I kept it quiet for an extremely long time and also self medicated somewhat. I thought I was very psychic and at times thought I had drug induced psychosis. I went years without seeing a mental health professional until I was placed in a secure mental health hospital and medicated properly but it has taken 18 months to get the combination and dose right which turns out to be quite high…
I was always weird as a kid. I could never relate to anyone and no one liked me. When I was 12 I started having serious depression, but I thought it was because I was so lonely and my life was so crappy, not because of MI.
Then a couple of years ago I started to think that I could read other people’s minds. I also thought that all my friends were turning against me and got seriously depressed over it. Then I started getting really angry at everyone for hating me. I thought my mom was trying to make the kids hate me. I though my husband didn’t really want to spend time with me and was trying to get rid of me. I thought everyone else hated me.
Then I started having this theory that doctors were conspiring to lock me up. I think it started because a couple of them noticed that something was up and asked me some questions and tried to get me paranoid. I ran out of my house a few times because of this. I also got migraines every time I went to see a doctor even if it wasn’t for me.
At this point, I noticed the anger as something that my dad also had so started to research MI issues. My uncle had sz and my dad had issues with anger. So I thought that perhaps I had something related to sz that gets worse as you get older. I had also started to see things that were not there so, I got really worried.
Then the weekly panic attacks started happening for stupid reasons like people were talking too loud. Then I knew I had to get help.
When all the weird stuff started happening, I just chalked it up to some potato salad I had eaten that had gone bad.
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I had a mild autism spectrum disorder, which had been present before my sz diagnosis.
Never run out in the dark.
I had a major depressive break at 23. Months off work. There was some paranoid overtones but I talk well and walked out of the shrinks office smoking weed.
Before I went psychotic at 29. I was doing well. Living out earning good money trying to sort out my life. I was really lonely. That really bit if I remember back but I was trying to get better. I just blamed being shy and unlucky. I was really sliding into paranoid town.
I did think that there was something wrong with me, before meeting a psychiatrist. Prior to one year before meeting doc my mind was very disturbed and I had all sorts of strange ideas and strangely for the first time I started failing in the examinations. I was sitting for my graduation exams. I was a brilliant student till then. Then after failing for two or three times I decided that I better see a psychiatrist and something wrong with my mind and I asked my dad to take me to a pdoc. My father maintained that there was nothing wrong with me but I insisted on seeing a pdoc. That was how I felt before meeting my first Psychiatrist.
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Was very young. Just thought I was the only person in the entire world experiencing what I was and I had no idea what it was. Nor did I think I had any illness until it was suggested to me but i knew something was not normal. I felt very alone.
Was blown away when I realised there were millions like me…not so alone anymore.
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My first doc diagnosed me a Neurotic. I continued with him for 3 years without any success. Then I met another doctor who correctly diagnosed me as Psychotic. All the doctors since then adopted that same diagnosis.
I’m still struggling to believe I have sz. The meds haven’t taken away my “symptoms”. I have always struggled with depression and anxiety though.
I had no idea there was anything medically wrong with me until the diagnosis. I honestly thought the people and places around me had changed and become sinister.
I knew i had other mental problems but never thought it was schizophrenia too. I figured the hallucinations were just my eyes being weird and honestly genuinely thought it was normal to hear music in my head constantly. i bought into the belief that aliens were coming for me, i could brush the feeling off but whenever it happened again i would get so petrified because i just knew what it was.
before my diagnosis of sz i was diagnosed schizotypal. I knew I was schizotypal and weird.
Brain tumor, dementia, sinusitis, hyperthyroidism, depression or some unknown brain disorder.
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I had no idea there was such a thing as psychology. I’m not making this up. And schizophrenia? Wth is that?
I had never met anyone that ever had a “mental problem” ever in my life. I knew a lot of people from a lot of places, and there was never someone they knew with one either I assume because I never heard about them.
So when I started turning, no one had any clue as to what it was or what to do. It was kind of like people without arms letting a house burn down incapable of saving it and then condemning it because it is burnt to the ground. In other words they watch bemused, and they black listed me for life. I have not one family member nor friend from all of those years of knowing them. I’ve tried to link up with them online, and nothing. Either they will not even reply to my requests, or they just make “polite 10 foot pole” distance remarks in a way they hope makes me stop trying to get a hold of them.
This is the weirdest damn thing. Who ever heard of such a thing? Can’t even acknowledge someone at bare minimum, and share a little bit of life?
Hell, it’s no wonder I’m crazy. Everyone I knew were crazy aszholes.
But now I know what schizophrenics are. Hi!
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You are absolutely right. These so called relatives and friends distance you when you need them the most. They think that it’s absolutely waste of time(or Fear perhaps because of this “mad” stigma that is attached to us). I myself had gone through this and feel sorry for you. There is a song in our India which depicts this state of mind of people around us.
“Sukh mein sab saathi; Dukh mein na koye” which means All are our friends in prosperity and no one in sorrow.
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My second-grade teacher took me to the school nurse because she said I was staring into space, and the nurse said I may have autism. There was no followup. This was 1971.
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I just thought it was real life happening, was a very weird time
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What made you think you had dementia?
Some of its symptoms and the fact that it was related to the brain.
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