Treatment resistant schizophrenia

i have been diagnosed with schizophrenia 3 years ago since then i tried different antipsychotic my condition has improved but thee is still residual delusions there is part of my brain know its a delusion and other part of my brain keep thinking of it and convinced with it. i ignore this thoughts and dint react with it is this considered treatment schizophrenia or not? will it end with time? any advice?

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Residuals are common. I think the fact that APs have made a dent in your symptoms would lead me to say you aren’t treatment-resistant— I think that label is reserved solely for people who do not get any benefit whatsoever from meds.

What meds/dose are you on? There may be wiggle room to bump your dose or add something on.

What symptoms do you still experience?

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Psychiatry is often very limited to only medication treatment. Have you tried other things? Depending on the underlying problems you have, you may want to add different things to your treatment…therapy, nutrition, exercise, neurofeedback (has side effects, and charlatans, be careful), lifestyle adjustments. To give some ideas.

Some respond well to meds, some do not, some partially respond. Some respond well to alternative treatments, some do not. It takes some experimenting and knowing yourself. It is possible to learn ways to deal better with residual delusions with therapy, for instance, if you are still hindered by them.

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as i said i tried different antipsychotic and the last one which iam on now is lurasidone (latuda) 40mg/day my symptoms is positive symptoms (delusions only no hallucinations) and negative symptoms (lake of social interactions only) and severe cognition symptoms (impaired memory ,impaired attention, impaired verbal fluency,impaired executive functions)

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during my first episode schizophrenia it was acute enough to be held in psychiatry hospital and there i got both antipsychotic and ect medication it helped me a lot but there were still delusions and after that i get out and continued on antipsychotic and my delusions get more improvement but as i mentioned above there is still residual delusions but hopefully i ignore them and dont interact with it but still annoying and affect my quality of life

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Good that you were helped a lot.

I’m not saying you should go off meds. You can add things though. Now you are more stable, maybe you can see what else can be done to improve your life. I think @shutterbug is helped a lot by therapy and learning techniques to deal with delusions. I also taught myself techniques and was helped a lot by looking at the physical and psychological problems that were underneath my delusions. I also learned what triggers me, and avoid that. It is different for everyone though.

There are still a lot of things that can be done to improve your life!

Right.

And as I said, complete erasure of symptoms is unlikely— residuals are to be expected, unfortunately.

Sometimes meds don’t touch delusions. In your case (as also in mine), therapy can help tremendously in challenging those delusions when you’re ready.

Some folks do report success with clozapine, if you haven’t tried it yet.

Negatives are another issue— meds typically don’t get rid of those.

If you’re unhappy on Invega, perhaps ask your pdoc for an activating med— like Abilify— which might be helpful for you.

Best of luck to you :+1:

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thank you all for your comments so from what i have read i am not treatment resistance that’s a relief i think i have to live with my delusions and just ignore it and maybe if it became severe i try electro convulsive therapy its potent against delusions anyway i didnt choose to be schizophrenic its my destiny

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