My doctor acknowledges my negative symptoms and recommended day treatment. It really helped! I am more “on top of it” juggling all my commitments and challenging myself more. I also started sarcosine about 5 days ago and today when the therapist saw me she said I am noticeably more assertive, socially competent, and improved. It might be a combination of sarcosine and therapy rewiring my brain. She said a mentally ill making it in society and work is all about pushing yourself. Many people she knows work now and lead normal lives. However none of them are schizophrenic lol. With schizophrenics they are just lucky to stick around and not relapse usually. But there is hope. Intense Therapy does change your brain chemistry and thinking patterns and sarcosine can help too.
i dont really bring them up bc i have a lot of other mental issues causing me far more anguish, and i know theres not a whole lot that can be done for negative symptoms at this time, plus she still seems iffy on whether or not i really have a psychotic disorder so i feel weird bringing up negative symptoms of schizophrenia
Therapy once in a while was not nearly enough for me either. I needed day treatment which is 3 times a week and in groups and 3 hours at a time. It forced me to get up early and confront my fear of failure and condition myself to talk to people and give structure. I keep a very scheduled week of activities now on day treatment. You need structure and a nurturing environment. Maybe a clubhouse? Sarcosine has no side effects for me. If you can’t access day treatment, get a meditation app to help with concentration and calmness. Force yourself to organize your day, be social. There are ways to do self therapy to slowly change yourself. Honestly therapy could not improve my problems like memory or attention. But it really did help with motivation and functioning. I was dragging my feet less running errands and being on top of my phone calls and driving more and getting more done.
I think clubhouse might be good for you. I visited one and it was very chill. Lots of opportunities to make friends, chance to learn job training skills or life skills, a good place to volunteer, good food. I do support group and it really changed my life. I was lonely and I found support and made friends. Go into any program with a good attitude and you can gain something from it.
my doctor is under the delusion that “all of the new antipsychotics help with negative symptoms”.
word?
as an explanation its actually taught in some outdated textbooks that atypicals treat negative symptoms. and of course hes all caught up in the hype of vraylar and all and the sales reps showed up and marketed it like it was the best thing on gods green earth just because it was new.
so hes one of those optimistic the future must be bright types when it comes to meds and the pipeline
so my pdoc ignored my negative sx, what i did was do research on what has worked for others and discovered dose reduction. you must do it in an informed way with the assistance of a pdoc, but overmedication is a common cause of miserableness and negative symptoms. i discovered some of my negative sx might have been extrapyramidal symptoms. i also discovered that titrating gradually to find the liwest effective dose can see you rediscovering elements of your personality you had considered gone with the meds/disease, both good and bad
