A question about Schizophrenia

[kioku]

I posted here a while back. But I checked out a book called Surviving Schizophrenia for research purposes. And I'm only 17 and I am studying Psychology in and out of school hours. I found the book interesting except one thing.. I had an aunt on my mother's side who was placed in a mental hospital and long time ago. My mother was never told why, but I do know that she was very paranoid, liked to be alone, only drank coffee, smoked alot, couldn't work, and always thought there were snakes everywhere. Every time I tell my mother a symptom of schizophrenia, she notes that her sister had that.

I was always pretty odd.. I mean very odd. Sort of in my own world. And I currently have all of these symptoms listed below. But it could be because of my recent depression or the OCD I have been diagnosed with.. Here:

--Overly acute senses- lights are too bright, sounds are too loud. (I've had this for about four years.)

--Staring, while in deep thought, with infrequent blinking.

--Clumsy, inexact motor skills (I have always had this)

--Sleep disturbances- insomnia or excessive sleeping

--Parkinsonian type symptoms- rigidity, tremor, jerking arm movements, or involuntary movements of the limbs (I have always had this. Sometimes my whole body freezes and shakes at weird moments.)

--Movement is speeded up- i.e. constant pacing

--Movement is slowed down- staying in bed( I alternate between these two. )

--The inability to experience joy or pleasure from activities

--Sometimes feeling nothing at all

--Appearing desireless- seeking nothing, wanting nothing

--Feeling detached from your own body (depersonalization)

--Hypersensitivity to criticism, insults, or hurt feelings (Now I have always had this.)

--Sudden irritability, anger, hostility, suspiciousness, resentment

--Depression- feeling discouraged and hopeless about the future

--Low motivation, energy, and little or no enthusiasm

--Suicidal thoughts or suicidal ideation

--Rapidly changing mood- from happy to sad to angry for no apparent reason (called labile mood)

--Severe Anxiety

--Inability to form or keep relationships

--Social isolation- few close friends if any. Little interaction outside of immediate family.

--Increased withdrawal, spending most of the days alone.

--Becoming lost in thoughts and not wanting to be disturbed with human contact

--Replaying or rehearsing conversations out loud- i.e. talking to yourself (very common sign)

--Finding it difficult to deal with stressful situations

--Inability to cope with minor problems

And alot more that can be found here:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/earlysigns.htm

My twin brother has even more. I'm worried about us... I mean, my mother has a lot of symptoms of Paranoid Personality Disorder, and my father is OCD. Not to mention my brother and I are just about finished with high school. Should I be as worried and I am?

[spiritual_emergency]

Hello kioku,

One of the symptoms you've added notes to (i.e. Parkinsonian type symptoms) are only symptomatic for people who are using medications as treatment. These are also known as extrapyramidal symptoms and typically, indicate that some degree of neurological damage has taken place such as tardive dyskinesia. In these cases, a med reduction or withdrawal is often prudent.

If you are taking some form of psychiatric medication, especially an anti-psychotic such as Seroquel, Geodon, or Zyprexa (these may have been prescribed off-label for your depression or OCD) it's possible this could be causing the trembling/shaking. If that is the case, you should alert your psychiatrist to your response as soon as possible. If you are not making use of any medications you may want to follow up with your family doctor to see if some other source can be found for the shaking.

Meantime, if we remove that one symptom from the list, everything that remains is quite mild in the greater scheme of things and could be related to any number of causes such as sensitivity, personal preference, awkwardkess/tiredness associated with growth spurts that are common in the teen years, etc..

--Overly acute senses- lights are too bright, sounds are too loud. (I've had this for about four years.)

--Clumsy, inexact motor skills (I have always had this)

--Movement is slowed down- staying in bed( I alternate between these two. )

--Hypersensitivity to criticism, insults, or hurt feelings (Now I have always had this.)

No reputable psychiatrist would diagnose you with schizophrenia as based on the above symptoms. You noted that have been diagnosed with depression and OCD so I assume you have a relationship with a psychologist or psychiatrist. If you remain concerned, I suggest you share the information above with them and ask their opinion.

I checked out a book called Surviving Schizophrenia for research purposes.

Admittedly, I'm not a fan of E. Fuller Torrey (the author). Torrey's sister was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after their father passed away. Torrey remains convinced that the family cat was the cause (of her psychosis) and has actively promoted the concept that schizophrenia is caused by a virus in cat poop that becomes airborne. He believes anti-psychotic medications contain anti-viral properties that target the virus present in the cat poop.

If it should be determined that you actually have schizophrenia, feel free to come back and I'll be happy to share some recommendations for different clinicians then.

[Luna-]

Hi kioku

I read all your other posts. I can see you have many concerns, that must be hard. I believe you.

A few points that came to mind:

1. What spiritual_emergency said.

2. Other medications (not only anti-psychotics) can cause some weird symptoms, especially in teens and some of these may be attributed to that. In addition, medications for schizophrenia can cause some of those symptoms. Some meds cause symptoms in some people that they don't cause in others; it's very individual. What are you taking?

3. I have or have had many of the symptoms you described but I have never been diagnosed with schizophrenia, having seen psychiatrists for 28 years. For what that's worth.

4. I see OCD in your posts. And I see your depression. (And your desperation; this must all be dreadfully worrying for you.) OCD and depression could account for many of the symptoms above. Anxiety can cause a large number of the symptoms you describe; it can do some VERY weird things to us. Anxiety is horrible! Depression could also account for many symptoms.

5. There is much written about schizophrenia and mental illness, and if you are interested, I would suggest you read further than one book with one approach. (Cat poop? APs as anti-virals? Seriously?)

6. Many of these things could be personality traits, variations of "normal".

7. If you are studying psychology, read further into Jungian psychology - there is a lot of richness there and a lot that speaks to people with mental symptoms; much less about labels and much more about human experiences.

It could be schizophrenia. It could be OCD. It could be a number of other things. Mental illnesses are not cut and dried, they are subject to interpretation and the interpretation depends on who is doing it. So it's just very difficult to say. I really hope you can find some relief from your symptoms, irrespective of what label is placed on them; labels cannot describe a person's experience and reality and that is really what matters.

(I have moved this thread to Schizophrenia and Psychosis.)

[Mjolnir07]

I posted here a while back. But I checked out a book called Surviving Schizophrenia for research purposes. And I'm only 17 and I am studying Psychology in and out of school hours. I found the book interesting except one thing.. I had an aunt on my mother's side who was placed in a mental hospital and long time ago. My mother was never told why, but I do know that she was very paranoid, liked to be alone, only drank coffee, smoked alot, couldn't work, and always thought there were snakes everywhere. Every time I tell my mother a symptom of schizophrenia, she notes that her sister had that.

I was always pretty odd.. I mean very odd. Sort of in my own world. And I currently have all of these symptoms listed below. But it could be because of my recent depression or the OCD I have been diagnosed with.. Here:

--Overly acute senses- lights are too bright, sounds are too loud. (I've had this for about four years.)

--Staring, while in deep thought, with infrequent blinking.

--Clumsy, inexact motor skills (I have always had this)

--Sleep disturbances- insomnia or excessive sleeping

--Parkinsonian type symptoms- rigidity, tremor, jerking arm movements, or involuntary movements of the limbs (I have always had this. Sometimes my whole body freezes and shakes at weird moments.)

--Movement is speeded up- i.e. constant pacing

--Movement is slowed down- staying in bed( I alternate between these two. )

--The inability to experience joy or pleasure from activities

--Sometimes feeling nothing at all

--Appearing desireless- seeking nothing, wanting nothing

--Feeling detached from your own body (depersonalization)

--Hypersensitivity to criticism, insults, or hurt feelings (Now I have always had this.)

--Sudden irritability, anger, hostility, suspiciousness, resentment

--Depression- feeling discouraged and hopeless about the future

--Low motivation, energy, and little or no enthusiasm

--Suicidal thoughts or suicidal ideation

--Rapidly changing mood- from happy to sad to angry for no apparent reason (called labile mood)

--Severe Anxiety

--Inability to form or keep relationships

--Social isolation- few close friends if any. Little interaction outside of immediate family.

--Increased withdrawal, spending most of the days alone.

--Becoming lost in thoughts and not wanting to be disturbed with human contact

--Replaying or rehearsing conversations out loud- i.e. talking to yourself (very common sign)

--Finding it difficult to deal with stressful situations

--Inability to cope with minor problems

And alot more that can be found here:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/earlysigns.htm

My twin brother has even more. I'm worried about us... I mean, my mother has a lot of symptoms of Paranoid Personality Disorder, and my father is OCD. Not to mention my brother and I are just about finished with high school. Should I be as worried and I am?

Hi Kioku,

You need to trust me here when I tell you to stop looking at symptom checkers, and that you don't appear to be having any psychotic symptoms. All of those things can be zchizoid, but unless you're having hallucinations it's safe to say that you're OCD, because you're obsessionally concerned about your mental health and are compulsively seeking reassurance that you're not (inquiring to your mother, checking symptoms online, searching forums). Because of this OCD, you're not going to believe that anyone who tells you that you're not what you're worried you are completely understands what you're going through, or you'll be convinced that you haven't explained yourself thoroughly enough to get the point across. Research has all but proven that people who begin with OCD almost never develop schizophrenia, though unfortunately OCD does often develop later in schizophrenics, but that's usually because of delusional thought patterns (There will be a hurricane if I don't keep my silverware drawer organized, that kind of stuff).

Schizotypal can be just as distressing, but that merely means that you outwardly appear to have schizophrenic symptoms, like withdrawal, de-realization and eccentricity, minus the psychotic symptoms like hearing voices or seeing things.

Finally, take it from a schizo, people haven't just thought me strange all of my life, they've believed me outright and undeniably insane, and it took a LOT of willpower to force myself to see the reality of my condition. When you're schizophrenic, you pretty much don't want to believe you're schizophrenic, at all, so the fact that you're worried that you are, regardless of the fact that you believe you're worried based on evidence, is a strong tell-tale sign that you're just fine. One of the first thing psych professionals do when they evaluate you is rule out psychotic illness, and they do that in about three minutes. It's that easy to tell when someone is suffering from this, so you can rely on the fact that one you wouldn't be so easily questioning your own sanity and two you wouldn't need to put so much research into finding conclusive evidence to back your concern, it would be immediately aware to those around you.

I hope this helped; please note however that I am not a health professional and it's always best to seek one in situations of uncertainty.