Is antipsychotic and psychiatric meds a solution for schizophrenia,mental illness?
Some people on this forum get relapses or feeling very bad after doing great for months and then all of sudden things changed inside their brain and situation,their mood,behavior got worse
Is medication the solution for mental illnesses/schizophrenia?
Medications for Mental Illness are not the solution, but can be part of a solution, that includes a bunch of other things one with a Mental Illness can be doing for themselves.
Taking medications for a severe mental illness is just one part of a bigger picture.
I have been on different meds over the years, since I was a child really, and I can honestly say that some meds have helped and others have actually worsened my condition.
There is no Magic Bullet pill that does it all.
Exercising, eating well, getting involved in a healthy social setting, family, friends, seeing a therapist, getting involved in meaningful activity, are also very important for someone with a Mental Illness.
Its not just about taking the meds, there are other factors that should be at play.
Stress can trigger a relapse in someone with a severe mental illness, no matter how many meds one is taking - it happens.
Medications play an important role in the healing process - thats for sure.
I agree with @Wave that meds can be part of the solution. I personally believe that if it was not for meds I would not have made it out alive. For many years I have self medicated with alcohol but there came a time when I could not do it on my own anymore. I sincerely hope that there will come a breakthrough of some sort in the treatment of sz so that we need not be dependent on anti psychotics to live our lives. I do not believe that meds will be the omega of sz treatment.
I think @Wave summed it up pretty well.
In my case, meds take care of the “outward” problems, but the psychological traumas, and all the other backlogged crap in my brain needs psychotherapy. If my insurance hadn’t made it prohibitively expensive, I’d be in therapy yesterday.
I’ve taken meds for mine and I got no relief from it at all. If anything it made things worse. So I stopped them and I haven’t really felt the same since I’ve been off them prior to being on them I actually felt like myself before taking the meds.
If you can manage that big pile of pooh your doing alright in my book! No need for meds but if its working by all means go for it, it’s different strokes for different fokes.
Have a goodone!
intounknown
A lot of people would say it is vital/necessary for schizophrenia, & useful for a lot of other mental health conditions.
Bigger picture/more ideal Worlds - i think there is a question as to the efficacy of other alternative approaches. But we won’t more fully know unless there is proper access to such alternatives.
The nay sayers basically say that the alternatives don’t work - & the adherents say they do - so it’s an impasse - dominated currently by the nay sayers.
only thing i can think of, when everything else has been tried there is only one way to go, i sometimes wonder if intensive talk therapy would have worked on me early on in this illness, if they had picked it up but it got to a stage where i needed meds,
i didnt want them but i needed them and its still the same i guess except now i am a little more tollerant i mean i wish i could live without them given the choice med or no med i would choose no meds but i can do that now because i know i would go mad again.
its the jekyll & hyde thing again only in reverse and i didnt have a potion to change me, i changed into this thing on my own, its the meds that bring me back to reality.
From the p.o.v. of one who has been empirically observing the issue for several decades, the answer seems to be: There’s a continuum / range / spectrum that runs from “pretty much ‘yes’” to “pretty much ‘no.’”
Some pts respond so well to a med or combo thereof that meds appear to get the job done so long as they are taken. Some pts respond so poorly to any med prescribed (from a wide selection) that it looks like no med will work.
Likewise, some pts who get sufficient symptomatic relief from med(s) may or may not arrive at a pretty complete solution once they have done enough psychotherapy to resolve the issues meds cannot touch.
The usual suggestions follow.
Get properly diagnosed by a board-certified psychopharmacologist who specializes in the psychotic disorders. One can find them at…
https://psychiatrists.psychologytoday.com/rms/
Work with that p-doc to develop a medication formula that stabilizes your symptoms sufficiently so that you can tackle the psychotherapy that will disentangle your thinking. The best of the therapies for that currently include…
DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing
MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia
REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
Standard CBT – http://www.beckinstitute.org/what-is-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/About-CBT/252/
can people ever recover and become med free?
A lot of people have/do claim that. The nay sayers generally seem to largely deny it all in different ways. i find it very odd.
One such story here that can be researched (of hundreds that i’ve come across) -
Make of it what you will.
It happens on occasion. But the statistics I have seen rarely range above 2-3% among those who dx’d with florid sx at some point. One usually does far better to observe to notice to recognize to acknowledge to accept to own to appreciate and understand one’s illness so that he or she can take the most advantageous steps to deal effectively with it.
do you think i could do it?
Do what, exactly?
i think it’s areas that need great care & a lot of support. i stopped all medication for 4 years twice. After stopping it all 5 times & always ending up very unwell, i eventually accepted taking a low dose of medication. Some people seem able to live successfully med free, it’s debatable how many do? i think more could if there was more appropriate psycho-social support - but that is debated. Each case seems individual.
recover fully…
its a huge risk knowing that any minute or second or hour your brain could just flip out and start doing its own little dance, idk if i can take that risk but do i really want to live life forever under the shadow of medication? i may have no choice.
I haven’t assessed you. Have you gotten a proper assessment from a board-certified psychiatrist who specializes in sz? Do you know what you genetic loading is? Do you know what your environmental loading is? Are you on med regimen that works for you? Do you take your meds as prescribed? Are you involved in cognitive psychotherapy? The answers to those questions may suggest a prognosis, but even then, no one will know for sure.
havent you done this? in your recovery?
Yea - that’s the dilemma. There does seem to be emerging evidence that lower maintenance doses of medication with support is sometimes the better of options. i think that more people could be better helped, but we have the system/society that we have. We have to live with the realities of our lives/circumstances.
We can only work with the resources that we have. i’m Not opposed to a more comprehensive psychiatry & wise use of medication(s) - it’s maybe wise to work with the people/services you have access to, as far as possible - & take professional advice - as imperfect as things are.
I’m not sure what “this” means, but what I can tell you is that, while I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin now, I am still quite obviously ■■■■■■ up… especially when I fail to see various stressors chewing at my ankles.