sorry its long!
my sister has enduring delusions or memories of past lives and experiences with demons and generally believes in all this as her extraordinary spirituality and the spirituality of myself as a schizophrenic and our middle sister who had unremitting schizophrenia, believes in our previous delusions being real
she is a very heavy drinker and in fact most likely quite long term alcoholic already having 2 bottles of wine every evening over 10 years ago and since
she has severe post traumatic stress from childhood and isolates herself in her room at mums
one thing she knows she has is pretty extreme depression
but would not try again with meds
for the past 5years she has been too unwell to work has been self injuring to extremes like nothing i have seen
she has been very suicidal all this time
she refuses to trust anyone to help her
no trust in doctors, mental health services, peers as in self help or aa people, therapists, and refuses to consider any of these as has become positive about a photography project (she is one of the best portrait photographers in the world)
she is able to have conversations
travel for a few weeks in europe
go to the shop
cook
care give mum when she was hit by a car 5 months ago
these are significantly better than i was in psychotic episodes
i need to know if you can be like this and still be diagnosed with schizoaffective
i dont see any way forward for her
unless spontaneous remission is possible
she has this unremitting psychosis at a slightly less extreme level than frank, acute psychosis and would be released from any attempt at hospital within days
she has extreme mistrust in any form of medications
with no medical options available to confirm - is this schizophrenia? schizotypal personality? schizoaffective?
mostly post traumatic stress from childhood?
my mum ignores attempts to diagnose because she has daughters not conditions for children
but knowing i have autism and schizophrenia has helped me frame my life