As a teenager I had no friends and no social network to speak of. My relationship with my parents was neither highly abusive or particularly affectionate/close. My brother and sister were much closer to each other than they were to me.
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Yeah I was the same way. Not a surprise to me but cool they made this study. Making some friendships has helped my recovery a lot…but I wasn’t capable of friendships at one point!
teenage years were difficult for me esp from about 15
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I had no friends in high school. I got sz a year after i got out of hs.
I do wonder whether a combination of being bullied and being socially isolated from your peers further increases the risk of severe mental health problems .
Then perhaps you are bullied because something is already different/wrong about you, and other children/teenagers can be cruel in picking up on such things and thus treating you in a bad manner.
I had normal social interactions up until about a year before I became ill. I was in a rehab for drugs, bad connection with my family, burned all my bridges with my friends, and only had a girlfriend and the drugs.
I have never fully recovered from the loss of most of my old friends when I became psychotic. I find it twice as hard to relate to new ones now that I’m potentially crazy any given day of the year.
It seems that some here had normal social interactions/reasonable amount of friendships pre illness and others didn’t.
It’s hard to see an across the board cause for psychosis/severe mental illness/schizophrenia.
Not all were bullied,not all had poor social interactions,not all had family members with psychosis/schizophrenia, not all experienced significant trauma.
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I was as normal as apple pie, except I smoked a lot of pot to self medicate anxiety and feelings of insecurity. I had a lot of friends and a vast social network that spanned across the US and even had some European friends too. I had friends that I was so close with we were like brothers, we did everything together. I dated girls and never had any problems getting women. I went off to a good university and made new friends there too. I grew up in a loving affluent household with two parents that were still married. And while my relatives all have anxiety and depression issues no one has ever been psychotic. Looking back I guess I’m a guy that had the genetic vulnerability to develop a psychotic disorder (it’s not sz but it’s bad, maybe bipolar1 or schizoaffective) and I had to push and push my brain with drugs and stressful drug related situations until I finally had a psychotic break at 24 and now I’m like everyone else with sz or sza. Oh and most of my old buddies from grammar school and high school, dead from drug overdoses or went to prison. But mostly dead from the heroin crisis that hit the states in the 90s. I’m still alive but other than having a Facebook page, I have absolutely no connection to the outside world. I might as well be Phil specter or syd Barrett.
I completely and totally fell off the face of the earth.
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I personally feel that the way in which one gets schizophrenia is going to come into play more and more as they start to figure out how to treat it better.
I don’t think we all have the same illness on here. The ones who got it young and were predestined to have it seem to be better adjusted maybe but more severely ill. I don’t know if I’m making this up because I’m a drug induced stress case or I read this somewhere but I think that there are definitely different types of scizophrenia at this point.
It’s harder I think to have had better social interactions and more friends pre illness. People ask about you all the time. They wanna know how you’re doing and what you’re up to now because no one really understands that getting sz or sza is a complete and total life altering experience.
I’m constantly having siblings make up excuses for me or doing damage control as to the where’s and when’s of my whereabouts, I also remember very well what it was like to be incuded by the group and then I became somewhat of an outcast.
It’s really bad this illness man. They need to make this ■■■■ a top government priority to fix. Not just for me but the countless sufferers who hear voices on a daily basis. How can they let people live that way it’s simply in humane.
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Thanks for posting the news @firemonkey. It’s the reason I’m on this site to begin with. I myself and I’m sure many others in here are very grateful for these news updates. They have literally kept me going for the last few months.
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It’s my long held view that schizophrenia is an umbrella term for several different but similar disorders.
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I believe that too.
Looking into that inflammation theory this week.
I sure hope it’s not caused by synaptic death or were all screwed.
What’s your feeling on the future outlook?
Do you think any of us will live to see better days?
I am not really sure to be honest. There seems to be so much initially promising stuff that turns out to be dead ends.
I do think though that with better public education the way society responds to those of us with severe mental illness will gradually improve.
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Personal experience confirms this study’s results for me.