I was speaking to a dear friend and I was saying how I can’t concentrate on movies like when I was a kid. Up until now I blamed that 100% on the sz and/or the meds to treat it.
But my friend suggested something which made me think: maybe all adults lose that intense focus you have as a kid. Maybe sz isn’t the culprit here.
The reason this matters to me is because I keep flirting with the idea of ditching all meds so I can focus again. But maybe, just maybe, that wouldn’t help a single thing.
No, I have the same problem. It’s definitely the meds or sz negative symptoms in my case. The rest of my family concentrates fine on T.V. and movies. I’m switching medications, hoping to fix concentration and enjoyment issues. Fingers crossed . I’m also trying Sarcosine now.
It’s the sz. Old people can still watch and enjoy movies. I’d suspect it’s the disorder and not the meds. Lots of things were reported before the meds so it’s always been an issue.
Adults can still watch and enjoy things, but they usually don’t feel that consuming and overwhelming passion that kids do for their interests. An adult can enjoy something and then move on to work or chores. When a kid really loves a movie, they won’t shut up about it for weeks. They look for any excuse to bring it up and talk more about it.
Its both, sz and meds. When I stopped meds I had less negative symptoms and was able to live alone but I wasn’t functional in society at all, I was paranoid and scared of ppl. I was also more suicidal. I think its better with meds because I am less suicidal.
Evidence to support it is innately the sz is that my focus got terrible through my prodrome - long before the APs
Apologies if this is encouraging a bad example but for years I self medicated with tobacco. The regular cig brakes every 20mins (I smoke outside) helped my focus on movies
Only if there was a way to block dopamine in a specific brain area…My psychiatrist said that there isn’t and that meds cause negative symptoms by blocking dopamine in all the brain.
I don’t know if this is part of concentration or focus but I sometimes have a hard time comprehending the story lines of movies and have to have them explained to me.
I don’t know if this is a result of my poor hearing but I always read the closed captions so that shouldn’t be it.
It varies and depends on what I’m interested in. I went from a superior concentration where I could focus up to 8 hours at a time before schizophrenia to only 1-2 hours on rare occassions. Most of the times, it’s less than 1 hour. I cannot watch movies or read books sometimes. Even meds interfere sometimes. I definitely don’t enjoy and actually hate rewatching old movies and rereading books.
I think people can still focus, just on different types of movies. I will admit that I used to blame my memory problems on sza/medication, until I quit smoking marijuana and all my memory problems went away.
I had cognitive symptoms way before I took meds. They say that cognitive symptoms are the earliest symptoms of sz. I think we a born with them, they’re highly genetic. Negatives are caused by both sz and meds.
Yes i have heard that as well. It is normal to lose a degree of that hyperfocus and energy you had as a child. It’s one thing I look back on so jealously of my past younger self. I used to be able to binge watch entire shows that had 300 episodes, could stay up all night reading an entire book, poured hours and hours into videogames getting totally absorbed in them.
I am not that way about anything now. The most anything can hold my attention for now is a couple hours at a time. Oh man I took that aspect of being a kid for granted
Also I’ve found that a lot of things I got super excited about as a kid I just don’t get entertained by as much now that I’m an adult. For example I was in love with this one video game franchise. I religiously bought every single one of their games. Nowadays I have finally given up buying them because I just don’t play them. They don’t hold my interest anymore. It makes me really sad.
Yes it was terrible.
Still can’t read novels.
Maybe try watching movies you already saw first.
Then you know what’s coming.
There’s not too many new movies out there anyway.
I think it was everything for me, probably started with mental illness then meds made me tired and unmotivated, i lost interest in tv and also over time i found better things to do other than watch tv or play video games
