What is the point of being diagnosed?

hi.

i don treally know how to start this.
I’ve had symptoms of schizophrenia for 5 years now, since I was 17.
It started with hallucinations, visual ones, auditory, delusions, even tactile hallucinations, increased memory loss, sometimes I feel like I’m a different person altogether. sometimes I can’t really tell if something that has just happened really just happened or not. or if how I’ve interperated it is what it really is? or am I just paranoid? i don’t know. whatever

point is, i’ve done my share of research and im not an idiot, I think there is something wrong with me. I mean obviously right, if I am seeing and hearing things? that’s like, schizophrenia 101? at this point I’m not afraid to admit something is wrong with me. What I am afraid to do, is come of the closet with it, so to speak.

I don’t want to be diagnosed. I don’t want to be labeled as “crazy”. how will I be viewed in society? as a crazy person. people don’t like crazy people. I’m so terrified of being labeled as that, what If I can’t find work because of it? what if I have to be institutionalized? how would that affect my family? and the 1 or 2 friends i really care about? that;s going to be on my record. how do you even get diagnosed? talk to a psyciatrist? i haven’t even told my parents or the ones i hold closest to my heart about what’s going on with me. nobody knows. how could I possibly open up to somebody I don’t even know? ■■■■ that. I feel like, i’ve survived on my own so far, maybe it’s just better to keep it all to myself. maybe if i can just take all of it, I wouldn’t be such a burden on everyone else.

i guess the point of this post is. to anyone who’s actually officially diagnosed, is it worth it?
to be “out of the closet”? being diagnosed? i have so much anxiety about this subject. I hate talking about it, even online on a forum like this, sometimes i just want to forget it’s even a part of my life. the only reason I’m even writing this is because it’s completely anonymous. but even still I’m going to hate myself for posting this.

i guess in the back of my mind i’m just really scared because maybe I am getting worse. i hallucinate consistantly, sometimes every day or every other day, sereverl times a day. i don’t even really know anymore. who counts that kind of stuff. i think i’m doing okay, since I can actually tell they are hallucinations. i’m actually aware that something is wrong with me.
but i guess i’m just trying to gage what other people have gone through.

what is the point of being officially diagnosed? there really isn’t one, in my opinion. I don’t want drugs. i’ve abused enough drugs as it is. I don’t need drugs to bring me “back to normal” or whatever it is they do. i don’t even know. I don’t want people to know. it’s bad enough all of you reading this even knows. i should just keep it all to myself. that way, only I have to deal with it, and no one else. I don’t want anyone in my life to worry about me or feel obliged to care for me or treat me differently because I have a “mental illness”. that makes sense right?

is it better to live with schizophrenia as a secret or as an open part of your life?
why do I feel like if I came out with all these things I’m going through, that I’d only be doing it for attention? is that paranoia? because I wanted someone to do something about it? like I said before, only I should have to deal with it right? why put the people I love through that. it’s not fair to them. they don’t deserve that.

i don;t think I’ll ever really tell anyone. maybe some people here feel the same.
how do you get by day to day hiding this secret? is it hard for you? how long have you been hiding? is it possible to stay sane hiding it?

You need to get treated for the problems you’re having. They will probably not just magically go away, in fact if you don’t get treated for these problems as quickly as possible they will probably get worse and your whole life will get worse. I don’t know if you have schizophrenia or not. Your specific problems are common symptoms of schizophrenia but only doctor can diagnose you,. We certainly cannot.

Part of the reason you need to go to a psychiatrist is because he will run tests on you and observe you and tell you what its NOT. The symptoms of certain other conditions can mimic the symptoms of schizophrenia. So a doctor will test you on several things so he can rule out other conditions. These other diseases are pretty serious and without going to doctor you could have some other medical condition.

If you have schizophrenia it needs to be diagnosed so they know what to treat you for. Not being diagnosed will not make the schizophrenia go away if you know what I mean. You either have it or you don’t but not finding out will not cure your problems.

No one likes taking medication but that is the best treatment for schizophrenia and most schizophrenics take it whether they like or not because most of us know the consequences of having living with unmedicated schizophrenia. You sound intelligent. You must be intelligent enough to know that you can probably not keep your problems secret forever. You need to tell your parents. They want the best for you and they can help you. In this world family is very important obviously.They care about you like no one else in this world. If they are half-way decent people (which I assume they are) then they will not disown you or something , They will accept you and try to help you.

You are their son no matter what happens and they would hate to know you are suffering like this alone and they will try to help you. But you need to get diagnosed so people know what they are dealing with and can try to help you.

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Hi, welcome.

First of all, meds help a lot of people. Without them you eventually can lose touch with reality and believe me, you don’t want that.

Before I was diagnosed I knew that if I was sent to the hospital they would diagnose me schizophrenia and refused meds and thought it would go away by itself because that happened in the prodromal phase of my illness, that didn’t happen, in fact it got so worse that I completely lost touch with reality. I was not a bad person, but I did a lot of stupid ■■■■ because I lost touch with reality, I wish I could take it all back and I can’t. I wish I was diagnosed and put on meds sooner but now its too late.

A diagnosis is not the end of the world, in fact is only a treatment guide, you’ll get better with medication and your doctors can help you understand better how to deal with it.

A friend that I’m sure is borderline and has depression also said that she doesn’t want help because she doens’t want the crazy label, but doctors will never call you crazy and you are entitled to not say a word to anyone if you don’t want to. I kept it a secret until I was able to start talking about it.

I think it’s hard for a person with schizophrenia to stay sane without meds, some do it, with help from Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, and a good support system, people knowing about their illness and giving a helping hand when needed. Therapy and a good support system, that means telling your parents of your illness and decision.

The first step I advise you to take is in fact go to a psychiatrist and tell him about your symptoms, I very much doubt he’ll hospitalize you, if you’re not a threat to others or yourself. You sound sane enough to decide if you want meds or not. But you need some sort of help in the way, CBT is extremelly helpful.

I decided for me that is better for my mental health to be open about my illness with people, because I hate lying and had to make excuses to explain certain things. So now I’m open about it, but for a good while there I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t accept that I have it, I thought it was extremelly bad luck to be on the 1% of the entire population, that noone would understand, etc. Turns out people are really supportive, most of them anyway, and there are a lot of ways to deal with the stigma around us. The worst part of the stigma is when we stigmatize ourselves as the crazy person, that’s even worse than others saying it to us. Took me a long while to stop doing that to myself and sometimes I still do it.

Well, sorry for the long post. I advise meds always, so it’s your choice in the end.

Good luck!

2 Likes

If you’ve got a mental illness it’s far more likely that people will call you crazy because of your behavior than for having a diagnosis.

Oh, there’s no way to live with untreated schizophrenia as a secret. It’s not something you can hide, it will show eventually. If you could hide it then you wouldn’t be ill.

4 Likes

Who cares? No diagnoses; no treatment. I got tired of being “ill,” so I did pretty much the following:

  1. Get a copy of these books, read them and have your family read them, as well. (Torrey can be a bit totalistic and unwilling to see exceptions to his “rules” at times, but most of his book is really worth the effort to plough through.)
    http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Schizophrenia-6th-Edition-Family/dp/0062268856
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Family-Guide-Schizophrenia/dp/1593851804/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=schizophren0c-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=XKLY6NWSWJSQ3VYN&creativeASIN=1593851804
  2. Get properly diagnosed by a board-certified psychopharmacologist who specializes in the psychotic disorders. One can find them at…
    http://doctor.webmd.com/find-a-doctor/specialty/psychiatry and https://psychiatrists.psychologytoday.com/rms/
    .
  3. Work with that “psychiatrist” (or “p-doc”) to develop a medication formula that stabilizes their symptoms sufficiently so that they can tackle the psychotherapy that will disentangle their thinking.
    .
  4. Psychotherapies for that currently include…
    DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
    MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
    MBCT - Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: theory and practice - PubMed
    ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
    .
  5. the even newer somatic psychotherapies like…
    MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
    SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
    SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia
    .
  6. or standard CBTs, like…
    REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
    Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
    Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
    Standard CBT – Psychotherapy | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness & scroll down
    .
  7. Get two or more of those “down,” and one can use the skills therefrom in this way to combat delusional thinking and emotional reactivity very quickly:
    10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing
    .
  8. If you/she/he needs a professional intervention to get through treatment resistance, I would use those search tools in item 2 above. Look for clinics that include intervention and treatment resistance services.
    .
  9. If you or your sz patient suddenly becomes manic: What to do when your depressed patient develops mania | MDedge Psychiatry?
    .
  10. Look into the RAISE Project at Google.
    .
  11. Look for mental illness clubhouses in your area (which can be hugely helpful… but may also pose risks). Dig through the many articles at Google to locate and investigate them.

First, let me say you sound a lot like how I thought when I went through psychosis for the first time. I kept everything that was going on to myself, and tried for the world not to take notice. I know you must be having a very hard time dealing with all the intense experiences all on your own. That said, you seem to be aware that interpretation can make a lot of difference.

Now, I also surmise that there is so much going on right now, that it is confusing and hard to sort everything out on your own. Others can help doing so, in face to face encounters. You would know this, I suspect: often thinking with others is much more productive than trying to figure everything out on your own. So why not talk to a doctor? They are specialized in this stuff. And the best part, they are to keep everything that you two discuss a secret. There’s a good chance the doctor can help you a lot in sorting things out.

I was also scared of people calling me crazy, but the fact is, I was so relieved to share this burden I was carrying on my own for so long. The mere act of opening up to someone can really make a difference in how you feel. And the good part is, the doctor will not tell anyone, so you can have both, you can open up without the rumours spreading like wildfire. (In my case, opening up felt so good, that I quickly started telling friends, it was almost addictive, but this is up to you of course.)

To answer your question, ‘is the diagnosis worth it’, I’ll come back to interpretation: when I was struggling with psychosis, I was very heavy on the idea that it was all a matter of interpretation. And I came to see schizophrenia as the preferable one. For my delusional interpretations were not pleasant, caused me a lot of distress. The diagnosis was for me a way of gaining further support for my preferred interpretation. A way to make sure I wasn’t drawn towards more distressing interpretations. For one thing was at some point clear to me, whatever was going on, my mind was not entirely normal anymore. You seem to recognize this as well. I saw my official diagnosis as a way of anchoring the least distressing interpretation.

I was diagnosed in 2010 but started having symptoms in early 2009. Eventually the illness no matter if it has a name or not will start to affect work, home and school everyday life. my father wasn’t diagnosed until he was almost 50. He had behind him a string of low income jobs that only lasted a few months before he was fired or he quit.

One of the reasons for diagnosis is treatment. If a person does have psychosis, early treatment may prevent worse manifestations of the illness.

My family member was somewhat aware of symptoms as symptoms for a time, but eventually had full psychotic breaks that led to loss of this awareness. If there is even a possibility you have any of the psychotic disorders, you may be able to get treatment fast enough to avoid the worst of it. RAISE project…

Doctors and other treatment providers are required to keep your health information confidential. You don’t have to tell anyone you don’t wish to tell. Your parents or someone else close to you can help you even if you don’t ever tell them the dx. Just let them know you are worried about your mental health and would like help finding treatment. Or go to a doctor on your own if you have all the resources you need.

I was not thinking exactly like you. I felt like a god. I could hear other people’s thoughts and knew what they were going to say. I did not understand they were voices until long after I had medication.

I had a high position at my work, got paranoid and lost it completely. Made a fool out of myself. Called security and told them mumbo jumbo about threats against the company.

I was psychotic for two years before I tried to kill myself to get rid of this supernatural ability to hear thoughts and spirits. I ended up in hospital for 6 months. It took me more than a year after diagnose and medicin to recover enough to start working again. Strange enough my old company rehired me and put me on “the floor”. Doing delivery jobs. Now, 5 years later I was asked to apply for team leader.

Without diagnose/medicine you will propably make a complete fool out of yourself. I got my dx at 32. I started hearing voices at 15. The devil appeared and screamed and yelled at me. I kept it a secret for so long. But finally it all just crumbled.

Also there are other conditions mimicing sz. Like temporal lobe epilepsy. Brain tumors. Thyroid problems. Drugs.

Getting diagnosed can save your life. Undiagnosed schizophrenia can kill you as you descend into a dream world you think is real.

Just talk to your family doctor.

My self I wanted to know…it was even noted by me something was going down.