hi…i was ill ,right now im ok.no delusions and paranoa…problem is right now i dont have any plans for the future.i just dont care about anything.my future .academics. dresscode ,selfcare.i probably quiting my present degree coz the arriers are damn high.but i dont have plans for new course to study .about getting job .settling and marriage.i know i have lost 4 years of my academics .but that dont make me sad…only JUST DONT CARE ATTITUDE…i watch 1-2 movies everyday but thers litle trouble maintaing constant interest.i dont find pleasure in socializing.i want to know this " dont care atittude" about life and future is a symptom of medication or illness itself…any one suffering from this sort of atittude please share your experience …HELP
I went through the same issues after my psychotic episode, in time it gets better. Psychotherapy helps a lot!
hi minni…do u find your past hobbies and activities enjoyable
I find most life enjoyable now
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Could simply be avolition. You don’t want to do anything. A negative symptom of SZ.
Hi! Apathy (lack of caring) and not feeling motivated are negative symptoms of schizophrenia, like another person (@martinhersey1) said on here. You’re not alone.
It’s also a nasty psychological side effect of being inside the mental health system. I was told by own trusted, long-time pdoc to drop out of school, quit working and go on disability when I was 23-24 years old and newly diagnosed as a schizophrenic (fyi, I earned my Associate’s, Bachelor’s and Master’s diplomas AFTER I was told to quit due to schizophrenia). After being told to lay at home and go on disability, I didn’t care about anything and it wasn’t from the negative symptoms, it was from society’s messages about what I could or couldn’t do with my life as a schizophrenic. Mix that with actual negative symptoms and my mind was like “i give 0 cares about everything and I don’t feel like getting out of bed.”
I tried taking a higher dose of anti-depressants but it dawned on me that it was my diagnosis and, specifically my prognosis that were really weighing me down.
What finally worked was mixing meds with a belief that I could do something small every day to make the world a better, more equal place. Feeling disenfranchised and rather dehumanized by my treatment in the system as a mental patient, I wanted to change the system for the better. I wanted to change society’s ideas of mental illness. I wanted a civil rights revolution to happen so that my schizophrenic brethren would never have to experience the restraints and other casual abuses that mental patients still experience. This was at a stage when I had no job, no car, no income, zero motivation, no future, and I was forced to attend a mental patient daycare (“intensive out-patient treatment center” or some kind of euphemism for “day care for 5250’s run by the city and mandated onto patients in exchange for free treatment”).
These are lofty, “impossible” goals, but why not try to change the world? I wasn’t doing anything better, anyways. I might as well aim for the stars and who cares if people call me crazy, since I technically am? Do you have any groups or communities that you identify with or want to help?
I think what gets me out of bed in the morning is the desire to prevent another schizophrenic from feeling the hopelessness, the worthlessness, the dehumanization that I felt during my illness. I started feeling like I belong to the schizophrenic community, a community of underserved people who deserve better and I wake up and think “I owe it to my schizophrenic brethren to get out of bed and help the community.” It’s kind of a cheat, this “get out of bed for the sake of the others” thing, but you’d be surprised how well it works, and eventually you’ll get out of bed just because you have stuff to do now!
I’ve always been a starry-eyed dreamer, though. What interests you? Money, music, your field of study, sports, history? Wake up and do what interests you, what captures your attention. Find whatever helps change your mindset!
btw, what kind of movies do you watch every day? I used to love to read books and watch action movies until active psychosis killed my attention span. Now, I can’t even sit through thirty minutes of action packed movies without getting up and leaving—and a whole book for fun?–pfft! Maybe you can change the content though? I used to love novels and now I can’t read novels, I have to read technical books, if anything at all. I can sit still through a youtube video but a movie is way too long.
Also, who are you socializing with? Maybe try a different genre of movie and maybe a different “genre” of people, lol 
Best wishes! I feel you on the academics part, I went straight into college at 18 and didn’t receive my Bachelor’s until age 28, due to illness and poverty. Us schizophrenics have really long, winding paths to follow to our final goals. Keep walking, keep your head up, keep searching for what will get you out of bed each day! <3
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In the beginning I felt that way a lot, but overtime the feeling died down. The apathy and disinterest, but my mind is slowly adjusting to my Application and my interests are returning. I still get blah days,but not as much as it was at first.
Medication AP * auto correct
Frankly I find it sane to ‘Not Care’ in moderation.
You’re not venturing into the ‘Milk N Honey’ world that the Baby Boomers were.
Simon (American Idol) would’ve personally threw Bob Dylan off the stage had he tried
to get himself seen during this age where there are millions more people; many of which have talent.
There are also less people you can confide in be it romance or employment
and things are a lot more dog-eat-dog.
You need to live for the moment; neither regretting the past nor worrying about tomorrow.
However if you don’t send the message in the bottle not even Fate will have a rational excuse to get back in touch with you to help out a little.
One danger I will warn right now is that the more focused and worried about something you are the more you won’t overcome the problem - Ironic Process Theory.
Follow your instinct and don’t do too much of anything that your heart isn’t into.
It’s all guiding you in the direction of your niche.
hi hquinn…that was so inspirational what u said there…thanks for sharing here…well “what interest me?”–i like reading about psychiatric conditions,schizo,etc.then wiki pages of movies ,actors,all media related.i spent my day mostly on watching and searching the right movie on IMDB.especialy foriegn movies(feel good movies).i like watching iranian movies.korean movies.i like action thrillers too…then i had planned to study about my condition itself–Bsc.psychology sometime…but that plan has also faded away…then about socializing…i enjoy having long conversation with my friends.but only if they come near me.i dont have the interest in going towards them for say party,marriage etc.may be because im lazy or avoltion …i donno…btw what meds u take?
hi! thanks, i’m so glad you thought it was inspirational!
i also like foreign movies (Japanese, mostly), so I bought a cheap camcorder and some cheap editing software (Sony vegas pro studio and cyberlink director). Now I make short videos for fun. I find having creative visual outlets helps with my introverted personality. I find my videos are influenced by what movies I like (for me, it’s youtube cat videos and surreal music videos lol but it would be cool to see what you’d do with a movie—thinking about that vampire movie from iran–A girl walks home alone at night, only saw the trailer but man it looked awesome).
I take abilify, down to 15 mg now + lamictal (mood stabilizer) + prozac + busperone (non-addictive anti-anxiety). I’ve found this combo works for my particular set of symptoms. I’ve also tried zyprexa (heavy hitter, sooo much weight gain, but so effective for positive symptoms 
) and geodon, resperidone, seroquel, some old gen drug with congentin for the shakes, and maybe one or two anti-psychotics that i can’t remember, plus a host of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs. I’ve had pretty much no positive symptoms since 2008 on my abilify combo (well, maybe a few paranoid delusions but nothing like the endless morning to night audio and visual hallucinations…). Abilify is still meh with weight gain, though, just not as bad as zyprexa. I read your positive symptoms are not there anymore! Glad to hear that! Thanks for sharing, too!!
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