Moving some recent posts from the old forums to the new ones:
A new study finds that adults with schizophrenia who keep to themselves often did so as children, but that social skills training can be an effective way to overcome any difficulties presented by socialising with others.
If you’re feeling alone, you’re not alone. That’s one of the key messages that Institute-supported researcher Sandra Matheson (pictured) wants people to take from her meta-analysis of social withdrawal and schizophrenia that was published recently in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. The report, which compared six studies that looked at childhood social withdrawal in adults with schizophrenia and in at-risk children aged 9-14 years, found that childhood social withdrawal in combination with three potential markers of schizophrenia risk – delay in speech or motor development, presence of psychotic-like experiences, and social, emotional or behavioural problems – was an indicator of vulnerability for schizophrenia.
“That’s not to say that children who are shy, or don’t have a lot of friends or don’t play well are going to develop schizophrenia later in life,” Ms Matheson points out. “What the results of the study tell us is that adults with schizophrenia who are socially withdrawn, quite likely displayed those same attributes when they were children and that not wanting to socialise with others is a common occurrence in people with schizophrenia.”
My neighbor who is a fellow schizophrenic who hears voices is VERY social. Lots of friends and acquaintances. My former friend who had paranoid schizophrenia was also VERY social. I took him to AA meetings and he ended up making lots of friends there even though he wasn’t an alcoholic or an addict. I inspired him to get a job and to try college. He didn’t succeed in school but he held a job for 7 years. He inspired me to move out of the Board & Care home and live independently. I was friends with him for 7 years. I was a little sad when we stopped being friends, we had a lot of fun and did a lot of things. But we ended up going different directions in life.
I’m sure the two are related. Not being social was the basis of many of my delusions, voices and hallucinations. For a while, I thought the delusions and voices were going to teach me how to be social, like some kind of programming. I thought everyone went through something similar.
I don’t think being social should have anything to do with schizophrenia. Or it’s another clue that schizophrenia is made up. I have gone through periods of being social and periods of not being social. The problem with “schizophrenics” is that when they’ve been conditioned to think they are freaks they start trying to be normal and normal people know that there’s no such thing as normal. There’s no set standard to compare to. So what are these studies based on? The fact that social withdrawal causes states of distress? Hasn’t that been proven with war captives and tortured prisoners who are put in isolation for long periods of time? Haven’t these same doctors who profess about socialization, put hospital patients in isolation rooms, restraints, dope them up with tranquilizers and send them home thinking their nutso? Who the ■■■■ cares anymore? So whose the authority on this disorder anyways. What a ■■■■■■■ joke.
