant amount. Vast majority of sz cases are chronic, with only a small minority able to achieve some semblance of a normal life.
I guess it depends on what you mean by significant. A minority, yes. But it’s not an insignificant minority, in my eyes.
Also, what do you mean by “some semblance of normal life”? Most people with sz are not institutionalized today. Some live with their families and do well there. Some live independently. And the numbers improve a lot with better psychological and psychoeducational treatment. In the future, we can expect the numbers to keep improving. Some are even able to work or study and live pretty normal lives even without complete recovery. They deal with their symptoms and compensate for their cognitive difficulties, and can even compete with normal people. I am one of those. And you probably wouldn’t have guessed that I would end up here if you’d met me five years ago. At least not if you’re one of those who think recovery from schizophrenia is rare.
Recovery is not rare. Complete recovery is uncommon, but most recover in various ways over the course of the illness.
