Mildly worried about having schizophrenia

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As my username probably suggests, I’m slightly concerned I might have schizophrenia or a related disorder.

My suspicions started a few weeks ago when a lecturer came around to school and lectured about various mental disorders, one being schizophrenia. He listed the common symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations and alike and I felt as though they applied to me. Let me tell you a little bit about myself to give some context.

I’m 17, currently studying IT, I tend to stay a lot to myself and don’t have a lot of friends, sort of because I don’t really feel the need or desire to have friends but also because friends that I have had in the past I have always suspected of talking about me behind my back, avoiding me or somehow making up a plan to in some way embarrass or ridicule me.

I was diagnosed with depression when I was 10 however I have never received any medications for it, I spent 3 years away from school between the ages of 13-15 because I didn’t feel safe at the new school I had started and was constantly afraid of what people thought of me (my self-esteem has always been rather low though).

I think I started having hallucinations around the age of 14 when I started hearing whispering voices (not always but not rarely) over my right shoulder and would only be able to distinguish a few negative words. Around the same time my speech had started getting a little bit distorted (I still make myself understood well but I stutter and half-slur sometimes).

Over the years I’ve started being able to distinguish more and more words and eventually the whispering became a sort of annoyed talking in a regular voice, the frequency hasn’t changed much and I can still function in the limited social life I have (literally just school hours).

I had a long-distance girlfriend (who I loved more than anything else on the planet and still do) up until recently when she broke up with me because she found it difficult to stay together with someone who was always questioning her loyalty (she’s never cheated on anyone before but I have always been afraid of it and involuntarily thought about it), in particular I remember one day on the bus ride home from school we had been talking for a while on the phone and she suddenly went quiet and I thought to myself “It’s fine, she’s probably just getting breakfast and getting dressed” but that train of thought was quickly hijacked and changed into “she’s definitely talking to her other boyfriend you don’t know of”. That was the first time I noticed that my thoughts were getting “hijacked”.

Obviously, being the 21st century I’ve looked up schizophrenia online and read up about it and taken an online screening test (no idea of that was legitimate or not) which said I had a high probability of being schizophrenic, in addition I seemed to be able to relate to most symptoms of it. In addition my mother’s uncle was diagnosed with manic depression.

I thought I’d ask you guys’ opinions and what you make of it before I go to a psychologist seeing as I live in a very small community and it’s rather remote (just shy of the northern polar circle) so there aren’t any local psychologists.

Thanks for your time in reading this, I’m aware self-diagnosis is out of the question but I would like to have the opinion of those who have more experience and knowledge of it.

Best regards,
Jon

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Jon what med are u on …!!! U must see a pdoc soon…we are not qualified to give u any diagnosis…take care buddy…welcome again to the forum…

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I’m on Atarax and Melatonin (both sleep medications) but to my knowledge they don’t have this as a side effect.

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Can you have conversations with your voice?

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Uh yes and no, sometimes I get answers sometimes I don’t, talking via thought but, it counts? I’m aware no one else hears them.

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How much of your time each day as a % do you spend interacting with this voice?

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I try to ignore it as much as I can so maybe 5-10% of the day I actively engage with it. On average it’s probably there around 80-85% of the day unless I make an effort to distract myself and focus on other things, however that tires me out much faster than normal. (I usually sleep 4-5 hours per night, 11-12 if I make an effort to distract myself and alike.)

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Yeah definitely see a dr, it has a high chance of getting worse

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See an MD now. Share your posts with him/her.

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Alright, I’ll try and get an appointment during Halloween break in a few weeks.

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Your family doctor/GP (if you have one) is a good first contact for this conversation. Good luck - take care! Welcome to the forum!

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If you can go straight to a psychiatrist

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Really, even going into ER under the circumstances is what would be done in my area. They would set up a psychiatric consult right then. I’m in Canada, btw.

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To my knowledge we don’t have a family doctor, I live in Sweden so it’s a bit different, but I’ll look into it. Thanks for the welcomes!

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I was unaware until about 3 yrs ago that auditory hallucinations could come with other illnesses besides sz.

It does sound as if you have problems with trusting others. (paranoia?)

I would tell a psychiatrist about the voices. There can be a medicine out there that reduces or stops them. That alone would provide a lot of relief for you.

I am Dx’ed with MDD, and have had on going hallucinations in the past for about 3.5 yrs. They are scant now though.

I would not worry much about the label of the diagnosis they give you. Let the doctors sort that out since many illnesses may come with voices.

I should also mention not to worry if the diagnosis changes or if they wont give you one. Their opinions change as they find out more and more about you and your symptoms.

Meanwhile, they they will just be giving you medicine(s) to treat the symptoms to help you while they are figuring out the label.

The medicines take time to work so patience maybe required. A small dose is given first for 2 - 4 weeks, then it is increased. I am telling you this because i dont want you to worry if the medicine does not work right away, or if there is an increase.

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Honestly probably my biggest fear and why I haven’t spoken to anyone about it already is because I don’t want to end up in something like a psychiatric hospital or alike. I have a sister who freaked out and became ‘actively’ suicidal and was taken care of by social services when I was 10 (hence why I became depressed, she was 12 at the time) and she was moved around to a bunch of different care homes and family homes and stuff all over the country in a seemingly random manner and I kinda don’t want to go down the same road.

In regards to having trust issues, I guess it could be paranoia? But I’ve also had a pretty malicious relationship to my dad up until last summer when I broke contact with him (he was manipulative and abusive and alike) so I guess that could also be a reason?

Thanks for mentioning about the medications, the ones I have now I started out with a rather high dosage and it’s stayed the same all the way so that saves me a lot of worry.

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I would not, i repeat, not, want to be hospitalized here. Here i think they put the very violent people in with the nonviolent.

I dont know about where your at.

If you dont want to be hopitalized then dont never ever say you are suicidal when your not. Never ever make idol threats to yourself or others around people who deal with treating mental illness for a living. They take that very serious. So never say things out of fustration or anger that you dont really mean.

however going to hospital is a neccessary evil so to speak if we are suicidal/thinking of harming another. It still beats death or jail!!

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Like @macy said, there are many disorders that cause people to hear voices and experience paranoia. There is psychotic depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective, psychosis NOS, and many more. Since you are young, and you haven’t had symptoms for very long yet, you are unlikely to get a schizophrenia diagnosis, but the diagnosis doesn’t matter anyways. What matters is the treatment. Go to a doctor right away, and tell them all of your symptoms. Write them out so you don’t forget anything. You could even just print out your post and bring that in. It is very common for a person to experience a single psychotic episode, but once it’s treated, they end up being fine for the rest of their lives. But the episodes don’t usually go away on their own. They almost always need medical intervention.

There are dozens of different kinds of antipsychotics on the market, but only 4 are approved for people under 18. So if you try a drug and it doesn’t work, don’t get discouraged. You can always try other ones. Some of he drugs will cause bad side effects, such as sedation, weight gain, high prolactin levels, sexual dysfunction, and other things. If a drug causes those things in you, just tell your doctor and ask to be switched to a new one. Every drug affects every person differently. There is a DNA test you can do to see which drugs are likely to react well in your system, but there is a lot of conflicting evidence on whether or not the test is accurate.

Once you’re on meds, and you feel stable, you may want to try stopping the meds to see if you’re cured. Do not do this. If you stop the meds without doctor supervision, you have a high chance of relapsing, and what started as a single psychotic episode could become permanent. After a single psychotic episode, the correct way to stop meds is to wait until you have been stable on the same dose with no symptoms for a year and a half, then slowly taper your meds down over the course of six months or so under close doctor supervision. You also might want to stay on your meds for life, and that is perfectly fine. It is the option with the least risk of relapse.

Every psychotic episode causes literal brain damage. It reduces the amount of gray matter (nerve cell bodies) in your brain. It is possible to reverse this damage to a certain extent, by doing things that require a lot of brain power. Puzzles, math games, sports that require coordination, and other such things can actually increase the gray matter in your brain, as long as you keep doing them. But it is still important to seek help as soon as possible, to reduce the damage to your brain. Make an appointment as quickly as possible, and share all of your symptoms. Don’t hold anything back out of fear of sounding “crazy” or getting put in a home. Group homes are so overcrowded and underfunded that they won’t put anyone in there who isn’t an active danger to themselves or others. As long as you are not suicidal or violent, they will have no desire to put you in a facility.

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I play a bunch of various real-time strategy games if that counts as puzzles? I love knowledge so I study practically everything, astrophysics, maths, military doctrines.

About being suicidal, I have attempted twice before but I have no self-harm on record and I guess I am somewhat suicidal but not entirely out of being depressed and feeling down, it’s partially also just because I’m bored kind of often (one of the downsides of knowing a lot of things is that after a while nothing is new) and feel like suicide would be a legitimate option to the issue but I realize it’s not. I used to have my girlfriend to talk to and help me out when it got really bad but like I said she’s broken up with me (we still talk just very very rarely) so that isn’t really a viable option.

I’m a pretty major tech freak especially when it comes to IT so I sometimes use a VPN to go on suicide chatlines and talk (we don’t have a national one) and that usually helps for a little while (2-3 days).

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To my knowledge over here in Sweden the violent and non-violent are kept apart from eachother so tht wouldn’t be the issue. I just don’t want to give up my current education because I really enjoy the subjects I study and hope to work in the IT field in the future so I don’t want being hospitalized to destroy that for me.

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