anyone know anything about schizophrenic disorder?

[bubblepop]

has anyone out there any experience of this? a relative of mine has just had a long spell in hospital and they have taken her off ALL of her drugs. she has been on them for 15 years, and now she is like a new woman! i am very pleased for her,it is like she has been given a new lease of life. before she was tired all the time, took no interest in life, and could barely hold a conversation.now she's out and about, buzzing around and is barely recognizable as the same woman! i worry that she may have another 'episode' though. i dont know much about it all, so i would be interested to find out more

I dont know about schizophrenic disorder but my brothers off his medication at the moment, wont take it, he has paranoid schizophrenia.
Hes dirty, unwashed with a manic look in his eyes, talking of the foriegn legion, eating nothing but crap, has gone from being skinny to the size of a bus, going round with a night camera...watching badgers...so he says:(
Hes fine according to his workers however.
Are they still keeping an eye on your relative?

yes i think so, i don't think she will ever be completely discharged.i was just wonderin if anyone knew the chances of it re-occurring.thanks for replying charliecat, tell me, is your brother the only one in your family who suffers? i have a couple of relatives on my mums side who have been affected.

Noone else affected, his dad was a manic depressive, not sure if he had any other troubles..
Is there any chance your relative has been given a 3 month injection?
My brother comes out of hospital fine(because theyve gave him a jab)..its when he doesnt take the daily pills it all starts going wrong.
Hes perfectly normal medicated.

Dh was diagnosed with this when he was in his 20's. He used a lot of drugs and they think this brought on the condition. He used to hear voices in his head having conversations with one another separate from him. He had vivid dreams/hallucinations? He was on all sorts of medication, he could tell you the names but I couldn't. However he swears that the drugs did more harm than good and he feels that he has an emotional blackout at times because of these drugs (I can testify to that!). He came off the drugs before I met him, he went backpacking around Australia and Thailand which seemed to do him a world of good. I met him after he came back and he was still getting 'episodes' then. For example, if you tried having a conversation with him, he would reply in rhyme, he would just talk nonsensical. He had a faraway look in his eyes, he couldn't concentrate on what you were saying or anything around him, it's as if he wasn't really there. He didn't even look himself, I remember once that I looked right at him but failed to recognise him!

He is now absolutely fine! That last episode was 10 years ago nearly. Your relative may well have other 'episodes', you just need to support her through them. Hopefully they will be short-lived and the ok periods will last longer. When dh was getting better his 'episodes' would last a few days, so don't let this worry you.

Hope she's ok!

schizophrenic disorder

Is schizophrenic disorder different from full blown schizophrenia then (ie paranoid or catatonic or whatever)? And how? Just interested...

I have absolutely no idea I'm afraid! There are obviously varying degrees of the illness so maybe that's where the different types come into it. I just know how dh used to be and I've listened to his descriptions of how it was for him, but I'm no expert on this condition at all! It is thought to be hereditary - dh's sister had a nervous breakdown too, quite a major one and I think his parents have battled with depression, so obviously I worry for my children. And if dh were having episodes now I would know a lot more about it, but it is all past really and I'm fairly certain that he's over it.

schizophrenic disorder is different from both scizophrenia and manic dperession but has fetaures of both, but is generally considered to be milder and more compatible with normal life.

dperession and mania both occur but characteristically in schizophrenic affective disorder are accompnaied by hallucinations and delusions

some people only have one episode others may have long intervals of wellness between

also there isn't a conclusive diagnosis test for it so different doctors might diagnose differently, depending how the patient presents with it

Interesting. Some of your descriptions of your DH's behaviour sounds similar to my mum Rhubarb - not listening to what you're saying, faraway look in eyes, talking nonsense.

I hope she gets over it then Bourneville! It's horrible to deal with isn't it? I don't know what to suggest tbh!

there are other illnesses which might be like that to a degree bourneville, how old is she?

Oh, she's pretty much over it now, she just sometimes comes across as a bit distant, esp if she's particularly tired or been particularly busy. She really needs time to recharge her batteries eg after work conferences etc. One time after a work thing away for a few days she sat & rambled on to my dsis for ages, i wondered if it was just me that felt weird about it but dsis said she was making every effort to really engage her but it was impossible apparently. It's quite difficult to feel properly emotionally connected to her, although i'm closer to her now than i ever have been in my life due to dd. I suppose that could be something to do with my own issues/defensiveness or whatever but my friends say similar things. Conversely, she is also a very warm & loving person too and we have tons & tons of family friends who love her to bits.

I think she's 55 zippi

My mum is schizophrenic:( and has been in hospital/home pretty much since then, while I went into foster care and then to my aunt (who wasn't the most maternal of women and cause me just as much upset as my mother). My mother breifly came off her meds when I was 7, long enough to have my brother with another mentally ill man, and they were both deemed well enough to care for me too. it turned out to be a very bad experiment all round, I went back to my aunt and my brother was adopted into his fathers family, altho we were kept in touch with each other.

all in all my childhood was very much less than ideal, altho my brothers was lots better (and I love to be able to say that. he has just qualified as a doctor too, so I am very proud of him:))

my mother has now had all of the different types of meds available is isn't able to take them any more. apparently after a while (well, in her case only maybe??) your body builds up a resistance to the meds and so they need to be changed. even the jabs no longer work. she is now full on mentally ill:(:( with no chance of ever being able to care for herself.

she scares me, and my children, and so it is a big issue for me to go to visit her (altho I do try to at least four times a year). she doesn't know where I live, or any other contact details for me, altho her care worker has my email so she is able to srite to me in that way and me to her, which I am able to deal with, as I can see who the email is from and open it when I feel able to IYSWIM.

her illness was offset by drugs (heroin, cocain etc) while she was pregnant with me, so I am so very very lucky to be here at all, much less be a normal mum(well, as normal as any other mum here). I do wonder tho if my kiddies immunity problems can be due to what she did?????

I don't know how any of this helps you, but it helps me to be able to speak about it and to see that there are others out there who know about it. none of my RL friends have any experience of anything like this and so never know how to help me when it is coming up to a visit.
Just writing this makes me feel sad, just cos it makes me feel like I want a mum, and don't have one really:(

since I was two, she has been like this, and it is psychomum speaking. Flame has a lovely mummy:)
I forgot to change the nickname....sorry

Psychomum - my utmost regards & respect coming your way... i am so well aware that it could easily have gone that way for us, I guess it was down to my dad & the lodger (who stayed with us till i was 16) that the family was kept together. It never occurred to me to think anything of it till I was 16 & did Psychology A Level, always thought I had a "normal" childhood which I kind of did, except for my mum's illness. I am still working through how it might have affected me, and having dd makes it all clearer somehow, I can't help thinking about what was going on when I was her age. Me & my dsis are desperate to talk to people who were around (esp my dad & the lodger) about exactly what went on, what she was like etc, and what happened to us at the time, just so we can piece it all together in our heads, but we have no idea how to broach the subject.

What sort of schizophrenia does your mother have?

I am not sure to be honest....All I have ever been told is that she has schizophrenia and it is all so painful for me that I confess that I try to avoid thinking about it. Also, my aunt does most of the 'caring' for her (altho she is in a special care home), and my aunt and I don't see eye to eye about it all.
My aunt thinks (and has told me on many occasion:() that I am stupid and really has no idea or empathy about how much it hurts me that my mother is like this. Like I said before, my aunt is in no way a maternal woman, and simply thinks that I should be old enough now 'to get over it'!

I also don't really speak to any of her care workers, so thats not much help either I guess.....I feel ashamed of the way I feel tho, but can't get past it either. friends have said that maybe I should get councelling, but I am not sure how that will help either....i don't know, I am beginning to ramble now too:(

psychomum5, maybe counselling would help. I've never had counselling cos i haven't felt the need for it. But you really shouldn't feel ashamed about how you feel, and with a counsellor you would be free to express everything exactly as you are feeling it. When talking to my dsis i was expressing a certain amount of anger or resentment about aspects of our childhood & my dsis was v rational about it saying that no one was to blame, i wasn't right to feel angry with my parents, etc, which of course is all true and since then as i have said i realise how amazing my dad was under the circumstances - and also how amazing my mum is to have come through it, and of course we're such a close supportive family now, but as children we grow up repressing all the sht, we have to feel something* surely! we can't work through it without working through those feelings if that makes any sense. And ironically the further away from that childhood i get, & the more stable our family gets & the closer i am to my mum, the deeper ths issues feel for some reason.

funnily enough i wasn't the only person to mention anger- my sister's boyf said once "where does all the anger go in your family?" & it's true- we have always had heated political type discussions but never discussed anything close to the bone, anything emotional etc, never get angry directly with each other and presumably that's because as my sis said it's no one's fault, we don't have a right to be angry or something.

now i'm rambling, sorry!