Poll: How long did your first episode go untreated?

DX'd - Sz/SzA
1

For how long did you have positive symptoms before starting treatment?

  • <30 days
  • 1–5 months
  • 6–11 months
  • 12–24 months
  • 25–36 months
  • >3 years
  • Never received treatment
0 voters
2

When I first got sick I spent a week and a half in a psyche ward then moved into an experimental, world-famous group home for schizophrenics called Soteria House. It was an alternative to hospitals and medications, they believed they could get better outcomes for schizophrenics just living in a big, old house in the community and not using medications.

So, there were no psychiatrists there and none of the staff had any psychiatric training or experience; they were hired for being open minded, tolerant, likable, accepting and understanding. They did no therapy, when someone was psychotic the staff just listened to what they had to say and offered support and company. They didn’t tell the person he/she was crazy or treat them badly or look down on them. They called this “normalizing the schizophrenia experience”.

They claimed success rates better then hospitals with this approach and it worked for some people I guess but it didn’t help me at all and I stayed there more than a year at the peak of my psychosis and received no medication, I went through hell there.

People on here talk about having all these far out, grandiose delusions and how they thought they were here to save the world and the universe and how they thought they were Jesus or something and then the delusions go away and they come down and realize they’re just regular human beings and life can get boring after that. I experienced something like that with Soteria.

Not the grandiose delusions but what I went through was hell, it was a daily battle to keep from going insane and I experienced some frightening and intense delusions and went through all kinds of different stuff. About 4 years after leaving Soteria I went back to visit but it had closed and all I did was drive past. And all I saw was an unremarkable, plain, old house and I thought, “What was the fuss all about? Why was I so crazy there?" In a way, nothing really happened while I was there. I had all this crazy stuff going on through my head but in real life nothing went on there. It was a weird feeling realizing this all those years later.

3 Likes
3

At first I was only treated for depression (which I wasn’t ) then they said i had thought distortions. After about 2-3 years i got sz diagnosed and treated.

4

At the beginning I was looking for alternatives to living with schizophrenia. I came across the Soteria house experiment(I was getting into anti psychiatry material). Anyways I saw a short film on the Soteria house. I remember people struggling like crazy. Do you think you may have been in their film?

1 Like
5

Stuff started changing when I was 16. My older sister during that time told my dad that she thought I had schizophrenia. He huffed and said they’d put me away and throw away the keys. I knew stuff was seriously amiss and reached out and saw my family doctor. Years later I went to a psychiatrist. Didn’t follow up with any of it. Eventually I was involuntarily committed. I had my 21st birthday in that hospital- So I went a good 5 years. I went wakeboarding with some friends and one of their dads, he was a Dr., said it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma(had to look that up). Years later I saw the same quote describing schizophrenia in a psychology book. Another guy at a small party asked me if I knew what a schizophrenic was, I said no. He said it’s someone who thinks you mean something different than what was actually said. No one close to me ever directly said that I may have schizophrenia. I didn’t even know what it was till I got diagnosed.

1 Like
6

I cant remember exactly but it was many, many months before I was properly diagnosed.

7

I was in Soteria House during 1980-81. I doubt I’m in any film, I never saw anyone being filmed. But it’s true people were struggling like crazy. While I was there there were some severely ill people, I remember seeing one of those severely ill people a month after he had moved out and he had improved immensely; maybe Soteria helped him.

1 Like
8

After receiving treatment was home bound for 3 years

9

I hid my psychosis my whole life basically. But it was eight years after my first major breakdown that I got treated with AP’s, AD’s, and mood stabilizers.

10

Started having mood disturbances (depression and hypomania) at age 12. Also started hallucinating at age 12. Didn’t start antipsychotics until age 24.

11

My psych was already treating me for ocd and at the time what we thought was depression, and she noticed I was different for lack of a better word. Fortunately she asked the right questions and I had decent insight and we got treatment going right away.

12

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