Negative and cognitives getting worse update

They couldn’t have chosen a worse time to become more severe. I’ve just started school an I’m really feeling them.

I feel a severe lack of will and motivation. Other symptoms I have are the inability to feel pleasure and poverty of speech. Negative symptoms are divided into two domains, reduced expressiveness and avolition. I am manifesting negative symptoms in both categories.

The worst thing is that I cannot feel anything except for negative emotions like frustration, dissatisfaction, and inner discomfort as a result of the anhedonia. There is no backbone of positivity to convince me to want to keep on living life.

I have one class Human Evolution, in which I feel like a complete idiot, still I find it impossible to get up the motivation to take notes or highlight from the textbook. The other issue with this is that I cannot keep up in the labs and ended up writing stupid wrong answers and losing points in order to get out of there on time and look cool and capable to the other students who all finished much faster than me…

I feel like my mind is foggy and sluggish all the time and it’s as if I cannot produce anything worthwhile ore be creative at all.

When it comes to maintaining social relationships I’m certainly failing. People message me and I don’t respond to them for a week or two. Don’t get me started on my email. I have a bunch of emails from my Professor and disability coordinator which I have been ignoring because I’m just too lazy.

In class I’m too nervous to talk to my classmates, I just sit with my head down and talk to maybe one person at a time. I have always been a social misfit.

There are mandatory online courses on sexual harrassment and managing finances which I haven’t completed. If they are mandatory how am I even attending classes? I just don’t have the motivation to get any of this stuff done.

I don’t even do things which I’m supposed to enjoy like watching youtube videos or whatever, mostly I just sit around all day staring at the wall.

I haven’t attended Friday prayers in over a year and that is mandatory for all males in Islam. It doesn’t help that my spiritual health is failing along with my physical and mental health.

On the subject of physical health, I have not been out running in almost a month, my body is completely flab yet my weight is pretty stable and I can fit into all my old clothes, yet I eat complete crap most of the time.

Nothing pharmaceutical helps with negative and cognitives except stimulants and those make psychosis worse. So I guess my life is just ■■■■ and I will always fight a losing battle because I have schizophrenia, thanks for reading my update and bye.

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I am in same boat as u …i ignore my studies due to cognitive symptoms…i cant work due to negative symptoms…lifes a hell…i dont want to live any more…

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Can u live in group home since u cant get disability money? If they forced me to work, i think god is more merciful than to put me in a position like that.

Here is US suicidr no. Maybe u can get a phone card.

I dont wanna be alive like this either, it’s quite the burden. Feel like jesus with the crown of thorns and all.

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For someone experiencing poverty of speech, that sure was quite a long rant, @Anon10

Have you tried some form of therapy? CBT, DBT, ACT etc?

Negative symptoms can also be med induced. Are you on a high dose AP? Any recent changes in medication?

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Is there anyone who can help you return those emails and messages or get those online courses done? A friend, parent, or sibling?

Don’t worry about what other students think of you being the last one done or something, I can pretty much guarantee they are not even paying attention to you.

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I couldn’t complete my studies initially due to my illness and got excluded when I returned a year later to complete them!

But now with the right support I’m doing really well and got 78% in my exams last year.

For me assistive technology is a big bonus, I have a program for note taking called audio note taker, that was given to me for free as part of my support package!
https://www.sonocent.com/en-us/audio-notetaker

Though when I first went to university they could provide a person to take notes for me, if the support package was put in place in time!

I also get soft copies of all of my module materials that I use a text to speech program to highlight the read passage, whilst I listen to it and that really helps with retention!

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ok well i cant help with all, so others might chime in

Most schools have a disability office. people with congnitive problems may ask for extra time on test and some may even provide pre-made notes.

Can make yourself go jogging for just 20 minutes? Exercise wakes people up and provides extra energy. do this in the morning. rest afterwards for only a maxium of about 10 minutes. See if that will light a fire under the disease’s butt to move along and leave you to what you need to do?

if i could give this post more than one like, i would.:smiley:

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Pramipexole is not a stimulant and I think is worth looking into

-Pramipexole (Mirapex) for anhedonia and negative symptoms?

In my case, I originally thought I had poverty of speech but eventually realized that I had nothing to say because nothing interests me and I do not derive pleasure from talking… If you observe people discussing, you’ll notice that the reason behind why they say something is to derive pleasure from it (like making others laugh and intrigued by telling a funny anecdote for example), or to share an interest with someone and thereby to “bond” …the reason behind most of casual conversation stems from motivation to have a rewarding experience from the discussion…

Basically my poverty of speech is rooted in the anhedonia itself…it’s not a separate symptom

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That is some good insight right there, @Szsurvivor !!
In my case, poverty of speech is linked to poverty of thought and avolition. It is as if my brain couldn’t be bothered to think anymore, it became lazy. Anyway, my poverty of speech has improved more than my anhedonia over the same time period, which makes me suspect the two aren’t tightly coupled, at least in my case.

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All my issues are related to brain chemistry such that talking therapy would be totally useless compared to a pharmaceutical based approach. There’s also the issue of my therapist being more verbally fluent than me and dominating the conversation. I hate having to sit through that.

I recently reduced aripiprazole from 30 to 20 with little improvement. I still cannot think or feel properly.

Has this drug been of any benefit to you for negative symptoms? Does it carry a risk of exacerbating psychosis at all? I would love to talk to my pdoc and see if he knows anything about it. I think pramiprexole might be my new obsession.

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What is poverty of speech/thought like for you?
I find for myself I can’t think of a lot to say in reply or at all at times and I just thought that was normal but now I’m reconsidering that I may have the same problem. It frustrates me since I can’t provide a lot to say unlike some people who can provide a lot of information about something.

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No spontaneity and a sluggish brain. Very little productive thought.

Oh I see, yeah I can kinda relate some times to that, it’s really aggravating I’m sure.

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@Anon10

According to this study in which pramipexole was used with haloperidol:
-https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9088887
"Three of the 15 patients dropped out due to worsening of schizophrenia. Insomnia, as the most frequent side effect, occurred in 4 patients. No clinically relevant electrocardiographic and laboratory changes were reported. This study supports the safety of the treatment of schizophrenia with pramipexole and haloperidol as a combination therapy. However, further clinical studies are required to support these preliminary findings."

Conclusion, it has the potential to worsen psychosis. But overall it appears to be safe. There were not a lot of people in the study so it’s difficult to draw conclusions. And I think we should also remember that for some Abilify worsens their psychosis (so even the safe stuff sometimes goes wrong, I think that goes in favor of trying pramipexole). If you have active psychotic symptoms or consider yourself fragile, I probably wouldn’t try it. You have to see if the risk outweigh the potential benefit. I think when we are dealing with anhedonia, which to me is the equivalent of a living death, the potential benefit definitely outweighs the risk.

Additionally, I invite you to also look at the case report below, in which pramipexole induced psychosis in a parkinsons patient. Importantly, the psychosis recovered/ended with the discontinuation of pramipexole.

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It’s also important to note that in the haloperidol-pramipexole study, pramipexole actually improved positive symptoms of some people:

“Pramipexole, a presynaptic dopamine D2/D3 autoreceptor agonist, has been given to haloperidol-treated patients with schizophrenia (n = 15) in an effort to ameliorate residual positive and negative symptoms that have not been satisfactorily influenced by haloperidol alone. Total scores of the positive and negative symptom scale (PANSS) decreased by more than 20% in 9 of 15 patients (reduction of total score: 22-62%)”

You can look at the picture of the results/table of the PANSS score in the original study that I posted in my original pramipexole post, in it you clearly see that positive symptoms scores improved for some people, while for a minority, it did worsen them:
-Pramipexole (Mirapex) for anhedonia and negative symptoms?

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Have you personally tried it @Szsurvivor?

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No, not yet, unfortunately! I will share my results with everybody once I do.

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That might be true. But I wonder why on earth did those negative flare up right after you started school? Could be a psychological mechanism…

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I am on clozapine with 5mg abilify.
Should I try pramipexole?
What the worst cn happen

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