What has been your longest period of remission? or what has been the longest remission you have heard about?
I have been in remission for almost four years and I was wondering if it would be possible to maintain that remission for another four years to come.
Although, me and my pdoc said it may be possible to come off it six months but I am considering just lowering my dose of abilify from 5 to 2 mg.
I wonder that on my own as well, i dont have positive and negative symptoms, besides the once that med causes. But i do have wondering mind, and self talk. I dont know if this is considered in remission or not.
I read they have some statistics that about one-third of the patients have only one single psychotic episode and then remain undelusional through out their lives, one-third of the patient have episodic psychosis over their life course, alternating between the realities, and the rest have ongoing psychotic experience all their lives.
I have only checked the first figure. It’s easy to find in the Internet.
I have heard it put similar to that ie 1/3 single episode 1/3 good and bad spells and 1/3 deteriorate to chronic,severe psychosis requiring being institutionalised.
I would guess most here fall into the second category
I don’t think i have ever had total remission. There has always been some degree of problem.
I have read that 1/3 recover too but doubt that those cases are really schizophrenia.
I dont use the term remission when it comes to my symptoms or lack of symptoms. Remission means no illness or evidence of disease. When it comes to schizophrenia their are always symptoms present or about to become present under certain situations like stress. Instead of remission Ill say Im having a good day week or month or couple of years or whatever. Even when Im having a pretty good day, subtle signs of something emerge.
if you mean positive symptoms it’s 4 years (twice) i’m going on 4 years and 3 months right now. i still can hear things every once in a great while but not on a consistent or daily basis.
I am only diagnosed with paranoid PD but agree about stress and the exacerbation of symptoms. How i appear non stressed or only mildly stressed is markedly different from being acutely/severely stressed when the irrationality and paranoia ramps up several notches.
That is it in a nutshell. I still hear voices, I still get panic and paranoia, I still have mild hallucinations, I still get into a lack of motivation funk, so there is always something. However I would say I’ve been mostly functional for four years and very functional and lucid for the most part these past two or more.
In early 2011 i was in a short term remission, for about two months. But my medicaid was canceled and i couldn’t afford the medication that helped me. But when i was on risperidone 8mg i wanted to sleep all day but i didn’t have any symptoms.
i am still waiting for that…
take care
I have just in front of me a manual ‘Scotland’s mental health’ published by NHS Health Scotland 2013.
It is said on page 129:
‘‘The diagnosis of schizophrenia can take up to two years because it is common for people to have single episode of psychosis and then completely recover. A diagnosis will only be made once the psychiatrist is certain that this is more than a single episode.’’
I agree that they shouldn’t diagnose with schizophrenia people who had one episode of psychosis. The diagnosis is not neutral, to put it mildly.
I was in remission for about two and a half years, but after two years on Geodon, I started having violent/intrusive thoughts which I still have today.
Maybe I won’t be diagnosed with schizophrenia if I live in your country. The psychiatrist only need 3 minutes to say that I have schizophrenia and the diagnosis would be forever. They don’t even talk to u. I’ve got my diagnosis once I admitted I heard voice. They don’t even asked when it started.
It’s been about 2 1/2 years since I’ve been admitted to a hospital. Before that it was about 25 years. I believe I have a lesser case of the illness.
Goggles
I am very sorry that you were treated like this.
My daughter was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in Poland, 2012. She was psychotic then - heard voices, suffered from delusions ( was thinking that I was going to kill her, then rob her, then keep her in the psychiatric ward as long as possible etc.). We both think now that she reacted with the psychotic shock to antimalarian drugs she took traveling to Africa and to a very serious personal trauma she suffered in Africa.
Doctors thought she was schizophrenic, end of the discussion.
Now she is fully recovered - without any symptoms about 1,5 year, no neuroleptics, no other meds. She works using her qualifications ( PhD), lives independently, pays her bills etc. It’s not all a bed of roses - she lives on her own, no friends really, no boyfriend, although she is a pretty and intelligent young woman. But then she was always very shy and kind of socially akward.
Back to the diagnosis: in Poland they can too slap it on you after some short time, watching ONLY their psychotic patient’s behaviour and talking to him/her, no other tests. This is irresponsible. They can ruin people’s lives with this quick diagnosing and putting a person on strong meds.
In the USA I believe it takes 6 months to diagnose.
In the manual I got from my husband ( he works for NHS Scotland) it is said, page 127:
‘‘It is important to remember that not all individuals who have psychotic experiences have a mental illness, Psychotic experiences such as hearing voices and suspiciousness or paranoia OCCUR IN THE GENERAL POPULATION, and to some extent are NORMAL AND UNDERSTANDABLE RESPONSE TO STRESSFUL LIFE EVENTS’’ ( it’s me who uses those capital letters, to make those important words more visible).
Have you suffered from major or long term stress before hearing that voice, Goggles?
I don’t think that diagnosis would be forever. I hope they will start reexamine their diagnoses.
However: if a judge says I stole something and I know I didn’t steal it I still treat myself as an honest person, not a thief. Even if other people say: ‘but the judge can’t be wrong!’ I know who I am. Doctors can be wrong the same as judges, the same as everybody else.
Take care
Karolina
Hi Karolina,
I ran into a traumatic head injury in February 2009 at the workplace. A huge door behind me hanging from the ceiling fell and hit my head. My skull and my spinal disc were displaced and my soft tissues were twisted and cramped. I had some memory problems and was like not as responsive as usual. It is like I was loosing part of my consciousness all time. My doctor suggested that i had clotted and insufficient blood and oxgen supply in my brain. After the procedures of compensation claim was done, the employer informed me they need my verbal agreement to change my employment terms from permanent to contract. They set up some hostile work condition to make me leave my work. Still working on my head injury problems, I was really helpless and stressful, and soon broke into a psychosis when I was receiving hypnotherapy and some alternative therapy. It begins with the use of a pendulum and prayer and dialogue with God. The therapies were effective at first. I then can hear small voices of God and Holy Spirits, which people who practice the therapies often do. I left my work and hide at home in May 2010 to do what Jehovah and my soul asked me to do.
I totally walk out of it in a few months. I have not any positive or negative symptoms for some time and I am off med currently. But I have sleep disorder and my mental abilities are not as good as in the past.
My mother told me, since she and I seldom got into touch and she failed to persuade me to go see a psychiatrist, she listened to some social workers and told a lot of lies about my behaviors so that the psychiatrist and the police would break into my apartment and tied me up with violence and locked me into a mental ward. She also took a group of strangers, who are taoism monks, with the psychiatrists, who yelled at me and provoked me, insisting that they are my close relatives and accuse me of failing to recognize them.
Mom told me she could not convince the psychiatrist and the police that I have a mental condition (I only left my work and stay at home, not any bizarre behaviors or paranoid, never disturbed anybody). Not even my fathers and my siblings believe I have a mental illness. They told my mother to think otherwise. They just lack any evidence suggestive of schizophrenia in me. So the social workers (who have never seen me) made up some story lines from nothing and told my mother and my sibling to read and report over the phone, to make sure that the psychiatrist believe that I have became schizophrenic and is a danger to someone. I think those lines are passing around and still on my file. So every psychiatrists I saw never conduct any clinical interview to me. They just told me I am schizophrenic. No one would talk to me.
I sometimes wonder if my mom knows what she was doing. When I walked out of the hospital, they escorted me to the taoism temple to perform rituals and said some vows and burnt some papers and my clothes to make me drink. My siblings were wearing some taoism tools to protect themselves and showed me a lot of handsigns when they saw me. My sis told me they saw ghost in my apartment. I do not. They strongly believe in it.
I am much better now that my parents do not force me to take med again. They are doing me even more harms. It was after I became sedated and huge size that they are really determined to avoid me. The whole thing is really horrible. I fear what my mother and my siblings would come up with next time. My mom still insists that if I take a lot more of the antipsychotics, I can totally recover and work on a gainful employment again. They think of it like supplement and nutritions, the more you take, the better you become.
Good for you getting better and doing what works for you. I’m sorry you had to go through all that. But you sound like you are recovering very well.
It’s been a long road and you deserve happiness. It sounds like its starting to come your way.
My sis who is NOT Sz was going through the dark forest of high stress. She would dart out of her room with a worried look on her face and walk up to me and ask, “do you need anything?”
“No, I’m fine”
Finally she admitted, she was hearing me yelling for help for hours on end. So when she would check on me and find me on the sofa, reading a book with my feet up, she was getting really upset with herself. (more stress) She finally broke and ended up have a physical problem and ended up with many bleeding stomach ulcers.
She’s out of hospital now and we’re keeping it low stress. But she’s still fighting it. Not SZ, yes voices, yes insomnia, yes restlessness, big yes to panic and hyperventilation, yes mood swing and crying jags, yes a decrease in motivation.
No delusions, no paranoia, no visual hallucinations, no disorganized thought. So she could have been diagnosed right there. But she only went through a month of this. Not 6 or more.