<p>My S was an avid reader. Now he does not read. It started out that he was sure that little ink marks in the books were “messages” to him so he quit reading as he was afraid, a year or so later he read Animal Farm but only reading 3 pages a day saying the pages were so full of insight, now he can’t follow a story. It’s the same with vidoe games and tv…he watches the Disney Channel or TVLand and plays the old video games…nothing too complex. Just DEVASTATING!</p>
<p>I have had the opportunity to read some writings of individuals who were in the prodromal stages of a thought disorder. It is typically rambling, bizarre and incoherent, as NSM and Hanna indicated. </p>
<p>And as for listing the list of side effects from the PDR, while certainly there are some potentially problematic side effects from meds like the newer generation antipsychotics, they are far better tolerated than the older meds. And if everyone read every side effect reported in the PDR (never mind that many are not causal, but correlational, and occur with about the same frequency as a placebo) people wouldn’t take many meds.</p>
<p>“I have had the opportunity to read some writings of individuals who were in the prodromal stages of a thought disorder. It is typically rambling, bizarre and incoherent”</p>
<p>Once our S came home from school and settled down, he said he wanted to take a year off and write, that he was developing a theory that no one else had ever written about. It actually started off quite promisingly as he really seemed to have something there. It however became rambling and paranoid and the writing itself started to look like scribbling.</p>
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<p>^^^Agree with above. When I was taking pharmacology in nursing school, we all knew that, when in doubt, we were safe going with “nausea and vomiting” for any and all drugs. </p>
<p>No matter how benign the drug is, it ALWAYS comes with a price. The only thing we can do is weigh the risks vs. the benefits and proceed on that basis.</p>
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<p>That’s what a lot of people with psychosis do.</p>
<p>It can be hard to assess whether or not that is a rational choice if you haven’t taken them yourself.</p>
<p>^^^Good point. I was viewing it from a general perspective. Obviously if someone is psychotic, they are not able to rationally make that distinction.</p>
<p>" And if everyone read every side effect reported in the PDR (never mind that many are not causal, but correlational, and occur with about the same frequency as a placebo) people wouldn’t take many meds."</p>
<p>I think there is a huge problem with letting people (granted, they are, by age, adults)
who cannot function, cannot think logically, be in charge of their own health and medication decisions. It just doesn’t work. The problem is, it is often too late for parents/family to get power of attorney and the mentally ill person who has a first mental break as an adult often will not allow it because they are paranoid, etc.
Then the mentally ill person is “free” to make own decisions, “free” to put his/her family through hell and cause chaos (and waste of $) in society like my s-i-l did. In cases like hers, I am all for forced medication. It is not about how the patients “feel” or about what side effects they might imagine they are experiencing. It is about how they are functioning and how much trouble they are causing others. Any observer could see that s-i-l was 1000% better on meds, but she couldn’t understand that–because she is mentally ill.</p>
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<p>This needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis which is why we have courts to make decisions on power of attorney.</p>
<p>Thank you for this thread. One post from someone did bother me- comparing mental illness to alcoholism when emphasizing the need for lifelong treatment. Alcoholism has a very negative stigma so another condition should be used. Compare it to hypertension, diabetes, any other chronic disease with known PHYSICAL causes/manifestations. There is a need to emphasize the physical basis for mental illness with no relation to anything under the individual’s control. Our society needs to treat brain problems just like those of the rest of the body. Fortunately the more recent therapies, especially drugs, are much better at treating the various diseases with fewer side effects.</p>
<p>Good luck to you. I know I periodically talk to my son, even if only a few words, just to hear his voice and know he is okay. Emails don’t give the nuances one hears in a voice. The weekly call home doesn’t have to have much content- just a check on well being. Feeling justified in my bugging son when he doesn’t answer his voice mail…</p>
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<p>Whether they can write well is not the point (when referring to someone taking necessary medications). It’s whether they think they can write well while off meds and whether they think they can still write well when on meds. If they think can’t write as well now as before, it’s a temptation to go off meds again (if the person is a creative writer for example). It doesn’t matter how well they can actually write.</p>
<p>What I would find to be highly agonizing would be the cases where the mentally ill person takes the medication, gets better, admits that she was sick and is now better, but then makes a decision while in this rational state that now that they are better, they no longer need the medication. They are better because of the medication!!! </p>
<p>My aunt did this. She was a nurse and knew better. She would never have discontinued her BP meds because she knew that without them, her BP would go up. But for some reason she didn’t make that same association when applied to her mental health medications.</p>
<p>kdos, thank you for sharing and I hope that things get better for your son.</p>
<p>The more that we discuss brain problems, the more we diminish the stigma of them.</p>
<p>As posted earlier, NAMI is an excellent resource.</p>
<p>I go back to your first post here, that your son’s decline began when he was away at college. The difficulty a college faces is who is “in charge”? No one knows your kids the way their family knows them. The isolation, the dirty clothes. The poor hygiene. The weight loss. These kids are “adults”, but oh-so young, and used to having adult supervision. As much as I understand this happening, I wonder was there was anything to have prevented this? I have seen a difficult decline in my own first child. Not schizophrenia, but not coping all that well at all, just the same.</p>
<p>My message is that we parents, who have focused so much energy on our kids, still need to be totally involved. Go there. Visit! Bring your child home some special weekend. (I thought an occasional phone call would suffice. I was wrong!) </p>
<p>I’m getting preachy here, but many of our son’s issues could have been avoided if he didn’t feel so alone and so far away. The first semester was challenging enough, but there was the Parent’s Weekend, and Thanksgiving and soon, December holidays. But the time between January and May is very hard on some very fragile kids.</p>
<p>kds: I am so sorry for what you have had to bear. {{{hugs to you}}}</p>
<p>My understanding is the schizophrenia meds have very serious, unpleasant side effects. From the point of the family, of course the person with mental illness should take his meds, so he can act like a somewhat normal person in society. But from the point of view of the person taking the meds, is it worth it to be normal if you feel awful and shake all the time? It’s easy to say, take the meds, if you’re not the one experiencing the awful side effects all the time.</p>
<p>By no means am I saying that schizophrenics shouldn’t take their meds! The meds have huge benefits. I’m just saying, it’s easy to dismiss the huge, nasty side effects if you’re not the one experiencing them. Some of the benefits don’t accrue to the person taking the meds, but he’s the one getting all the side effects.</p>
<p>Oh, and I echo what limabeans said. Kdos’s son was so sick, and nobody at his school noticed for months? That’s scary.</p>
<p>"My message is that we parents, who have focused so much energy on our kids, still need to be totally involved. Go there. Visit! Bring your child home some special weekend. (I thought an occasional phone call would suffice. I was wrong!) "</p>
<p>Most students don’t need this kind of parental oversight. Many would resent having parents so involved, and such students might not be able to emotionally grow as much as they could if parents let them be more independent. </p>
<p>Don’t blame yourself for what happened.</p>
<p>[Frederick</a> J. Frese III, Ph.D.](<a href=“MindsonTheEdge.com is for sale | HugeDomains”>HugeDomains.com)</p>
<p>There is hope for those with schizophrenia, this whole website and the show it features are great resources.</p>
<p>/PSA</p>
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<p>I’ll try to find a few studies on side-effects tonight.</p>
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<p>The family may be just as concerned about the damage that meds can cause as the
one taking the meds. There are concerns that antipsychotics will damage neural receptors, perhaps permanently. So you might wind up with brain damage if you don’t take meds or if you do.</p>
<p>Some types of psychoses can be temporary. Post-Partum, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Psychosis NOS can just go away, with or without meds.</p>
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<p>I don’t agree that parents should “still need to be totally involved” once their kids are in college. This is the time when we should be pulling back and letting them evolve into the independent adults they can become. That said, what you are describing doesn’t sound like being “still totally involved.” It sounds like staying plugged in and not just abandoning them to their independence.</p>
<p>We make sure to speak to our OOS college student at least once a week. We see her every couple of months between parents’ weekends, holidays, or special trips we make just to visit ( I flew to her campus a week ago to watch her run in a 10 mile race). But if I felt it was my role to stay “totally involved,” she’d buck that for sure, and I can’t say I would blame her.</p>
<p>Being involved vs independence is a familiar theme on college confidential. If the student had risk factors for bipolar, depression or schizophrenia, then maybe it would be better to keep in close touch through the college years.</p>