I just want to preface that I am not in any way commenting about you. Almost no one, including a lot of psychology students I have know, even when I was in grad school, don't really understand schizophrenia. There's a lot of misinformation about it, especially in the horror movie world. And I would never criticize your decisions as to who you would be friends with or involved with, because everything you said is reasonable.
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about antipsychotic medication. People who take it are completely capable of driving cars on long trips and doing just about anything else.
I've taken antipsychotic medication for 11 years now. I'm not schizophrenic, I have obsessive compulsive disorder. Abilify is a anti psychotic that has many off label uses. It is used a lot for people who are bipolar and for depression.
If you stop taking antipsychotics, you do not relapse into hallucinations as quickly as the character in this movie. Most of them will take over a week before anything would happen.
I think the biggest issue though, is the poor portrayal of a schizophrenic in this movie. Less than 1% of schizophrenics are violent or dangerous. Paranoid schizophrenics, which is supposedly what the character in this movie is, do not act violently on what they percieve is the source of their paranoia. They are more likely to simply try to hide an panic.
AS far as hallucinations and delusions go, every person on this earth has them to a small degree. Schizophrenics just have them to a degree in which it becomes an burden on their life. But many schizophrenics, even the highly medicated ones, can drive fine and can do everything that we do completely fine.
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harvey-cc
10 years ago
Thank you for sharing your experience and shedding light on this. Your right this movie and alot of others makes it seem a scary and unstable condition. The only real experience I've had with mental illness was a good navy buddy of mine, had taken LSD and while on it went back to his ship and told them everything he had ever done wrong, stolen and drugs. They assumed he was physchotic so immediatly had him commited to bethesda. They gave him all types of drugs for 6 weeks then determined that he was not physchotic and discharged him, medically.
Before that he was completely normal and showed no symptoms of anything. Now ever since the drug and then subsequent stay he has had problems. He gets arrested for tresspassing alot, and when I asked he says that he was called to those locations or knew that something was there for him. This has led to many arrests for being on farmers property/barns. Its really sad as before he was just a happy regular guy who didn't really get into trouble or have those issues. I wonder if the drugs they navy gave him during his commital may have permently affected him because when I talk to him now its like he's a different person. He's still the friend I knew but he will go off on tangents and believe things that are pretty fantastical about forces calling him and people who are out to oppose him.
Dont spend all your time on the internet do something with your life and then post it on a blog
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Foxbarking
10 years ago
It's my pleasure. Before my OCD diagnosis, I had a lot of misconceptions about psychiatric conditions. It was due to these misconceptions that I actually decided to go into psychology as a profession. But the majority of them come from movies and television shows and it's just sort of a fact of life I guess.
But yeah, psychiatric medications can really change someone and not always for the better. I had to cycle through a lot of them before I found ones that were able to help without making me a different person. But all psychiatric drugs interact with neurotransmitters and can unfortunately have permanent effects. And depending upon the drug type, the effects can be different. For example, drugs like prozac, an SSRI, and Abilify, and atypical antipsychotic, are newer drugs with reduced side effects. these began to come around in the mid to late 1990s. But older antidepressants and older antipsychotics often could permanently affect patients more often so if your friend had taken these before that time period, it is possible they had a permanent influence on him.
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chuggliams
10 years ago
I know a few schizophrenics and whilst they were never violent towards me, they did scare me on occasion! One of them was on Largactyll during the 90s (I'm not sure how it's spelt but its nickname is 'the liquid cosh') and two others have to have a monthly injection given to them by the mental health team.
I could always tell when one of my mates was due his monthly visit because he'd start talking about his conversations with the pope and the 'new world order!' He's a lovely bloke and would take the mickey out of himself about a week after his injection, bless him.
I think it's more unnerving than scary, thinking about it. What seems incredible to me ('believing 100 impossible things before breakfast') is completely normal to him. But as I've said- not one of them has ever hurt another person
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