This is what my brain is like after sz. Before sz my brain was a bicycle which I knew how to ride well.
Another metaphor for competing in life with sz is like trying to drive a corny tricycle on a freeway full of trucks and suvs.
What metaphor would you use to describe your life with mental illness, or sz in general?
Van Gogh was sz right?…:…
Yes Vincent Van Gogh was.
I think he was either bipolar or just unipolar depression. Not necessarily sz. Szs aren’t often very productive or successful, not even in the arts. Possibly because of amotivation type symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh
The article states he went through psychotic episodes and delusions. He only became famous after he committed suicide
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Yes, but bipolar people can experience hallucinations and delusions in their manic phase too. You also have to wonder the credibility of a report that he had these symptoms, as it was the 1800s and many of the current measurement methods for psychosis didn’t exist. If psychiatry is prone to mistakes now it was even more likely they would be back then.
Schizophrenia is a damning diagnosis, most people who have it fail to achieve highly in life. While those with bipolar are somehow able to achieve much more in life. Schizoaffective is somewhere in between.
Yeah, I think psychiatry has got most mental illnesses diagnosed. For example each country has their medical book as a resource such as the DSM-V I think is the most recent.
COGNITIVE DEFICITS IN BIPOLAR DISORDER AND SCHIZOPHRENIA: A COMPARISON
Similar cognitive profiles have been reported in patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but the severity of impairment appears greater in schizophrenia.79–81 There is now substantial evidence that cognition is a good predictor of functional outcome in schizophrenia as well as bipolar-I disorder.12 Controversies, however, exist regarding the specificity of domains or the generalizability.
Comparisons of cognition between these patient groups are problematic due to the fact that differences in illness characteristics and current symptoms are not always assessed and may confound neuropsychological test performance.80–83
A major limitation is differing medication regimens. Patients with bipolar disorder usually receive mood stabilizers (e.g. lithium, anticonvulsants) whereas patients with schizophrenia often take antipsychotic medications. Also, it is impossible to assess the degree of the patient’s cognitive impairment if studies fail to include a normal control group.83,84
In a study conducted at our centre (tertiary-care psychiatric hospital), 15 stable maintained schizophrenic patients and 15 euthymic bipolar-I patients attending the outpatient clinic were compared with each other as well as with 15 age- and education-matched controls. Stable schizophrenic patients were clinically assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for Schizophrenia (PANSS) and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) while euthymic patients were clinically assessed using the Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) and HDRS. Neurocognitive assessments were done using the WCST, Spatial Working Memory Test (SWMT) and CPT—all are computer-based. Stable schizophrenic patients performed poorly on all the neurocognitive parameters as compared with both controls and bipolar euthymic patients. Euthymic bipolar patients showed a significant difference in the domain of EF compared with normal controls, while the schizophrenic and bipolar euthymic patients were comparable. Thus, our study suggested that bipolar patients in the euthymic/remitted phase also have some types of cognitive processing deficits. Patterns of cognitive disturbances in tasks of EF are similar in both the groups but are quantitatively more marked in schizophrenia. Euthymic bipolar subjects showed significant impairment only on EF when compared with the control group.85
This is an interesting read from this article:
I think cognitive deficits in sz being more severe may be the reason we tend to not have as good of outcomes as the bipolar patients. As for negative symptoms, that just adds on. Positive symptoms are not correlated with functioning interestingly enough.
Interesting graph pertaining to outcome of certain mental illnesses.
You know, I can’t find really good evidence stating that sz is more limiting than bipolar. But I keep seeing it said over and over that cognitive impairment in bipolar is rarer and less severe. That may be the big difference between the two diseases.
Yes! Sz has a higher disability rate than bipolar. That may mean something…
I heard he had temporal lobe epilepsy as noted by his seizures. The jury is out when it comes to diagnosis by 35 medical professionals.
Psychosis and schizophrenia are in the mix.
All mental illnesses are debilitating. Lower life expectancy, lower quality of life and poorer outcomes.
That first painting, I think, is actually The Scream by Edvard Munch.
Dual diagnosis: being caught between the Scylla and Charybdis, a sea monster to one side, and a whirlpool with rocks on the other. Or, between a rock and a hard place.
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