Do you know if you are schizophrenic?

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I heard that people with schizophrenia do not know they have it. Is this true? For example, they do not think anything is wrong with them?

I have tried to read about this condition but am not certain I understand what it is. It appears to be something to do with having delusions and seeing bizarre asociations with things. Also having visual and audital halucinations. Once I read somewhere that when scizophrenics watch television they think that the people on it are talking directly to them.

Can anyone clear it up for me?

If you have a schizophrenia, you cannot get on with other people, because you cannot agree about real things.

As sweetleaf says, someone with schizophrenia could be convinced that he or she has no problem if they suppose that the hallucinations are caused by an external agent. So it is more like they would not consider themselves responsible for the psychosis. They may be right about some reactions of doctors who wants to control, industry who wants to sell drugs, but they also think that their mental issues are completely caused by people or things that are real.

In some cases, it is complicated because one can have mental issues that are indirectly cause by someone else, for example with double bind. But the difference here is between an agent that causes some troubles, and then some troubles that are in your mind. If you are alone, and still have mental troubles, then it's in your mind.

So I would say the main issue is about taking responsability about what is your mind. If you believe in a conspiracy, well it's in your mind. If you believe in some god, well it's in your mind.

There are different types of schizophrenia. Some schizophrenic people don't suffer from delusions and don't have any problem accepting their diagnosis. But even people who suffer from manic episodes aren't delusional all the time. It's a bit like bipolar disorder insofar that high dopamine (manic, delusional and hallucinatory) episodes take turns with low dopamine episodes, during which a schizophrenic person is merely depressed and socially withdrawn. Psychiatrists speak of positive and negative symptoms to describe these two different states.

During manic episodes, i.e. episodes of positive symptoms, schizophrenic people might believe in some kind of conspiracy against them and distrust their psychiatrist, their relatives, or whoever else is trying to help them. At those times, it is very possible that they're not aware of their own condition. But this is not the case during episodes of negative symptoms, or when being on antipsychotic medication. According to John Forbes Nash Jr., the schizophrenic mathematician whose case was the template for the movie A Beautiful Mind, schizophrenic people can also learn to identify paranoid thoughts and hallucinations and intellectually reject them.

most people with schizophrenia have lack of insight of the illness because the brain damage excessive dopamine/glutamate causes on their brain causes brain damage... (the info i gather on that) it would be like if you smoked a huge joint and could not move, or took a dissociative drug and exprience ego death...

otoh a lot of people like us are more educated about mental illnesses

i myself have chronic psychotic episodes but i would probably fall under schizo-affective... am not diagnosed but relate a lot because i have had fully psychotic/psychic episodes, psych episodes mixed with depression or mania, etc, and just plain depression...

i would say aspergers people are high risk for developing affective and psychotic conditions because of the poor socialization and sensitivity to environment sets us up for the possibility of having "hallucinations" and delusions (sensing energy fields, mind filling in the blanks with voices, etc)

my theory...
i have been clinical depressed since i was 13, and developed psychosis slowly until it was full blown chronic ~age 21

If knowing means understanding your own symptoms, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that with most mental conditions people leave it to their doctors, and that therapists don't like people who are too self-taught on issues because they feel like they're being told how to do their work. To answer your question from my experience, I recognised what they had diagnosed me with when I first read about psychosis - and I didn't know at the time what my medical file says. Maybe the relationship is between being in a psychotic state and not knowing it - and not all Schizophrenics are constantly psychotic.

I hear that most schizophrenics don't even know they are sick. They believe their own delusions. Plus that is also why they stop taking their medicine because they think they don't have to take it anymore because they are better.

There are some who are aware of their illness so they take their medicine for it and never quit and some just learn to ignore their delusions knowing they are not really there.

I truly believe that god and the devil control earth and that aliens are coming for us. I also don't make any sense when I talk
and everything I say only makes sense to me so I stay quiet all the time. And if I don't want to be friends with someone, which is mostly
all the time, then I freak out at them to let them know that I would rather die than have to spend ten minutes around them.

That's only when I'm not on respiridol, but even then It's half as bad when I'm on my meds

Are you serious ?

As someone with schizoaffective myself, yes delusions can be that bizarre, circular. I have a few of my own according to doctors but I still believe what I believe. Schizophrenics can go both ways in understanding they have an illness. Some lack insight and will refuse treatment. Others take their meds because it makes a big difference in their symptoms. With me, most of the time the poison works but other times during stress it doesn't touch my symptoms at all. Right now I am under a great deal of stress. My grandpa just recently went into the hospital near death. At least right now he is doing better but his heart is damaged. My art is going downhill by shutting places down for good and plain old getting kicked out of places. This is because I am dark. I am worthless and hopeless about my "future" which i have none. My parents have all kinds of health problems. My mom is having dangerous surgery. Nothing goes right in my life. But the world everything is being fine. While the stock market has been going down in recent weeks the economy is strong. It ain't the economy that got me kicked out or closing the businesses down, its the quality of my art and the Dark Power of Influence that I sadly have. Sometimes like WhiteWidow, I don't make sense when I speak or even write. Some days are better than others. I won't get into my delusions or hallucinations here. Sometimes I don't take my pills because I believe it to be poison and it makes me fat and ugly. Also I believe I don't need pills because I don't believe I am schizoaffective even though all the docs say I am. I know a few days ago I heard constant voices and seeing visions days like that are rare. Most days I hear and see things only a few times a day. Not common or constant enough for a diagnosis. I know that the docs mainly diagnosed me based on my "delusions." God points his giant finger at me, laughing. Points from the clouds. I was made to suffer. What's worse at the hospitals they don't even believe me. Its only the people that has seen me for a long time like my case worker and my psychologist. My psychiatrist is only OK because after one of the hospital stays she implied she didn't believe me anymore and that I was a liar that must burn in hell for all eternity. I felt something weird in my pills yesterday and it didn't feel like medicine. Its almost like a camera or something else inside it. I also fear the aliens. There is nothing wrong with fearing the aliens because we can't be alone in the Universe no matter what others believe.

It's good that that is the trend, don't get me wrong. ^ It could be a regional problem, or public vs. private care problem or a combination, but when pills were suggested to me, I wasn't answered when I wanted to know more about the pills. I was definitely not considered 'intelligent' enough to know things, though I'd wanted to converse with the psychiatric unit.

It depends on the severity of the illness.

The key psychiatric term here is "insight". That is the ability of the patient suffering from psychosis to know and understand that they are losing touch with reality.

generally someone who is psychotic does not have insight into their psychosis. They generally will believe their delusions and hallucinations and will avoid treatment (especially paranoid schizophrenics).
This is one of the key areas of treatment and recovery for a lot of people suffering from schizophrenia. If patients suffering from more severe forms of schizophrenia could have insight into their psychosis they could eventually learn how to distinguish between hallucinations and reality and then they could begin to "recover".

However that's not to say that all schizophrenics have no insight. Some schizophrenics do know they are psychotic and they tend to do better with treatment and compliance with meds etc.

Hope that clears that up a little for ya.

I suppose what I don't understand is this term "psychotic". What does it mean to be "losing touch with reality"? Also what is a delusion?

Am I wrong to assume that these things are like having visual halucinations? Or that people are out to get you? Or could they be subtle things?