Psychosis

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So I attended a mental health first-aid workshop last week and one of the topics we covered was psychotic disorders and I noticed that I have a lot of the symptoms. Not hallucinations or delusions as characterize schizophrenia, but more mild symptoms like: loss of drive to eat or wash, inappropriate emotion, withdrawal from communication, loss of concentration, distorted perception, disorganized speech and a loss of touch with reality. When I last saw my psychiatrist she increased the dosage for the Seroquel I take and I didn't think much of it at the time, but now I'm wondering if I have Psychotic Depression as I have had severe depression for years. Then it said in the workbook that most women suffering from schizophrenia experience late-onset schizophrenia, that is, when the person becomes schizophrenic after age 45.

So now I'm worried. It is unfortunate that I stumbled on this material as I wasn't concerned about this before, but now I figure I have some psychotic symptoms and may be heading towards schizophrenia.

Does anyone else suffer from mild psychosis and what is your experience of it? For me the feeling of being out of touch with reality is the worst. It's like I'm just slightly out of sync with the world and can't engage it fully. I have felt this way for a long time and I keep hoping it goes away. The Seroquel does help.

For those of you with schizophrenia when did you develop it and also, how do you know if something is a delusion or not? It seems to me that it takes an awful lot of trust to believe people when they tell you your perception of reality is skewed. What other tools do I have to deal with the world if I can't trust my perception of it?

According to the DSM, autistic individuals cannot be diagnosed with schizophrenia unless they have prominent hallucinations/delusions. This is because the symptoms of disorganisation, flat affect, and disordered-appearing thought can also be part of autism.

Distorted perception and feeling a loss of touch with reality are not necessarily symptoms of psychosis - they can also be symptoms of dissociation, trauma, anxiety, or prolonged mental stress in general.

Your description of feeling out of sync and disconnected sounds like dissociation or low mood more than psychosis.

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia at one time (early adulthood), but there were a lot of different opinions & doctors arguing with each other at that time about "what was wrong with me." It was likely a misdiagnosis, and I was probably experiencing dissociation and severe depression rather than psychosis.

I've had feelings of unreality similar to what you describe, and perceptions of reality that differ from the consensus reality. I found that just hoping it would go away, or trying to make it go away, didn't really help. What helped was to find time and a supportive environment where I could examine my perceptions and understand where they were coming from, and how they related to my life experiences. By doing that, I could learn to differentiate more clearly between consensus reality and my individual perceptions. Even though I might still have unusual experiences, I can remain connected to the ordinary world, because I can situate the weirder parts of my life within that ordinary reality, instead of them being just confusing and dislocated.

I hope that helps & makes sense.

Well, that makes sense as I have had prolonged mental stress. I think my anxiety has a lot to do with my feelings of disconnection and unreality. I am stuck in high gear and frozen like a deer in headlights. I have to constantly remind myself to breath normally and relax my muscles.

Being around other people does help to ground me, but I can only do it for limited amounts of time.

androbot01: At the request of my aunt, I wrote an essay a few months ago for a psychiatric nursing class. My goal was to explain schizophrenia in a way that would make sense to both schizophrenics and neurotypicals, so no difficult concepts like "grandiose delusions" or "affective disorder". It seems you need some grounding in what schizophrenia actually entails; I hope you find this informative.

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Seroquel is used on label to treat not just psychosis but also bipolar and off-label to treat sleeping disorders, various anxiety disorders and to act as a mood stabilizer. Dosages used for schizophrenia are like 600mg+ a day.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I can only imagine how scary that must be.



Yeah, I don't think I am schizophrenic now. The only auditory hallucination I experience is hearing music. That started back in my teens. Not like a song getting stuck in my head, but like there is music playing somewhere, but I can't identify the source and I realize that wherever I go the volume stays the same. I kinda like when that happens. Also I'll hear whispers when no one is there. But no big deal there. And as far as delusions go, I don't think I have any, but how would I know?

Anyway, I look forward to science discovering more about the human mind, maybe one day before I die they'll find the chemical solution that will fix my brain.

So I'm sensing a complete lack of interest in this thread. I'm bumping it anyway, just in case someone can relate to what I'm experiencing.

I'm not sure if this is a philosophical question or a medical one, but it seems to me that we're all in each other's plays. Each of us supposed to perform as the hero of our own lives, but surely believing in one's own importance in the grander scheme of things is delusional. People think they can create reality with words and agreement. And we all pretend this is so, like we have come to some common place where we experience reality together. This is a dark joke to me.

I feel angry and disgusted. Like this world is a prison and when we die we are released.

mookestink, you said "It seems you need some grounding in what schizophrenia actually entails." I don't think I am schizophrenic, I am worried about becoming schizophrenic. I would appreciate some grounding in the early stages of schizophrenia.