I was diagnosed schizoaffective/ depressive type a couple of years ago but I just found out recently. My family was told but know one told me! I asked my pdoc recently and thats how I found out. I guess it makes sense now that I understand. I thought I was just really depressed with odd symptoms. I’m still not sure what to make of it. I really didn’t think I was that bad but I guess I was wrong. I read that this diagnosis can be on a 0 to 4 scale.? I don’t know if that is true, but I would love to know your thoughts and some of the symptoms that you all have. Like, what are positive and negative symptoms and how does it affect your life?
This is my diagnosis. The UPS and downs are constant. Scary hallucinations are better than being immobilized IMO. Both the UPS and downs I find immobilized. If I’m really doing good I get a few hours of somewhere in the middle. I’m also easily triggered by some people.
Hang in there. You do get better at managing them.
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I have sza-depressive type as we call it on the forum. As far as positive symptoms I have auditory and visual hallucinations, I have delusions magical thinking at times, and I have delusions of persecution . As far as negative symptoms go, I have flat affect, I barely move around or do anything, it takes a lot of prodding to get me to go for a short walk. And usually I don’t talk, I type WAY more. Hope this helps.
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I’m also sza-depressive, I’ve never heard of this 0-4 scale, do tell me more… The depression is way worse than the sz in my experience. Cause the sz has been managed with meds while the depression doesn’t seem to be.
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Dimensions of Schizophrenia in DSM 5:
• (To be rated on 0-4 scale: 0 – not present;
1 – equivocal; 2 – mild; 3 – moderate; 4 – severe)
- Reality distortion – Delusions
- Reality distortion – Hallucinations
- Depression
- Mania
- Negative symptoms
- Disorganization
- Psychomotor symptoms, including catatonia - Impaired cognition
Ok, zero- I get. But rating it 1-4 are pretty subjective. And most of the data is subjective - what is told to them by the patient rather than what is observable.
Yes, I agree. It’s in the updated version of the DSM-5 so they must somehow incorporate it.
I am diagnosed as schizo-affective for 25 years now, having two opposing delusions that tend to jerk me back and forth one to the other. It’s like I bet against myself and loose and really getting nowhere. I, nor any of the family even knew that I was ill. I didn’t even know what schizophrenia was and was really happy to finally find out and was given some medications for the negative symptoms after enduring several years of torment. But I think that made me stronger.
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Yeah dude, it’s so crazy that you can go your whole life with this thought process and learn that it’s been influenced by mental illness
It really makes you realize that YOU ultimately decide who you are in the end
I don’t have sz but I fear developing it so much that I frequent this forum. I’ve decided that it will be known by the people I have in my life if I start to lose my grasp on reality…
(there’s a “voice” (really just a line of thought, because the mind functions on multiple) in my head that determines things that are realistic, even though often some of the creative “voices” can be more salient to me at any point in time, and I always seem to be trying to get a hold on just a single one of them and saying “that’s me”, but really I am a collection of all those thoughts)
…then I have people in my life who will be able to see it and help. I’ve just got to focus on keeping myself disciplined enough to do the most that I’m capable of
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I know, I know, that some people don’t like seeing users like me who aren’t even sz, but come here to deal with other issues… I come here every once in a while because I have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, and alongside that a lasting state of hypochondria towards ever developing the condition which has kind of led me to a possibly unhealthy preoccupation
I know this is kind of reckless to my own well-being, but last night I took LSD for the first (and possibly or probably the last and only) time, and it was in an environment I kind of regret doing it in. It was really messy and just… an acid trip of a night. I don’t think I see myself ever doing it again (at least not in any kind of future that is currently foreseeable), but I would like to think that I walked away from the experience with a good bit of insight to my hypochondria for developing the condition. I spent a lot of time during the trip considering this aspect of me as a person (which was kind of influenced by what I’ve read about inconclusive links between the chemical and the disease) and I think I ultimately decided things similar to what I concluded in the post I’m replying to, which is pretty much recognizing the irrationality of my hypochondria.
I know this is kind of f**ked up, but I think I kind of wanted to take it to prove to myself that I either had it or didn’t (somewhere in the back of my mind, me thinking that the trip would be the “trigger” if I did have it, as some of the things I’ve read on it have suggested as an explanation but also recognized the possible fallacies in this conclusion), and during that 12 hour over-the-top piecing together of my mind and who I am as a person, I realized the irrationality of this “fear” that kind of led me into putting me in a position where I was prone to exactly what it is that I fear, whether or not it’s something worth fearing.
All around drugs are a bad idea. Especially for us. They say the same thing about alcohol consumption though and I drink.
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