i did an iq test prior to my schizophrenia and the result was around 120. now after the breakdown i did it again and the result was the same and i wasnt even trying hard to score points as i did before.
Depends when you get me. Late at night I go to sleep after I’ve solved the riddles of the universe. In the morning I can’t remember if the peanut butter goes on the top or the bottom of the toast.
On Lumosity I score about 10% above average. Im a former university student but ABILIFRY fried my mind.
I use lumosity.com too! I score pretty low. I’m currently at the 52 percentile. My strengths are attention and problem solving. My weaknesses are memory and speed. I scored about 70 percentile in problem solving and 55 percentile in attention. My memory is 30 percentile and my speed is 40 percentile. I used to be a math major at a top university.
I think my mind has been fried from medication too. I think I’m currently over-medicated.
I’m one of those people with superior intellectual ability. I think the cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia has definitely affected me by a significant amount. I feel like my IQ dropped at least 20 points. My psychiatrist keeps calling me a genius but she says my current IQ is just 110, even though I’ve never been tested. She says I’ll never be able (and shouldn’t expect) to perform like I used to (that is 120%). She said I shouldn’t try to be better than other people, which I kind of agree with. It was never about being better than people. I just wanted to challenge myself and be the best I could be. Plus, going to a competitive school and majoring in pure math requires you to perform at a certain minimum level. It’s survival of the fittest. That’s why I can’t go back until I improve.
I feel like I could compete again if my medication was lowered or altered. For instance, I think I could compete if I was on Adderall. It has been suggested I have a learning disability (like auditory processing disorder or ADD) or Asperger’s and I think I would benefit. But she doesn’t want to give it to me for an extended period of time due to the risk of psychosis and subsequent relapse.
Maybe it is a sub-type of schizophrenia. I never heard voices or seen things. I have had illusions but I know they’re not real. I also was never paranoid for 3 years. I recently got extremely paranoid but I think it had to do with certain things like taking a supplement that increased dopamine, getting off medication, and having the side effect of paranoia from Topamax.
I’ve never had word salad, disorganization, or catatonia.
My main symptoms are/were philosophical thoughts, severe derealization/dissociation, increased sensitivity to light and sound, autistic like symptoms, anxiety, depression, hypomania, philosophical “delusions”/obsessions/preoccupations, cognitive decline, avolition, anhedonia, flat effect, and other negative symptoms. I might have missed some things but it’s enough to prevent me from working or enjoying life. My current diagnosis is schizo-affective disorder.
It’s also interesting to note my intelligence actually increased for two years after my illness. I was solving math problems I couldn’t even comprehend before I got sick and my short term/working memory improved drastically. I don’t know how this happened. I think it had to due with being on the maximum dose of Cymbalta.
hi @astefano
I was talking about the brain tests, which you have to make every 3 months with Lumosity, there I score 107, where normal is 100. In the percentile ranking im about 94%, but I think maybe this is because of Im just good at games.
Hey, you can always take afternoon classes in some subject, even if you should just relax.
I was very bright at school and trained as a doctor at uni. The illness pretty much demolished my thinking. I went from getting 98% in my cardiology to failing my respiratory. Such deficits made it impossible to be signed as fit for practice.
Don’t really care though - I would have been a crap doctor.
Hey. I just took that test and scored 107 too. So does that mean my IQ is 107?
It means something very similar. If the test is scientific and it does seem like a iq test, then 100 is the average. So you score a little above average and so do I.
I’ve only taken one IQ test in high school. I would qualify for the study, but my IQ isn’t super high.
I took a lumosity test over a year ago and scored pretty well. I don’t know what my current average would be but I suspect that due to my medication that it would be slower. My family and my social worker keep telling me I’m intelligent, but I certainly don’t feel it lol.
IQ ranges with schizophrenics seem mixed to me. There are some top bright people and some who struggle more. Depends on the type of sz you have perhaps?
I took an IQ test on here over a year ago and scored 133. I think it was higher before my onset
How do you get to your information? I can understand how schizophrenia can appear to have an impact on your analysis and evaluation of information but does it matter? If my thought is disorganised but arrives where intended, how is getting to cat from catalyst different to coming to it from dog? Anti psychotics took vast portions of my working memory, spacial reasons, auditory feedback loops we use to retain information, much of my ability to process complex, multiple sources of information eg writing and watching, I suffered from 2 drug induced psychotic episodes that were publicly humiliating but not violent in nature and was placed on a treatment order. I was ordered to be on paliperidone injections for 6 to 9 months but refused treatment after 3, I was detained for a month to be monitored but it seemed the damage had already been done. I linked my information through words, sounds, shapes or pictures but all of my words, visual imagery and my body’s rhythm which gave me a bit of a beat in my head had gone; I have become aware of these thought processes I have running constantly I’m sure we all do, they are our beliefs, desires, fears or insecurities. Many of my processes involved word specific explainations of why this action benefits me how it relates to the art of war and how a child could apply it in their life, I worked in a school so I picked someone I knew and explained my action’s benefit in appropriate terminology. I have obsessive compulsive disorder so any missed word or sentence or expression left me repeating that mistake until I felt even, if I did not it would manifest in my body moving in unnatural ways which would result in pain so seldom would I leave a mistake to be acknowledged by my body, it would still need to be finalised but the mind anyway even 3 days later. These explainations would link to memories reaffirming my beliefs and gave me motivation to proceed as planned. I’m not sure if other people are like that but losing access to these pathways affected my ability to proceed, I was unaware of how much motivation I experienced through explainations. The medication slowed my thought processes so severely that it became a registrable, vocalised, auditory hallucination; prior to this I cannot recall any thought which I would have considered irrational or at least harmful to be repeating. I always tried to end one idea before carrying in to something corresponding, unless it was verified. The medication did give me time to correct some connections which were being acknowledged with no way of understanding them, eg I linked all of my memories good and bad of past relationships to my most recent which resulted in numerous memories triggering the same negative response. Although this was needed I believe it could have been achieved through thought alone. I believe that impulses can be controlled if you identify the trigger. Since coming off of the medication I have had to revert back to my original intuitive response system, I have had to modify parts of my behaviour antipsychotics altered like movement, speech, who I was seeking to impress and my motivations behind that. It inverted my values, meaning I was acting in spite of someone rather than for them. They also seemed to give me multiple independent personalities that were attempting to control my intuitive responses, eg what should I do today I want to… they would encourage me to be lazy. I have always practiced a particularly rigid manner of thought, I would always remove myself from the equation and view it as it is, information. When another personality spoke, at first I would feel an unexplainable emotion but after a few months they were like kids, they would ask me to explain why I would move in this way, why do you not want people to look at you, why do you walk on the left side of the street? It was similar to building rapport with a child, eventually they just became nothing, me repeating the benefits or consequences of an action. I’ve been off of anti psychotics for almost 5 months now and have regained mostly all of my original motor functions, my sinus rhythm along with other autonomic bodily functions are becoming autonomic… But my central nervous system, cardiovascular and endocrine systems are still not functioning as they were before. However I do find myself alone in my head, deciding because I chose to rather than acting in response to emotional responses. I do have a moderate iq but martial arts is my passion, I think any passion that can be practiced in your sleep could have elements introduced into all areas of their life. For me, movement was my most defining attribute, but it can also be determined by defining the people who influence us, sentence structure, or a specific desire, fear or memory which is unique to you, something that will always remain unchanged. Something you feel no one could identify with. Having a personal memory will also invite known people as conferring influences and knowing how someone interacts helps your mind to produce a more realistic experience. It is counterintuitive to find something that separates you from the rest of the world, but having an undefined number of commonalities links you with anyone who you think “they are just like me” I used to think this about anyone, animals, public figures I found common ground with anyone. It is a good way to think in order to achieve real connections but not to experience a hypothetical feeling of compatibility if resulting in an emotional response that you attach to. When ideas of what we think this person would think in this situation grow, it opens us up to too many variables in our manners of thought.
I definitely believe the way we interact with these thoughts do have physiological effects as well as psychological and cognitive function. However I know that our brains are powerful things and some people are far to to jump at a medicinal solution rather than attempting alteration of our thought, through thought. I was raised with a positive belief system so it is in my dna and it was easier to find my way back, but some are raised on a negative manner of thought, acting with negativity to drive rather than positivity. Even that is really something you need to be honest with yourself about. There are levels of thought, some may be so deep seeded you wouldn’t even identify with them. The only way to get at them is through thought.
Typically, we like to leave inactive threads alone and just start a new thread instead. This is different than how some forums are run, but we do it this way because it frequently upsets users to have old topics revived when they are no longer relevant. It can also be frustrating to the person who revived the thread when they don’t get a reply, because the original poster is no longer active or no longer finds the topic relevant. Feel free to start a new thread on this topic.
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@Dp87 I would suggest for future posts, please break up into paragraphs. A big wall of text is hard for members to parse.