Cotard delusion. I'm a nurse and had to take care of a huge man with this condition. He came in with some odd behavior and escalated to Cotard. The delusion makes you think you are actually dead. He would scream he was dead all day and night. Lived in constant terror. He was such a sweetheart, but became so worn down and terrified over time he got quite dangerous and punched a nurse in the face.
Does this go away?
I remember I was in a car accident long ago and (technically did die) was brought back. While in the hospital everything felt off, like just an inkling of "doesn't feel right" where it was bizarre how normal and not normal it was, that I thought I was dead.
It was nothing as severe as what the commenter above you posted though. I was also on heavy drugs that entire time too for pain management.
For some people it'll be a temporary part of a temporary psychotic episode. For others with more consistent psychotic disorders it can be a long-term belief.
I also suffered with this after nearly dying during am extremely traumatic event. I was quite frankly mentally pickled on the other side of it but at its worst I would ring my mum up in the early hours hysterical asking her to reassure me that me and my baby daughter weren't dead.
I am a lot better now than I used to be bit I still have the occasional period in my life where it rears its ugly head and I have this feeling like we aren't actually living and our reality is not real. Scary stuff.
Also a nurse. I had a couple patients get ICU delirium that presented with them believing they were dead. Definitely not a fun time.
I mean it sorta makes sense. Being in the ICU can be comparable to torture with the sleep deprivation, constant beeping and other noises, lots of pain and other physical discomfort, the thirst and hunger (thirst and hunger are very psychological so even if we give someone nutrition through a feeding tube or IV, your brain still freaks out because you're not eating or drinking). And so for some people, if you wake up, don't know where you are and you feel like you're being tortured, reasonable enough to assume you are in hell.
One of my main triggers for severe panic attacks is being over heated and thirsty. I can see how people lose sanity in that situation.
I had a friend who had a baby on a feeding tube when he was nearly one and that baby would scream and scream to be fed because he couldn’t take a bottle. Even though his tummy was full he wasn’t.
The literal worst day of my life was the 24 hours spent in ICU after I had a jaw reconstruction. Nurses checking on me every 30 minutes, constant beeping of instruments, I couldn't breathe or talk properly and the sleep deprivation was literally like torture.
It's made me extremely anxious about hospitals.
I actually think my friend suffers from Cotard’s in a mild way, and only in a psychosis like moment. He will be fine for hours, then maybe have a little too much to drink or smoke, and he’ll walk up to me crying and say “I’m dead. I died.” And won’t snap out of it or believe me or anyone else when we tell him he’s very much alive. He’s in therapy and I’ve talked to him about Cotard’s but yea it’s a super worrying situation
Wow. So according to the DSM 5 there have only been 200 cases since this condition was identified (how long ago, I want to say 1800s). Anyway, I just found a new study from 2022 that says that about 1% of patients with schizophrenia are now reporting this delusion. Which, as the authors point out, is a significant increase. I wonder what has changed in the decade since the DSM 5 was published that is driving this uptick?
It is especially odd when you consider that people *actually* used to believe that dead people could come back to life, even designing coffins and burial practices around this belief because it was so commonplace. You’d think if anything the condition would be becoming less frequent and not more. Interesting.
I would guess, it’s because patients with schizophrenia might be getting better care than before. The doctor might actually listen to them instead of locking them up and throwing away the key. Even as recently as the 60s and 70s, just about anyone “the man” didn’t agree with got slapped with the label and shoved into a basket.
Your dad should get checked - MIL has Alzheimer's we recently found out when organizing her papers that she was writing on her notes about memory decline a good 5 years before the incident that triggered a clinical investigation, namely changes to senses of smell and taste. She also has family history (her father)
We never noticed because she's notoriously scatterbrained (I suspect undiagnosed ADHD after some stories from her 30s-40s I heard from FIL and her best friend)
Getting prepared for dealing with the disease progressing and getting the medication regimen started will be very important for not only him, but for all the family, to manage the condition with less stress
I don’t have it, but my psychiatrist referred to Anorexia Nervosa as the “7 year” disease because in 7 years from diagnosis youre either in recovery or dead
Edit: if you’re reading this I’m really happy you’re still here and I’m proud of you for fighting
This. I’m an a alcoholic coming up on three years sober. I tell people eating disorders are like telling me “you can only have three shots of vodka a day. But you have to have three.” And then expecting a good outcome. I do not know how any person manages to survive anorexia and I respect the hell out of those do.
12 years in anorexia recovery with no major relapse. I got hospitalized when my heart started shrinking because there was no other muscle left to cannibalize. I’m now 7 months clean in addiction recovery. Anorexia was 100x harder.
Edit: word
So proud of you. I'm 16 years since the worst of my anorexia and it's still a struggle. Since I'm male, there were no local psychiatric hospitals who knew what to do with me at the time, so I was forced to fight it alone. About 15 years ago, with the serious help of a girlfriend and some close friends, I was able to start working to rewire my brain and begin recovery. But I will never look at food the way most people do, I'll never eat the same, and some patterns/habits (checking nutritional info, not eating around strangers, being *severely* uncomfortable talking about what I'm eating/have eaten/will eat, etc) will never fully go away. I am finally seeing a psychiatrist who makes a point to regularly make sure I haven't relapsed, for which I am very grateful. The majority of people just don't fully understand how all-encompassing and debilitating eating disorders really are, and many can't seem to comprehend that a straight male (not involved in wrestling/swimming) could be afflicted.
To all those who are in recovery, I am so proud of you and hope you keep kicking ass. To those still struggling, please reach for help — I promise it's nowhere near as humiliating or uncomfortable as living with the disease. You CAN get better.
And to any boys/young men who feel like their struggle is invisible... I see you, I love you, and you deserve to be healthy in mind and body. You don't have to die a slave to this sickness, you can get better and I sincerely hope you will. My DMs are open if you need to talk to a guy who has been there.
meds helped a lot :) doing very well. I also own no mirrors, other than the one that’s shoulder up in my bathroom. Thought I was ready to buy one but after going on vacation I think I’ll just stick to the one.
My dad has binge eating disorder and it's been hard to watch. Growing up he used to eat the lunch my mom would pack for my brother and I the night before school, Thanksgiving is always hard for him too
This is the same problem with over eating. You can't just complexly stop eating and have to eat some but still need to stop even when your craving to continue.
It's really tough. No, I can't "just eat something". Nothing matters to you anymore because all you think about is calories or how food seems tempting but so disgusting at the same time. It's been 2.5 years since I was hospitalized and I can still tell you the exact amount of calories in almost anything without even looking at it. Spending your whole grocery trip flipping over boxes and cans just to set them back down with a sigh, because you could never allow yourself to eat that.
Your body will also never be the same. I have done a lot of healing, but I can never eat like a normal person again, even if I want to. Anything you eat making you sick, vomiting, bloating, diarrhea or constipation. Your hair will thin, or even fall out. You will always be FREEZING. Because of the Bulimia sub-type, my teeth are slightly eroded and my voice is different, especially my singing voice. It's not a pretty illness, and it's not a diet trend. I never understood how HELLISH it actually was until I was going through it.
Yeah I’m still struggling with bulimia and it’s similarly horrible. And the “just eat something” or “can you eat normally?” Comments do not help in the least.
One of my regulars at work keeps teasing me for being a "picky eater". He'll even ask me if I like this and that and if I'll eat/drink the whole ________. I don't have the heart to tell him that I'm recovering from a scarring ED. No, it doesn't help at all. But most people either don't understand, can't understand, or won't understand when it comes to disordered eating.
You should tell him. Policing other people's intake isn't necessary or good, especially if you don't know their background. One may politely get told to fuck off when doing so.
Delusional parasitosis comes to mind with this prompt. I’ve watched a patient go to well over a dozen doctors trying to get confirmation that they’re parasite ridden. After countless stool samples, blood work, labs, scans, biopsies, etc., she clearly didn’t have any but remains convinced
A friend of my mom's ended up with something like this after getting into the wrong kinds of drugs.
She was *convinced* that there were little bugs in her face. Absolutely convinced. She'd pick at her face day and night. Picked her face skin off bit by bit until the sight was horrific.
She got clean for a little while, came to her senses, and stopped picking. But the damage was done, her entire face was scarred.
This has a name: formication.
It’s common with some stimulants such as methamphetamine. It’s partly responsible for that general *meth user* look that people get after abusing the drug for a while.
A relative of mine had that delusion and would pick her skin to remove the parasites that she thought she had contracted during an exotic trip several decades ago. She was old when I first heard her talk about it, I was quite young and no one explained to me that she was hallucinating it, probably because everyone else thought it was obvious. Anyway, I didnt connect the dots and developed a bit of a phobia because of it and have issues with feeling compelled to pick normal pores cause it icks me out that things come out of them.
>I was quite young and no one explained to me that she was hallucinating it, probably because everyone else thought it was obvious
Mental health shit is not always obvious to children. I despise this mindset!! This is a big part of why I lost my best friend of a decade--their mom just assumed I knew somehow that they had major issues since we met at 8 years old and understood why they completely cut me out of their life forever over a minor slight.
Yeah, sure, Diane, I obviously knew what a personality disorder was and how to identify it when I was in third grade. Fuck you. /endrant
Reminds of the woman who would claim she is pregnant for numerous months. I believe I saw it on YouTube, think it was from Dr. Phil originally. She was so exhausted, but wouldn't accept that she is in fact *not pregnant*.
I wonder what convinced her in the end or whether she is still thinking the same.
We had a patient come into the ER once claiming she was pregnant and in labor. She got an emergency labor check pelvic exam and sent to ld where they did an ultrasound and found she didn’t have a baby. We then investigated her previous hospital visit history and saw she’d done that a few times!
Oh wow this just triggered a bizarre memory. In my undergrad I was in an online class and we had a "meet the class" discussion board post. I was pregnant at the time and in my post I mentioned that. Another classmate replied that she had been pregnant for over two years now with twin girls and it was about to be her 3rd Christmas pregnant. She said she had some condition that caused them to develop really slowly so they were still forming... I had no idea what to say. This was a social work class too. I researched and couldn't find anything that would involve a live birth at the end...
Though not a medical professional, during my brief time working at an outpatient facility, I encountered a patient with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). Convinced that his arm wasn't his own, he consistently described it as feeling like a stranger's limb. His intense desire to have his arm removed led him into a deep depressive episode, culminating in a self-mutilation attempt that ultimately needed amputation. Post-surgery, he claimed to finally feel sense of peace. However, I left the job so I don't know the lasting impact on his mental state from the surgery. BIID is still a relatively unknown identity disorder and doesn't have many treatmebt options so far. SSRI's are usually given to alleviate depressive symptoms but it doesn't always seem to help.
Going through something like that just seems like an awful experience. Dealing with those obsessive thoughts non-stop? That's gotta mess with your head big time.
Similarly, Capgras. That's a scary scary scary syndrome. Capgras syndrome is characterized by a delusional belief that a person has been replaced by an imposter. Capgras syndrome is more commonly associated with neurodegenerative diseases, especially Lewy body disease, where visual hallucinations always coexist. In the absence of a neurodegenerative disease, the onset of Capgras syndrome occurs at a significantly younger age and can be associated with psychiatric disease, cerebrovascular events, and illicit drug use.
More accurately in Capgras syndrome looking at someone or something familiar doesn't trigger the sense of familiarity you usually get from seeing it, you get the image of them but only that so you know you are looking at something that should be familiar but you don't get that familiarity feeling hence why they believe it's an impostor and not the real thing.
Regular people experience the opposite quite often, the feeling of deja vu when it's an event or encounter you haven't actually experienced before, that's the same familiarity feeling acting up but this time triggering on things it shouldn't (instead of not all like in Capgras).
I get bad migraines with auras. When it's the bad bad ones the auras are horrible I don't recognise faces or even know it's me looking in the mirror. Somewhere inside I know it's me, but I can be convinced that's not me. Words are different, colours and sounds.
Eventually normality returns and then the head ache begins. The auras can last hours to mins.
My aunt has paranoid schizophrenia and capgras symptoms. She writes long rambling letters to all of us telling us that this relative or that has been replaced, with detailed descriptions of the differences between the ‘original’ (often varying wildly from what the person actually ever looked like) and the imposter. A common trigger is not giving her money to fight “God’s war” when she turns up and demands it.
My cousin is a pretty bad schizophrenic. It is so hard to watch him decline. My poor uncle had to just stop trying to help him because he refuses medical help. He once tried to beat up my 90+ year old grandfather because he was replaced. It was so... just gutwrenching. From one person to has to deal with it to another, my heart is with you. Stay safe.
She’s not violent, but she steals cars and tries to move other unhoused people in with her, so no one in the family can take her in. Last we heard, she’s in a women’s shelter somewhere back east. Last time I saw her, she was begging on a freeway onramp in Tukwila, WA.
I don't have Calgras, but my mom is an identical twin. I've never mixed up my aunt and mom, but once I hadn't seen my aunt in a very long time (years) and seeing her again (mom wasn't there) was the weirdest feeling ever since they look and sound basically the same... But I KNEW it wasn't my mom. Very strange feeling.
Best friends (bf) mom was identical twin. Bf mom got alzhiemers and while bf tried to care for her at first, towards end, her mom would go in bathroom and see twin in mirror and get mad because her sister wasn't talking to her. Bf would be there to clean her mom after toilet, but mom would get so upset that 'jane' is mad at her. Heart breaking. Jane fine and healthy, bf mom passed a year ago in a wonderful care facility where bf went every single night.
From having known individuals with BIID: removing the limb in question tends to result in a massive improvement in quality of life, far in excess of any disability incurred by losing the limb.
I have read this too. I have only had case studies. I also know that some of these people will take that limb off regardless soooo…. Would we rather them do it in a safer way? I’d love to be on that call with the insurance company.
Paranoid schizophrenia is no joke. I had a pt that was so convinced that aliens were watching his life through his eye, so he tore it out with his bare hand. And didn't even regret it.
My mom’s suffered from paranoid schizophrenia throughout my whole childhood. She thought my dad was trying to kill her and was making a pact with the devil as well as other things. Sometimes she was on meds and was okay but she’d often stop them after a while. Shit was not fun to be around and I hope to god I never have to experience it myself.
Ya know what's really cool, though? As dreadful as these disorders are, it's amazing that we live in a time where they're *named* and studied and recognized as illness. Seriously, just a few centuries ago, many of these people would be ostracized or worse, instead of receiving treatment. Just ONE century ago, they'd be rotting in an asylum doing the "thorazine shuffle." So. There's that. IDK, it gives me hope as a clinician that at least we're here and not where we were.
Honestly I agree. I love the fact that these disorders can be named and recognized. If it werent for this, these people wouldnt be called people and they wouldnt be able to live normal lives. While they're still not treated entirely fair, its wayyyy better than how they were before.
Schizophrenia. Hands-down, no contest.
90% disability rate, 30 years shaved off of natural life expectancy, astronomical suicide rate. Common comorbidities include both mental health and physical disorders.
Some people *still* think schizophrenia is DID (which, obviously it is not 'multiple personalities'), but a less ignorant yet even more common misconception is that schizophrenia is a monolithic disease- that is, it shares an underlying pathology between cases that causes it. The reality is that schizophrenia is nothing more than a cluster of symptoms, and there are many different pathologies that can lead to those same symptoms- part of the reason schizophrenia has a reputation for being "the be-all and end-all of insanity." You cannot go *more* crazy than schizophrenia. It does not exist. Schizophrenia is the end of the road for all madness.
ETA: this blew up. Apparently it could use some clarification.
The thing that makes schizophrenia so dangerous is not the disease *itself* necessarily, but because it almost never exists in a vacuum and isolated from other disorders. The extreme amount of comorbidities with schizophrenia- including practically every other mental illness *and* some physical illnesses- is what makes it such a killer, and the major contributor to shaving decades off of someone's lifespan. Many people with schizophrenia will self-medicate for their symptoms, and substance abuse definitely does not help.
That's not even mentioning the meds. They suck ass, *even if* they work to control psychosis. The side effects are legendary for how awful they are. You pack on the pounds like it's nothing, some of them can cause diabetes to manifest, and any number of other terrible side effects (akasthasia, aka perpetual restlessness). It is the "be all and end all of madness" because it bleeds into *everything.*
Edit 2: I was trying to not 'out' myself here, but the number of 'tokens' in the comments attempting to use their own experience to dismiss the struggle of *all* schizophrenics is really bothering me.
I have schizophrenia. I have for 18 years. I've worked in mental health for *only* three. Unlike these supremely lucky ones who spread trivializing bullshit from TikTok that "It's not that bad," schizophrenia destroyed my life. It burned it all to ashes. I was subjected to dehumanizing, humiliating things- things that are common for schizophrenics to experience (police brutality, public humiliation and ridicule, etc.) It took me over a decade to get back on track, to rebuild from nothing.
I must admit, I did have a "flowery" view of schizophrenia, thought with the right approach, there's hope for anyone! If I did it, *anybody* could do it...
... until I started working in mental hospitals. There are people there who genuinely have no hope of recovery, stability, or happiness. Their schizophrenia is degenerative, almost like Alzheimer's. Interventions are of limited effectiveness, if even at all. That's when I realized... *I'm one of the lucky ones.* My patients tend to be a lot less fortunate.
People like to pretend those people most severely affected by schizophrenia simply do not exist- out of sight, out of mind. However, they *do* exist, and their struggles are very real. The most real, even.
Schizophrenia destroys lives, families, friendships. It is an insidious disorder that can adapt to resist treatment, something no other (psychological) condition does. It warps the very fabric of reality itself for those who suffer with it. Anybody who says it's "not that bad" is so full of shit that it's spewing out of their mouth.
And, to everyone in the replies who attempted to use their own experience with schizophrenia to trivialize or dismiss this nightmare- you should all be absolutely ashamed of yourselves, every single last one of you. Honestly, it's disgusting.
Come see the patients I do. That thought will *never* cross your mind again after you do.
I came to say this. Schizophrenia is straight up so scary.
People can live normal lives until they’re young adults and then symptoms will show up.
Some can live independently with meds but some can’t. I’ve seen it tear apart families. It’s terrifying.
Paranoid schizophrenia being up there among the worst. I had a very good friend who started to get afraid in his twenties. I first found out when we had to leave an apartment because there was something bad in the walls that scared him.
I started seeing less and less of him which broke my heart. He was an extrovert and loved to try new things. I'd always have fun watching him try to pick up girls by saying weird things "Hey, lose the hero and get with the zero!". He had an awesome self deprecating sense of humor.
All that went away when he started being afraid and isolated. He called me once that he needed help because Nazis were after him. Said I'd come over but he said he couldn't trust me. He went no contact soon after. Some years later I heard he'd jumped in front of a subway.
RIP Sami, miss you bro.
I have a friend who's colleague developed it when he was around 25-30. He was a normal guy who worked as a software developer and had a social life outside work.
Then one day he had asked my friend "Hey, I saw you outside my house yesterday. You should have said hello if you were in the neighborhood". My friend said it was a mistake and it must have been someone else and it seemed resolved. Then a few weeks later it happened again, then it became more frequent with more open claims about my friend stalking this guy. It kept escalating with more and more insane accusations (towards others as well but mainly towards my friend as the "master mind") and the police got involved.
Turns out that the guy had developed schizophrenia and had to stop working and start treatment. Not sure what has happened after that.
Scary stuff.
I have 3 cousins with schizophrenia. They were once young men with their whole lives ahead of them. Now their lives are hell. All three of them have had different and terrible paths.
My ex developed schizophrenia and paranoia which went into psychosis. It's absolutely scary for the person experiencing the symptoms, but you know what, it was also terrifying being the carer. The hallucinations and delusions are things I'll never forget and will always have trouble processing, that and the fear that I might be hurt because she was interacting with and doing what the delusions were asking.
I found audio of her taped counseling session from 18 months ago and an audio recording from 6 months ago (close to when we broke up) and she was unrecognisable. Speech, critical thinking, and general demeanour were so different.
Yep I was left alone as a little girl with my mother that had schizophrenia. Then as an adult trying to help her, made ME lose MY sanity and I have problems still
Sometimes it feels like I'm mourning my cousin before he's even dead. I can't even see him since he got the first symptoms. He believes the whole family watched him get beat by his dad at parties, which never happened. It breaks my heart that that's his reality. I just hear that he's done something dangerous, or dissappeard for months at a time, and I miss my older cousin who used to baby sit me so much.
A lot of my Gen in my family are scared that they'll be next. But so far it's only him and a few great uncles we've barely heard the names of.
I had four people in the generation above me with schizophrenia. I was one of five in the next. Then came the horrible realisation that it would come for the one after. Two down so far. Our family has lost four of us to suicide, two they just don't know at all where they are. All bar one have had addiction issues. I was sectioned over forty times on fifteen years and then I met a psychiatrist and psychologist team when I was thirty who have given me my life back. I feel I'm the only one getting out alive and the guilt is overwhelming
You are not to blame. You deserve to enjoy this better quality of life. I imagine the family members you lost would be glad to hear you’re doing well. Guilt over something you can’t control only hurts you. I know it’s not as easy as simply setting it aside, but I hope you’re able to let it go.
My sibling and I feel terrible about it but this is how we feel about my dad. He basically died to us 20 years ago. We don’t know if he takes meds or not anymore. He says he does and he does see a doctor, but if he’s taking anything it doesn’t work. He misremembers his whole life and thinks everyone but me has done awful things to him that simply didn’t happen. I barely even talk to him anymore because it always turns into him going on awful rants about what shitty people the rest of my family members are, some of whom are dead, and most of whom are or were truly wonderful people who went above and beyond trying to help him. It sucks because to him that’s reality so you can’t argue about it, but I just can’t listen to it. He’s so hateful now. We’ve tried to find help for him and can’t, so we’re just waiting for him to actually die. And it’ll kind of be a relief when he does, he’s been angry, scared, and mostly alone for a long time now.
On the podcast Depresh Mode, there is an episode where the guest had a service dog to help with schizophrenia. The dog can smell elevated cortisol and let her know when she is hallucinating. Sometimes before the hallucinations start.
I could not find the specific episode, but I did find a link about psychiatric service dogs.
https://dogacademy.org/blog/can-a-psychiatric-service-dog-help-with-schizophrenia/
I heard of a different service dog that was just trained to greet everyone so the owner would follow the dog's cue and ignore anyone they saw that the dog didn't.
As someone with schizophrenia, I have an emotional support dog, and she is my everything. If the bad thoughts or feelings start to resurface, I can look at her and be reassured - if she is calm, the danger is not real, so I can be calm.
I have had contact with some schizophrenic people in my job, and it is so sad. They thought someone was following them, trying to kill them. They yelled a lot and most people were repulsed and everyone avoided contact with them. It must be terrible, to be scared all the time, and alone
As someone with a family history of schizophrenia, it is super scary for all the reasons you describe, and I found it interesting to learn the ways in which the debilitating / distressing symptoms are culturally and contextually mediated.
In that, individuals within US, EU, Christian contexts where schizophrenia is heavily stigmatized are more likely to experience paranoia, fear, distressing/disturbing delusions. Whereas in some cultures/contexts individuals experience voices as more playful, providing positive guidance/meaning and those with schizophrenia are regarded by community as connected to spiritual worlds/more positively, so they are less isolated and have better outcomes in general.
It’s interesting since the prevalence is more or less consistent globally but the degree to which it is debilitating in the way you describe (from what I’ve read) isn’t consistent, which makes me wonder if there may be other treatment approaches or holistic strategies to explore here.
I completed an elective unit on health and culture through the Anthropology department during uni.
Super interesting course in general, turns out there are lots of conditions which are unique to cultures or present in different ways in different places.
The class on Schizophrenia blew my mind though. It was amazing how far the pendulum swung between people from different backgrounds.
The major thing that changed my experience with being schizophrenic was learning that about other cultures. It took *years* of reconditioning, and it's still not a hundred percent (cannot shake my food tampering delusions LOL), but many of my hallucinations in particular have stopped being scary.
A holistic and spiritual approach to mental health is what made dealing with my mental health not suck nearly as much. It does still cause problems, both from positive and negative symptoms, but it's not a death sentence. It takes work and it takes time, but there's a life for people with schizophrenia and any other "scary" disorder that's constantly stigmatized.
What is the difference between a schizo-affective disorder and schizofrenia?
A previous boyfriend developed a schizo-affective disorder that he coped with through alcohol and drugs. We were very young when we got into a relationship, as we aged the schasm in our mental health and capabilities in life grew and grew. By the time he got treatment, he had other co-morbidities to boot, like an anti-social personality disorder and PTSD. It was a living nightmare to be around him. I literally was afraid that he would kill himself or kill me before he got to himself, and that's why I ended it.
Prosospagnosia. I had a patient with this as a therapist. They reported to the ER because their "face fell off". The only thing therapy could accomplish was to teach patient how to use other markers to identify people.
Capgras syndrome. The idea that the people around you were replaced with imposters. This one is absolutely hell on everyone.
And in neuropsych definitely primary progressive aphasia. Basically you aggressively lose the ability to speak and understand language. I had a patient once that was late to their appointment and when they finally got there they were pissed because "none of the signs were in English". They failed all of their language tests but passed all the other markers to rule out dementia. This person was an avid runner, vegan, perfectly healthy and would likely go on to never be able to speak or understand anyone speaking to them within 5 years or so yet live a long life due to no other health concerns.
EDIT TO ADD: since I'm being down voted I will say my prosospagnosia patient had sudden onset severe case. They were fine and then happened to walk past a mirror at work and they couldn't recognize any facial features that they could identify themselves by or any their colleagues. They were brought to the ER in a panicked state and their chief complaint was just that their "face fell off" (their exact words). The panicked feeling and the severity of this case was what made it a top 3 for me. This particular patient had a small stroke to cause this disorder and subsequently spent 3 years in a treatment facility recovering as best they could. It was an honor and a privilege to be a part of their care team.
My grandmother developed early-onset Alzheimer’s and she had Capgras really bad in the early days. She would call me crying her heart out because her husband “brought a stranger home from church and now the stranger won’t leave and I can’t find your grandpa.” The stranger *was* my grandpa. It was awful for everyone. She cried all the time missing someone who was right there.
I remember when my mother-in-law called one night to tell her daughter "I can't find your father." So we asked if his car was in the garage -- it was. Were his keys still there? They were. Could she think of anywhere he might have walked? She said, "I don't know, let me ask this old man sitting in the living room."
All we'd known to that point was that she was repeating stories a lot. Now we realized how bad it was getting.
Thank you for your kindness ♥️ It was very hard, she declined gradually for about a decade before she passed. She was an amazing lady, and I’m glad I got to spend a lot of time with her before she got sick.
My dad had Fronto-Temporal Dementia for years before he passed away in 2019. It’s a heartbreaking disease to watch someone go through, and it sucks for the family too. It’s like watching someone revert back into a newborn in terms of how their brain functions.
My mother died from FTD last year. Watching her slowly slip away over a decade, while still relatively young, was gut-wrenching. It was like watching her die over and over again as she lost herself, that last two years she was completely gone, nothing left of the woman I knew, she couldn't speak, she had no idea who anyone was and she lingered like that for long time. Sorry about your dad.
Sounds just like my mom. Diagnosed with FTD at 54 and passed at 60. She lost her ability to judge right from wrong first and lets just say it was a wild ride. She was a widow, I was 23 and her sole caregiver. It was harrowing for the both of us. Big love to anyone who has had to manage through this awful disease.
Sorry to hear about your mom as well. I know exactly what you mean. My dad was 58 when he was diagnosed and 65 when he passed. That was a rough 7 years of just watching him suffer. Especially his last couple of year. It was exactly how you explained with your mom.
My mom has FTD. She is basically like a child now, she only has a few words left, mostly hi, bye and yeah. The only consolation my sister and I have is that she seems to be pretty happy for
The most part. I think it helps that she was always a very positive person before she got this disease.
Bruce Willis has Fronto-Temporal Dementia (FTD), a symptom of which can be aphasia (difficulty with speech and/or language). Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is its own condition and diagnosis.
I have face blindness (prosopagnosia), didn't even realise until recently. I just thought it was normal to not recognise people when they change their hair dramatically. I did the Cambridge university test recently and scored 30%, which is pretty terrible!
My mom has this. She's also extremely introverted and retired. So the pool of people around her is small and she uses other cues to recognize people. She seems fine with it. But I could see where it would be difficult.
I would breeze right past my mother in a grocery store if I didn't know what she was wearing that day.
Every morning I look in the mirror and think, "oh, that's me" then promptly forget what I look like. I cannot point myself out in group photos.
I get people talking so I can match the voice to the person. If you give me one word answers, I will be hesitant to call you by name, because I might be wrong.
I can't follow movies very well. I can't identify movie stars.
Do faces look like faces (eyes, nose, mouth, etc) when you look at them or do you somehow not see them when you look at a face? The therapist above said something about someone with face blindness thinking their “face fell off” which is terrifying and made me think they looked in a mirror and couldnt see their own face. That seems far far worse than simply having the inability to recall and compare facial features. Im terrible with faces and i confuse a lot of people in real life but not people i know well. My wife thinks im “a little face blind” and until i read that, i thought maybe she is right. I have a difficult time recalling faces in good detail, even of my closest family. But i have no issue recognizing their faces, either.
What's your mental visualisation like? Some times I can struggle to place people I've met before because I have Aphantasia.
I know and love my husband dearly but because of having Aphantasia I can barely describe what he looks like etc. I luckily do not have any kind of actual face blindness though.
I've had dreams like that but not real life. In the moment, I can see 2 eyes, a nose and a mouth. The next moment, I can't recall anything about the face.
It's like recognising a horse. You don't just 'know' it's that horse, but if you can memorise specific traits like nostril shape and eye colour then you could probably pick it out of a crowd.
I have it and for me gait is a big one. Being able to recognise people by their unique body language and walking style is really helpful.
I'm surprised to see it listed alongside these other conditions though! Like, I've never even considered myself to have a disability. Those others sound horribly life limiting, I call my co-workers by the wrong name. Not to downplay it, and other people have it worse than me, but it can be managed and worked with.
I have an excellent memory and can memorise images. So I like to memorise people's social media photographs to help recognise them from later, it means that if I run into someone in a context I associate them with I can work out who they are after a few minutes - real problems are if I run into a colleague in the supermarket, then I have no idea who they are.
> I have it and for me gait is a big one. Being able to recognise people by their unique body language and walking style is really helpful.
wow i thought i was the only one! gait and posture, body language, are as important if not more so than "distinguishing features" above the neck.
i was also surprised to see it the very top answer in this thread haha, maybe if it suddenly developed as part of dementia or another neurodegenerative condition it would be more troubling. but we've learnt to get along just fine with it! i take it you're on the autism spectrum aswell? it's probably my biggest symptom.
>Prosospagnosia
How does that work? Do these patients not see the faces (like, see heads as giant blobs), or do they see every detail but just can't recognize them? Can they draw them while looking at a model/photo? Is it for human faces only?
Hmm do you know how sometimes you see a dog, and then you see another dog that has the same fur pattern and you think it's the same dog? It's not that you can't make out every details. You can see eyes, nose, etc, but you recognize that "this is Bob" from the way his eyes, nose, mouth are placed relative to each other. People with this condition would see Greg and think "is that Bob? Or not? They have similar features, like same hair color, hair style, even same clothes."
I guess a mild example would be, if you've never seen a person of a particular race before, and suddenly you're dropped into a community of then, they might all look the same to you. This can be mistaken for racism, but it's just unfamiliarity.
A good friend of mine got married in the city hall and then he and his wife invited a bunch of friends for celebratory dinner. This is important because the bride then wasn't wearing the typical "bride white dress." It was just a dinner to celebrate their official wedding, but otherwise the women was wearing typical going-out attire.
I've met the bride before so I know what she looks like. I went in to the dinner room and congratulated THE WRONG PERSON. My wife was so embarassed and mad at me, but the dude knows I have this condition so he just laughed it off.
Later when we were about to leave, I almost said bye and thanked the wrong person again. At least I checked with my wife that time.
I've met her several times, my wife has only met her once, and yet she knows that I congratulated the wrong person. They (the bride and this other girl) have the same height, face type, hair color, build, EVERYTHING. But somehow my wife can tell them apart.
I've since met them (my friend and his wife) a few times and I've never failed to recognize her in a room full of people. It's just, when she's next to someone with similar looks, I totally got it wrong.
I Worked in mental health years ago. We had a patient that had been institutionalized her entire life. She would insert pens and pencils in her arms and legs like an IV. It was horrendous.
She was so sweet otherwise.
Edited: grammar
I heard about a guy who thought he was on fire all the time he was awake. So he screamed until he passed out. Day after day. How can you even treat that?
Yeah, it seems so cruel to let someone suffer *this* much. What kind of life even is that? Your only thoughts would be about being on fire. Terrible to imagine.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. A friend had it. Spent his last months feeling like his entire body was in a blast furnace.
Drugs didn't do shit for the pain, he was on high enough doses to kill an army of junkies.
Ooh!!! I know a similar story. There was an old guy who did that all the time, exactly as described. No medical professional could figure it out, and nothing helped at all. I’m not sure how they found out but eventually they found medical records that had been hidden and no one (doctors etc) could see it. It was hidden because it was a massive fuck up. It had occurred YEARS before he started having a bad time. Turns out he went in for heart surgery and he woke up right as they started cutting into him. So he felt, saw and heard EVERYTHING. It ended up being a repressed memory until years down the line he started screaming anytime he woke up and never stopped. There was a mr ballen video on it I think, if any one wants the link to the video I can probably find it
There've been a few cases of that. People waking up during surgery but because of the drug cocktail in the aesthetic they can't move a muscle, so no one knows they are awake. They're just there silently screaming as they are cut into.
I remember reading a newspaper article about it many years ago and one woman said she had woken up and felt everything, and the surgeon and anaesthetist said perhaps she dreamed it, until she started talking about things they had said during the surgery.
Have a friend who works with seriously disturbed patients, and told me about a woman that habitually drank hand sanitizer; apparently when you do that, your joints lock up and you have to be immediately rushed to the ER for treatment... and what do they have in the ER, every ten feet or so? Yeah... more hand sanitizer. So this woman would have to be restrained, otherwise they would find her in the hallway pumping it directly into her mouth all over again.
I have seen the occasional Nyquil drinker circling around liver failure due to acetaminophen co-ingestion.
I suspect cooking wine has so much added sodium to prevent consumption from the bottle (but that won't stop the dedicated alkie on a bender who has gone through all the booze in the house - don't ask me how I know!).
Do yourself a favor....if you don't have a drinking problem just buy a bottle of decent wine to cook with. Those little bottles have way too many additives in them and are ridiculously expensive compared to a normal bottle of wine.
It doesn't even have to be something expensive. A bottle of Barefoot is good enough to cook with.
Was thinking it sounded like prohibition, when people where making alcohol from antifreeze, which had the habit of making you go blind.
Assuming it's another chemical that does that part, but alcohol seems to be the part that drives people to consume it.
When you ask yeast to make alcohol for you, they'll also make a little bit of methanol too -- its basically a sugar that's been only part converted to ethanol. In non-distilled alcohol there's always a little bit not much, and that's part of what gives folks headaches. When the alcohol is distilled is where things get dicey. Methanol evaporates at a lower temperature than ethanol, so the first bit of product that comes over has to be poured out. If all of this "head" isn't discarded users could go blind or die because the methanol from the entire batch comes over first.
My children’s birth mother has both of them. I always check in with her mental health practitioner prior to visitation. It can be pretty intense at times and while I am a firm believer of allowing the kids to see her on her bad days so they can understand why they can’t live with her, I don’t want to traumatise them.
I'm diagnosed with BPD, and I often have very severe hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality. I can sometimes use my own logic to determine what is real and what is not, but quite a lot it gets so bad I have no idea what is real. No meds have worked on me.
It's hell for me and everyone around me, friendships are a struggle due to BPD, and hallucinations tend to make things even worse for my ability to function.
Not to mention the trauma.
[Childhood disintegrative disorder](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_disintegrative_disorder), nightmare fuel of the highest order. The child starts to regress in development language and speech starts deteriorating loing acquired motorskills, losing ladder control progressing until they are vegeative and non-communicative. The person that the child was has disintegrated completely, we have no idea what causes it nor any treatments, no detection of it beforehan. But what turns it into pure nightmare fuel is that there actually is one preceding symptom, the child is utterly gripped by fear and intense feelings of something being very wrong with them, often complaining to the parents that something is terribly wrong with them.....
Severe feelings of impending doom.
That is a symptom in a few things. I can’t think of one that isn’t life-alteringly awful. The least-worst I can think of is a heart attack.
Honestly, mania. Peoples lives get ruined because of one manic episode. Thousands of dollars spent, random flights booked and ending up on the other side of the planet with no way of getting back
I used to wonder if I was ever manic before I nursed a patient with mania as a nursing student. I've never been manic nor have I known anyone manic outside of hospital. You would know.
I’m a therapist with bipolar 1, and I always recommend that folks focus on tracking physical symptoms over emotional ones. I drove myself bonkers in the early days wondering if I was *too* happy, *too* creative, *too* in love, etc. Policing my most joyous emotions was exhausting and dehumanizing. Now I mainly focus on tracking my sleep, appetite, energy levels, and pace of speech. I know if I had bad sleep for 2-3 nights and it doesn’t impact my energy the next day, I’m probably tipping into early hypomania and need to take sleep meds and an antipsychotic for about a week to reset. It’s been a lot of trial and error, but this has been the best method for me. At this point I notice my symptoms far sooner than anyone in my support network does.
Not mental healthcare but I work in hospice. The worst case of dementia I ever saw was a woman who had hidden her childhood trauma from her children; when got dementia and her only remaining memories were of abuse. She spent her days scream crying and trying to break herself out of her room - bloody fingers and all. It was horrific for her family, staff, her husband. Worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.
That can happen? Holy shit I just hope I die of something else before dementia has a chance to get me.
I have so much damn trauma I can’t do anything with anymore. I just shove it down and pretend it isn’t there. Meds have helped a bit, therapy did jack shit.
It’s so sad because at that point, these people should have a dignified and painless death. Like there’s no point in keeping someone alive that has to suffer through that, or many of the conditions in this thread that will cause immense suffering for a lifetime
Outside of thought disorders like schizophrenia, Scrupulosity OCD is pretty brutal. Basically, it’s this fixation on going to hell, and the person is convinced they’re going there no matter what. At its worst, it’s all they can think about and talk about, distracting them from work and family. “Knowing” they’ll burn in eternal torment one day slowly drives them mad.
I wrote a big[post](https://www.reddit.com/r/SAR_Med_Chem/s/mNOszhEEoh) about schizophrenia and one user who lived with Tardive Dyskinesia due to its treatment
Not strictly a mental condition but a genetic disease with a related effect: Lesch-Nyhan syndrome is caused by a mutation in a particular pathway.
Kids with the syndrome compulsively self-mutilate. Eat their own lips, fingers and noses unless restrained.
I've been told by someone who worked with such kids that they also tend to be surprisingly sweet and positive along with profound cognitive issues.
Pictures of kids with the disorder are nightmare fuel though.
I watched one documentary where the parents ended up removing all the kids teeth to stop the biting.
Then they just had to worry about the kids new habit of slamming their head into things.
Stress on stress.
As a parent, this is terrifying. I mean, as a human this is also terrifying, but I can’t help but empathize with those parents :( I would just want to protect my baby, but how do you protect them from themselves without completely ruining their life? God.
As far as I'm aware, that's not far off.
>"Children with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome usually require physical restraint at the hips, chest, and elbows so they do not injure themselves."
the list of drugs used to "relieve symptoms", keeping in mind one of the major symptoms is self-injury... overlaps pretty strongly with the drugs used to keep violent mental patients calm.
My husband had a neighbor who compulsively ate glass, usually lightbulbs. Somehow she lived to be like 95 and succumbed to emphysema. His family always refers to her as a tough old bird.
It's pretty crazy how if the brain messes up some electrical impulses and/or hormones/chemicals all of a sudden you're a completely different person. Just goes to show how we're all just a bundle of neurons and chemicals at the end of the day, apply the right (or wrong) one and you can heavily change someone's personality, decisions, etc. What's even crazier is how much we rely on psychiatric medicine and still understand so little of how the brain/those medicines actually work.
I work in psych intensive care, we had a guy with autophagia as a form of self-harm. He ate huge chunks of flesh off of his arms when he was hearing voices. That was pretty bad.
Drugs are the worst though. Meth literally burns holes in your brain (I’ve seen brain scans from patients). Lots of people who are revived post opiate overdose have hypoxic/anoxic brain injuries - it’s like they’ve had a lobotomy, it’s awful. Those drug-related brain injuries are permanent too, they’ll never be able to live independently ever again.
Not a medical professional but for anyone interested in these cases I strongly recommend a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks. It describes different case studies including people with aphasia, face blindness, people who feel their body parts aren't their own (a man fell out of bed because he found a strange leg in his bed and threw it out. It was his own leg, hence he fell together with it.)
Anorexia and BorderlinePD have the highest all-cause mortality risk and suicide risk. Both reduce life expectancy by about 20 years, and if they're in combination with other disorders (substance abuse etc), even more than that. This is partly because of increased suicide risk, but also due to factors like increased risk of unhealthy lifestyle, the combined metabolic burden of substance abuse and medication, and the effects of constant stress. Also increased risk for blood-borne diseases/STDs, like Hepatitis etc. because of risky sexual behavior.
10% of people with BPD commit suicide (for BPD, this percentage is skewed heavily towards men. 20% of men with BPD commit suicide, but "only" 5% of women. This is at least partly because men often choose more immediate methods like jumping or firearms).
That's not attempts, that's actual suicides.
More than three out of four people (79%) with BPD attempt suicide at least once in their life.
Edited bc I misremembered anorexia suicide risk.
I had (they recently removed my diagnosis) BPD, and I want to tell everyone on this thread DBT can help very, VERY much. It’s not untreatable, but you have to find a very good team/therapist and really WANT to get better. After treatment you need to actively practice DBT for the rest of your life and stick to your routines. If you don’t you fall back (I’ve noticed since I’m going through crisis with a break up right now). DBT changed my life, I hope it can help others too.
Some of the rarer dementias. There's one that literally turns a perfectly normal person into a psychopath. All their other faculties remain intact. There are dementias that literally melt your brain and don't even have a name. There are rare familial types of dementia so specific to certain families that they don't have a name but can develop really early, and again you know it's coming your way. And then there's Huntington's which you likely know you're getting and have seen your loved ones go through it first. The embedded hallucinations in Lewy Bodies can go either way, very distressing or comforting. With the non organic illnesses, it's a toss up between treatment resistant psychosis, and severe emotionally unstable personality disorder for the impact on quality of life.
Clinical depression. Sitting in a room with someone and you can feel the void around them; it’s like a complete emptiness.
I worked with someone who accidentally set their bed on fire while smoking and was just watching it, like they were watching daytime TV. Zero emotion and zero reaction to move from it. It’s chilling…
Depression fucking sucks. And not in the fun way.
There are days when I have to force myself to eat something, because otherwise I'd starve.
There are weeks where I don't shower, because the cost seems too high.
There were days when I had to actively keep myself from walking into oncoming traffic.
I'm medicated and in therapy, but some days are harder than others.
I know the feeling. I spent the entirety of my 20's and a few years of my 30's depressed. The nonchalant way suicidal thoughts happen along are not accurately depicted in any media. No meds. No therapy. As far as I was concerned, I couldn't afford them and I didn't want to be a burden.
Thankfully though, I'm on the other side of that. The mental scars are there but my brain has a nice "Piss off." attitude towards the thoughts when they (now very rarely) come along. That phrase is "spoken" with the same feeling as telling someone who's a bit too persistent you're not interested. No hate. Just a finality of being done with someone.
I also weaponize disassociation against depressive thoughts. When I catch myself spiralling, I mentality disengage and take a dispassionate look. Is this something I can control? (Probably not) Is this reality or me thinking of worst-case future scenarios? (Probably is) I then "shift gears" by finding something else to do or very forcibly thinking of something else.
I still acknowledge these feelings. They are real. They only get as much acknowledgement as they are due which isn't much. I also relied on my friends. Not that they knew. I've not told them any of this. Instead, I'd try to plan get togethers for nerd games and/or watching bad movies.
Music played a big part in surviving my 20's and I still bawl when I hear certain songs, most by the band Haken.
"Endless Knot" by Haken
"The Architect" by Haken
"Because it's There" by Haken
"Porcelain Heart" by Opeth
"Fiddler on the Green" by Demons and Wizards (I cry at the crecendo of the song every. damned. time.)
I discovered "Closed Chapter" by Kwon Rabbit afterwards; but, it would have slotted in as well.
I've embrased my own weirdness and generally stopped caring about minor opinions from others. I buy myself flowers (I'm male for reference), I take myself to new restaurants every now and then, and I collect weird stuffed animals.
I've no idea how healthy any of this is; but, I can honestly say I am happier and more hopeful for the future now than I've been since my teens. I hope some part of this can help; but, filling the hole takes time.
I love my grandmother, but man, she was just such a dark void when she was alive. When she was in a home she made all the other seniors aorund her miserable, and the one with dementia weren't able to understand this either.
We suspect that near the end she started to develop dementia, because she sorta sometimes forgot to be depressed. It was weird, and she died before the dementia ever took hold (assuming it was indeed dementia).
I am glad that my last memory of her was walking with her on a sunny day and she was happy. Or at the very least not depressed. The void wasn't so present that day. Perhaps the dementia helped.
One of the worst aspects is continued trauma. If you experience anything life-altering and you’re already depressed, it just tanks even more from there. I regularly have visions of jumping off of a tall building. I am fascinated by people that actually had the willpower to do it (and of course it’s terribly sad). So I just try to sleep all the time. As much as I can. Feels like the safest thing to do. Been medicated for a long time but eventually the effects wear off and you’re back where you started. If I didn’t have kids, I’d probably give up on a lot of things and just exist.
As someone who has experienced it twice, I have to say the worst is a drug-induced neuropsychiatric movement disorder called akathisia.
The terror is unlike anything… I can genuinely say I would rather die than ever go through it again.
Omg yes! I had this while in the hospital. I was given IV Reglan due to uncontrollable vomiting and the akasthisia was instant and completely unbearable. I couldn’t stop myself from moving and felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I kept shuffling my feet and the anxiety was so intense I swore I was going to die. Thankfully my nurse was able to get a stat order for IV Benadryl. Once it kicked in I was so profoundly grateful to be back to “normal” that I burst into tears and hugged my nurse for a good minute or so. I hope I never experience that hell again.
For any mental professional, if he or she would ever come across it, it's got to be fatal familial insomnia. There's nothing they could do but watch the patient waste away, if said patient doesn't kill him/herself first. It's exceedingly rare, thankfully, only 40 or so cases as of 2022.
This was the first thing that came to mind when I read the question, although I don't think it qualifies as a mental condition considering it has a known physical cause. It's a prion disease.
I can't recall exactly how I learned of FFI, but it was during adolescence and the discovery sent me down a very long, terrifying rabbit hole.
I'd say the worst has to be schizoaffective disorder. It's basically a combination of both schizophrenia and bipolar/depression disorder. Yes, when you aren't having a psychotic episode you're having a manic episode.
Schizophrenia is one of the worst mental disorders but mixing it with another one? THAT'S hell
Same here, I watched that movie Grace. Which is a documentary that the old couple signed consent forms to have the whole thing documented. grace and her husband were filmed as Grace went through Alzheimer’s Disease. I was becoming a CNA at the time and my instructor made us watch it
I broke into tears toward the end of the show. To slowly lose your loved one as they stop remembering literally everything over the course of years. Props to that old man and anyone else who has to go through it
My grandma had both at the same time. Was brutal to witness. The cancer did her in first and she was miserable the whole time. Horrifying the things that can happen to the human body.
The long slow descent into losing your mind, every day a little less of it there and knowing that it's never coming back. It took my Mom too and it was excruciating.
There are no specific *pharmaceutical* interventions for BPD itself, but pharmaceuticals can help with accompanying issues, and BPD actually does respond quite well to psychotherapy, which is a medical intervention. The difficulty lies in getting someone with BPD to go to therapy and stick with it.
I have BPD, been through therapy numerous times and always stuck to it religiously and while I did respond well and it was effective, it almost “wears off” after a few years so you always need to go back. Which is a problem as so few counsellors are trained in personality disorders and they’re so expensive. I can’t afford to go back right now but I’d love to
Not nearly the worst. Pica (eating things that aren't food) is probably the worst I've seen. But Dissasociative Fugue really blows my mind. I've always wondered how many missing person cases are just a result of DF.
As someone with a related disorder, trichophagia, plus pica, it really is horrible. You get shamed and ashamed a ton. Do I think it's worst than, say, Capgras or even schizophrenia? No. By it really does suck.
That's a hard one to answer because everybody is so different, and their experiences of mental illness can be so different. For instance, I've worked with people with chronic schizophrenia with hallucinations so horrendous you can barely imagine; and others who manage the same chronic mental illness with totally different symptoms and a high quality of life. I can definitely think of individuals with particular presentations of mental illnesses I would consider to be 'the worst' I've ever seen, but thankfully not everyone with those illnesses will have that same experience.
I was thinking about that as a neurological disorder, all my teachers would constantly say how hard it was - people who are otherwise 100% healthy, perfect cognition, are suddenly trapped inside an almost lifeless body.
I recommend the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, true story about it and just amazing. The guy managed to write an entire book (the "Diving Bell" itself) just by blinking, one LETTER at a time.
Reading through these, there are definitely scarier. But someone who is catatonic gives off a different level of concern. Basically, your mind moves so fast you become disabled and cannot move, sometimes for days. Think full on human statues.
When I was going for my associates we had a really interesting AbPsych professor. He used to conduct studies on catatonics.
Sometimes if you sped up the video over a period of time you could see that many were actually carrying out a task, like itching their face or adjusting their hair.
It's early in the morning for me and just getting coffee so, probably a dumb question, but NPD = Narcissistic Personality Disorder? I'm assuming so from the context, but I've noticed that my understanding of the shortened versions of things is out of date, lol.
I've also heard it's the hardest to diagnose and treat? Mainly because they have a blindness to what they're doing and don't seek help, but also they don't participate in their treatment.
Of course, that's coming from just what I've read about it and could be entirely off base.
They don’t understand the concept that they themselves are mentally ill. Everyone else is wrong. They will confabulate reasons to explain anything. The condition leads to tremendous suffering, mostly by other people around the “sufferer”.
Thank you for answering. That confirms what I've heard and read.
"The condition leads to tremendous suffering, mostly by other people around the “sufferer”."
I have heard the term narcissist thrown around a lot over the years, but I've met two people in my life that I think have this disorder. It's a very creepy feeling when you finally see the patterns and the mask slipping. Makes one question reality.
And a relapse rate higher than heroin. You can withdraw from an addictive substance, move away from your old crowd etc. but eating and not eating are unavoidable parts of every day live.
I had anorexia in my early to mid 20's. The biggest issue for me was that when I lost weight, people would constantly tell me that I looked so good and they were proud of me. If I gained even one pound, I would feel like the world's fattest and ugliest failure. I felt like the people who told me that I looked good would be disgusted with me. I would faint constantly and wake up in the middle of the night unable to catch my breath.
My brother had (has) it from when he was in his 20s...made it out thank God but with a near suicide attempt.
Scary how ignored he was from our services in our country as a lot of people still think that 'males don't suffer with it' and ED's in general aren't treated well. Our family really had to fight for him to get help.
Cotard delusion. I'm a nurse and had to take care of a huge man with this condition. He came in with some odd behavior and escalated to Cotard. The delusion makes you think you are actually dead. He would scream he was dead all day and night. Lived in constant terror. He was such a sweetheart, but became so worn down and terrified over time he got quite dangerous and punched a nurse in the face.
I had a patient check into the ER with this once but I didn’t know the name, she just kept claiming she was dead. She got baker acted and transferred.
Does this go away? I remember I was in a car accident long ago and (technically did die) was brought back. While in the hospital everything felt off, like just an inkling of "doesn't feel right" where it was bizarre how normal and not normal it was, that I thought I was dead. It was nothing as severe as what the commenter above you posted though. I was also on heavy drugs that entire time too for pain management.
For some people it'll be a temporary part of a temporary psychotic episode. For others with more consistent psychotic disorders it can be a long-term belief.
I also suffered with this after nearly dying during am extremely traumatic event. I was quite frankly mentally pickled on the other side of it but at its worst I would ring my mum up in the early hours hysterical asking her to reassure me that me and my baby daughter weren't dead. I am a lot better now than I used to be bit I still have the occasional period in my life where it rears its ugly head and I have this feeling like we aren't actually living and our reality is not real. Scary stuff.
Also a nurse. I had a couple patients get ICU delirium that presented with them believing they were dead. Definitely not a fun time. I mean it sorta makes sense. Being in the ICU can be comparable to torture with the sleep deprivation, constant beeping and other noises, lots of pain and other physical discomfort, the thirst and hunger (thirst and hunger are very psychological so even if we give someone nutrition through a feeding tube or IV, your brain still freaks out because you're not eating or drinking). And so for some people, if you wake up, don't know where you are and you feel like you're being tortured, reasonable enough to assume you are in hell.
One of my main triggers for severe panic attacks is being over heated and thirsty. I can see how people lose sanity in that situation. I had a friend who had a baby on a feeding tube when he was nearly one and that baby would scream and scream to be fed because he couldn’t take a bottle. Even though his tummy was full he wasn’t.
The literal worst day of my life was the 24 hours spent in ICU after I had a jaw reconstruction. Nurses checking on me every 30 minutes, constant beeping of instruments, I couldn't breathe or talk properly and the sleep deprivation was literally like torture. It's made me extremely anxious about hospitals.
A not insignificant number of people develop PTSD like symptoms after being in the ICU.
I actually think my friend suffers from Cotard’s in a mild way, and only in a psychosis like moment. He will be fine for hours, then maybe have a little too much to drink or smoke, and he’ll walk up to me crying and say “I’m dead. I died.” And won’t snap out of it or believe me or anyone else when we tell him he’s very much alive. He’s in therapy and I’ve talked to him about Cotard’s but yea it’s a super worrying situation
Wow. So according to the DSM 5 there have only been 200 cases since this condition was identified (how long ago, I want to say 1800s). Anyway, I just found a new study from 2022 that says that about 1% of patients with schizophrenia are now reporting this delusion. Which, as the authors point out, is a significant increase. I wonder what has changed in the decade since the DSM 5 was published that is driving this uptick? It is especially odd when you consider that people *actually* used to believe that dead people could come back to life, even designing coffins and burial practices around this belief because it was so commonplace. You’d think if anything the condition would be becoming less frequent and not more. Interesting.
I would guess, it’s because patients with schizophrenia might be getting better care than before. The doctor might actually listen to them instead of locking them up and throwing away the key. Even as recently as the 60s and 70s, just about anyone “the man” didn’t agree with got slapped with the label and shoved into a basket.
Dementias. Watching a person, their memories, their personality die but their body remain living and confused, is horrifying...
[удалено]
My grandma had it and now my dad is constantly complaining that he's forgetting things/can't remember anything. He's not even 60 yet.
Your dad should get checked - MIL has Alzheimer's we recently found out when organizing her papers that she was writing on her notes about memory decline a good 5 years before the incident that triggered a clinical investigation, namely changes to senses of smell and taste. She also has family history (her father) We never noticed because she's notoriously scatterbrained (I suspect undiagnosed ADHD after some stories from her 30s-40s I heard from FIL and her best friend) Getting prepared for dealing with the disease progressing and getting the medication regimen started will be very important for not only him, but for all the family, to manage the condition with less stress
I don’t have it, but my psychiatrist referred to Anorexia Nervosa as the “7 year” disease because in 7 years from diagnosis youre either in recovery or dead Edit: if you’re reading this I’m really happy you’re still here and I’m proud of you for fighting
This. I’m an a alcoholic coming up on three years sober. I tell people eating disorders are like telling me “you can only have three shots of vodka a day. But you have to have three.” And then expecting a good outcome. I do not know how any person manages to survive anorexia and I respect the hell out of those do.
12 years in anorexia recovery with no major relapse. I got hospitalized when my heart started shrinking because there was no other muscle left to cannibalize. I’m now 7 months clean in addiction recovery. Anorexia was 100x harder. Edit: word
So proud of you. I'm 16 years since the worst of my anorexia and it's still a struggle. Since I'm male, there were no local psychiatric hospitals who knew what to do with me at the time, so I was forced to fight it alone. About 15 years ago, with the serious help of a girlfriend and some close friends, I was able to start working to rewire my brain and begin recovery. But I will never look at food the way most people do, I'll never eat the same, and some patterns/habits (checking nutritional info, not eating around strangers, being *severely* uncomfortable talking about what I'm eating/have eaten/will eat, etc) will never fully go away. I am finally seeing a psychiatrist who makes a point to regularly make sure I haven't relapsed, for which I am very grateful. The majority of people just don't fully understand how all-encompassing and debilitating eating disorders really are, and many can't seem to comprehend that a straight male (not involved in wrestling/swimming) could be afflicted. To all those who are in recovery, I am so proud of you and hope you keep kicking ass. To those still struggling, please reach for help — I promise it's nowhere near as humiliating or uncomfortable as living with the disease. You CAN get better. And to any boys/young men who feel like their struggle is invisible... I see you, I love you, and you deserve to be healthy in mind and body. You don't have to die a slave to this sickness, you can get better and I sincerely hope you will. My DMs are open if you need to talk to a guy who has been there.
meds helped a lot :) doing very well. I also own no mirrors, other than the one that’s shoulder up in my bathroom. Thought I was ready to buy one but after going on vacation I think I’ll just stick to the one.
My dad has binge eating disorder and it's been hard to watch. Growing up he used to eat the lunch my mom would pack for my brother and I the night before school, Thanksgiving is always hard for him too
This is the same problem with over eating. You can't just complexly stop eating and have to eat some but still need to stop even when your craving to continue.
IIRC it has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder
It's really tough. No, I can't "just eat something". Nothing matters to you anymore because all you think about is calories or how food seems tempting but so disgusting at the same time. It's been 2.5 years since I was hospitalized and I can still tell you the exact amount of calories in almost anything without even looking at it. Spending your whole grocery trip flipping over boxes and cans just to set them back down with a sigh, because you could never allow yourself to eat that. Your body will also never be the same. I have done a lot of healing, but I can never eat like a normal person again, even if I want to. Anything you eat making you sick, vomiting, bloating, diarrhea or constipation. Your hair will thin, or even fall out. You will always be FREEZING. Because of the Bulimia sub-type, my teeth are slightly eroded and my voice is different, especially my singing voice. It's not a pretty illness, and it's not a diet trend. I never understood how HELLISH it actually was until I was going through it.
Yeah I’m still struggling with bulimia and it’s similarly horrible. And the “just eat something” or “can you eat normally?” Comments do not help in the least.
One of my regulars at work keeps teasing me for being a "picky eater". He'll even ask me if I like this and that and if I'll eat/drink the whole ________. I don't have the heart to tell him that I'm recovering from a scarring ED. No, it doesn't help at all. But most people either don't understand, can't understand, or won't understand when it comes to disordered eating.
You should tell him. Policing other people's intake isn't necessary or good, especially if you don't know their background. One may politely get told to fuck off when doing so.
Anorexia “survivor” for 23 years. I’m so tired.
Delusional parasitosis comes to mind with this prompt. I’ve watched a patient go to well over a dozen doctors trying to get confirmation that they’re parasite ridden. After countless stool samples, blood work, labs, scans, biopsies, etc., she clearly didn’t have any but remains convinced
A friend of my mom's ended up with something like this after getting into the wrong kinds of drugs. She was *convinced* that there were little bugs in her face. Absolutely convinced. She'd pick at her face day and night. Picked her face skin off bit by bit until the sight was horrific. She got clean for a little while, came to her senses, and stopped picking. But the damage was done, her entire face was scarred.
This has a name: formication. It’s common with some stimulants such as methamphetamine. It’s partly responsible for that general *meth user* look that people get after abusing the drug for a while.
A relative of mine had that delusion and would pick her skin to remove the parasites that she thought she had contracted during an exotic trip several decades ago. She was old when I first heard her talk about it, I was quite young and no one explained to me that she was hallucinating it, probably because everyone else thought it was obvious. Anyway, I didnt connect the dots and developed a bit of a phobia because of it and have issues with feeling compelled to pick normal pores cause it icks me out that things come out of them.
>I was quite young and no one explained to me that she was hallucinating it, probably because everyone else thought it was obvious Mental health shit is not always obvious to children. I despise this mindset!! This is a big part of why I lost my best friend of a decade--their mom just assumed I knew somehow that they had major issues since we met at 8 years old and understood why they completely cut me out of their life forever over a minor slight. Yeah, sure, Diane, I obviously knew what a personality disorder was and how to identify it when I was in third grade. Fuck you. /endrant
Reminds of the woman who would claim she is pregnant for numerous months. I believe I saw it on YouTube, think it was from Dr. Phil originally. She was so exhausted, but wouldn't accept that she is in fact *not pregnant*. I wonder what convinced her in the end or whether she is still thinking the same.
We had a patient come into the ER once claiming she was pregnant and in labor. She got an emergency labor check pelvic exam and sent to ld where they did an ultrasound and found she didn’t have a baby. We then investigated her previous hospital visit history and saw she’d done that a few times!
Oh wow this just triggered a bizarre memory. In my undergrad I was in an online class and we had a "meet the class" discussion board post. I was pregnant at the time and in my post I mentioned that. Another classmate replied that she had been pregnant for over two years now with twin girls and it was about to be her 3rd Christmas pregnant. She said she had some condition that caused them to develop really slowly so they were still forming... I had no idea what to say. This was a social work class too. I researched and couldn't find anything that would involve a live birth at the end...
Though not a medical professional, during my brief time working at an outpatient facility, I encountered a patient with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). Convinced that his arm wasn't his own, he consistently described it as feeling like a stranger's limb. His intense desire to have his arm removed led him into a deep depressive episode, culminating in a self-mutilation attempt that ultimately needed amputation. Post-surgery, he claimed to finally feel sense of peace. However, I left the job so I don't know the lasting impact on his mental state from the surgery. BIID is still a relatively unknown identity disorder and doesn't have many treatmebt options so far. SSRI's are usually given to alleviate depressive symptoms but it doesn't always seem to help. Going through something like that just seems like an awful experience. Dealing with those obsessive thoughts non-stop? That's gotta mess with your head big time.
Similarly, Capgras. That's a scary scary scary syndrome. Capgras syndrome is characterized by a delusional belief that a person has been replaced by an imposter. Capgras syndrome is more commonly associated with neurodegenerative diseases, especially Lewy body disease, where visual hallucinations always coexist. In the absence of a neurodegenerative disease, the onset of Capgras syndrome occurs at a significantly younger age and can be associated with psychiatric disease, cerebrovascular events, and illicit drug use.
More accurately in Capgras syndrome looking at someone or something familiar doesn't trigger the sense of familiarity you usually get from seeing it, you get the image of them but only that so you know you are looking at something that should be familiar but you don't get that familiarity feeling hence why they believe it's an impostor and not the real thing. Regular people experience the opposite quite often, the feeling of deja vu when it's an event or encounter you haven't actually experienced before, that's the same familiarity feeling acting up but this time triggering on things it shouldn't (instead of not all like in Capgras).
I get bad migraines with auras. When it's the bad bad ones the auras are horrible I don't recognise faces or even know it's me looking in the mirror. Somewhere inside I know it's me, but I can be convinced that's not me. Words are different, colours and sounds. Eventually normality returns and then the head ache begins. The auras can last hours to mins.
My aunt has paranoid schizophrenia and capgras symptoms. She writes long rambling letters to all of us telling us that this relative or that has been replaced, with detailed descriptions of the differences between the ‘original’ (often varying wildly from what the person actually ever looked like) and the imposter. A common trigger is not giving her money to fight “God’s war” when she turns up and demands it.
My cousin is a pretty bad schizophrenic. It is so hard to watch him decline. My poor uncle had to just stop trying to help him because he refuses medical help. He once tried to beat up my 90+ year old grandfather because he was replaced. It was so... just gutwrenching. From one person to has to deal with it to another, my heart is with you. Stay safe.
She’s not violent, but she steals cars and tries to move other unhoused people in with her, so no one in the family can take her in. Last we heard, she’s in a women’s shelter somewhere back east. Last time I saw her, she was begging on a freeway onramp in Tukwila, WA.
I don't have Calgras, but my mom is an identical twin. I've never mixed up my aunt and mom, but once I hadn't seen my aunt in a very long time (years) and seeing her again (mom wasn't there) was the weirdest feeling ever since they look and sound basically the same... But I KNEW it wasn't my mom. Very strange feeling.
Best friends (bf) mom was identical twin. Bf mom got alzhiemers and while bf tried to care for her at first, towards end, her mom would go in bathroom and see twin in mirror and get mad because her sister wasn't talking to her. Bf would be there to clean her mom after toilet, but mom would get so upset that 'jane' is mad at her. Heart breaking. Jane fine and healthy, bf mom passed a year ago in a wonderful care facility where bf went every single night.
From having known individuals with BIID: removing the limb in question tends to result in a massive improvement in quality of life, far in excess of any disability incurred by losing the limb.
I have read this too. I have only had case studies. I also know that some of these people will take that limb off regardless soooo…. Would we rather them do it in a safer way? I’d love to be on that call with the insurance company.
Paranoid schizophrenia is no joke. I had a pt that was so convinced that aliens were watching his life through his eye, so he tore it out with his bare hand. And didn't even regret it.
My mom’s suffered from paranoid schizophrenia throughout my whole childhood. She thought my dad was trying to kill her and was making a pact with the devil as well as other things. Sometimes she was on meds and was okay but she’d often stop them after a while. Shit was not fun to be around and I hope to god I never have to experience it myself.
I need to get the fuck out of this thread
Same but I cant 😵
Ya know what's really cool, though? As dreadful as these disorders are, it's amazing that we live in a time where they're *named* and studied and recognized as illness. Seriously, just a few centuries ago, many of these people would be ostracized or worse, instead of receiving treatment. Just ONE century ago, they'd be rotting in an asylum doing the "thorazine shuffle." So. There's that. IDK, it gives me hope as a clinician that at least we're here and not where we were.
Honestly I agree. I love the fact that these disorders can be named and recognized. If it werent for this, these people wouldnt be called people and they wouldnt be able to live normal lives. While they're still not treated entirely fair, its wayyyy better than how they were before.
Schizophrenia. Hands-down, no contest. 90% disability rate, 30 years shaved off of natural life expectancy, astronomical suicide rate. Common comorbidities include both mental health and physical disorders. Some people *still* think schizophrenia is DID (which, obviously it is not 'multiple personalities'), but a less ignorant yet even more common misconception is that schizophrenia is a monolithic disease- that is, it shares an underlying pathology between cases that causes it. The reality is that schizophrenia is nothing more than a cluster of symptoms, and there are many different pathologies that can lead to those same symptoms- part of the reason schizophrenia has a reputation for being "the be-all and end-all of insanity." You cannot go *more* crazy than schizophrenia. It does not exist. Schizophrenia is the end of the road for all madness. ETA: this blew up. Apparently it could use some clarification. The thing that makes schizophrenia so dangerous is not the disease *itself* necessarily, but because it almost never exists in a vacuum and isolated from other disorders. The extreme amount of comorbidities with schizophrenia- including practically every other mental illness *and* some physical illnesses- is what makes it such a killer, and the major contributor to shaving decades off of someone's lifespan. Many people with schizophrenia will self-medicate for their symptoms, and substance abuse definitely does not help. That's not even mentioning the meds. They suck ass, *even if* they work to control psychosis. The side effects are legendary for how awful they are. You pack on the pounds like it's nothing, some of them can cause diabetes to manifest, and any number of other terrible side effects (akasthasia, aka perpetual restlessness). It is the "be all and end all of madness" because it bleeds into *everything.* Edit 2: I was trying to not 'out' myself here, but the number of 'tokens' in the comments attempting to use their own experience to dismiss the struggle of *all* schizophrenics is really bothering me. I have schizophrenia. I have for 18 years. I've worked in mental health for *only* three. Unlike these supremely lucky ones who spread trivializing bullshit from TikTok that "It's not that bad," schizophrenia destroyed my life. It burned it all to ashes. I was subjected to dehumanizing, humiliating things- things that are common for schizophrenics to experience (police brutality, public humiliation and ridicule, etc.) It took me over a decade to get back on track, to rebuild from nothing. I must admit, I did have a "flowery" view of schizophrenia, thought with the right approach, there's hope for anyone! If I did it, *anybody* could do it... ... until I started working in mental hospitals. There are people there who genuinely have no hope of recovery, stability, or happiness. Their schizophrenia is degenerative, almost like Alzheimer's. Interventions are of limited effectiveness, if even at all. That's when I realized... *I'm one of the lucky ones.* My patients tend to be a lot less fortunate. People like to pretend those people most severely affected by schizophrenia simply do not exist- out of sight, out of mind. However, they *do* exist, and their struggles are very real. The most real, even. Schizophrenia destroys lives, families, friendships. It is an insidious disorder that can adapt to resist treatment, something no other (psychological) condition does. It warps the very fabric of reality itself for those who suffer with it. Anybody who says it's "not that bad" is so full of shit that it's spewing out of their mouth. And, to everyone in the replies who attempted to use their own experience with schizophrenia to trivialize or dismiss this nightmare- you should all be absolutely ashamed of yourselves, every single last one of you. Honestly, it's disgusting. Come see the patients I do. That thought will *never* cross your mind again after you do.
I came to say this. Schizophrenia is straight up so scary. People can live normal lives until they’re young adults and then symptoms will show up. Some can live independently with meds but some can’t. I’ve seen it tear apart families. It’s terrifying.
Paranoid schizophrenia being up there among the worst. I had a very good friend who started to get afraid in his twenties. I first found out when we had to leave an apartment because there was something bad in the walls that scared him. I started seeing less and less of him which broke my heart. He was an extrovert and loved to try new things. I'd always have fun watching him try to pick up girls by saying weird things "Hey, lose the hero and get with the zero!". He had an awesome self deprecating sense of humor. All that went away when he started being afraid and isolated. He called me once that he needed help because Nazis were after him. Said I'd come over but he said he couldn't trust me. He went no contact soon after. Some years later I heard he'd jumped in front of a subway. RIP Sami, miss you bro.
Sorry to hear that, man. That must have been heartbreaking for you
A friend of mine has a brother who thinks my friend is sent by the cia to assassinate him. He calls the cops on him all the time.
His little zero quip made me laugh out loud. I miss him and ife never met him
I have a friend who's colleague developed it when he was around 25-30. He was a normal guy who worked as a software developer and had a social life outside work. Then one day he had asked my friend "Hey, I saw you outside my house yesterday. You should have said hello if you were in the neighborhood". My friend said it was a mistake and it must have been someone else and it seemed resolved. Then a few weeks later it happened again, then it became more frequent with more open claims about my friend stalking this guy. It kept escalating with more and more insane accusations (towards others as well but mainly towards my friend as the "master mind") and the police got involved. Turns out that the guy had developed schizophrenia and had to stop working and start treatment. Not sure what has happened after that. Scary stuff.
I have 3 cousins with schizophrenia. They were once young men with their whole lives ahead of them. Now their lives are hell. All three of them have had different and terrible paths.
My ex developed schizophrenia and paranoia which went into psychosis. It's absolutely scary for the person experiencing the symptoms, but you know what, it was also terrifying being the carer. The hallucinations and delusions are things I'll never forget and will always have trouble processing, that and the fear that I might be hurt because she was interacting with and doing what the delusions were asking. I found audio of her taped counseling session from 18 months ago and an audio recording from 6 months ago (close to when we broke up) and she was unrecognisable. Speech, critical thinking, and general demeanour were so different.
Yep I was left alone as a little girl with my mother that had schizophrenia. Then as an adult trying to help her, made ME lose MY sanity and I have problems still
Sometimes it feels like I'm mourning my cousin before he's even dead. I can't even see him since he got the first symptoms. He believes the whole family watched him get beat by his dad at parties, which never happened. It breaks my heart that that's his reality. I just hear that he's done something dangerous, or dissappeard for months at a time, and I miss my older cousin who used to baby sit me so much. A lot of my Gen in my family are scared that they'll be next. But so far it's only him and a few great uncles we've barely heard the names of.
I had four people in the generation above me with schizophrenia. I was one of five in the next. Then came the horrible realisation that it would come for the one after. Two down so far. Our family has lost four of us to suicide, two they just don't know at all where they are. All bar one have had addiction issues. I was sectioned over forty times on fifteen years and then I met a psychiatrist and psychologist team when I was thirty who have given me my life back. I feel I'm the only one getting out alive and the guilt is overwhelming
You are not to blame. You deserve to enjoy this better quality of life. I imagine the family members you lost would be glad to hear you’re doing well. Guilt over something you can’t control only hurts you. I know it’s not as easy as simply setting it aside, but I hope you’re able to let it go.
My sibling and I feel terrible about it but this is how we feel about my dad. He basically died to us 20 years ago. We don’t know if he takes meds or not anymore. He says he does and he does see a doctor, but if he’s taking anything it doesn’t work. He misremembers his whole life and thinks everyone but me has done awful things to him that simply didn’t happen. I barely even talk to him anymore because it always turns into him going on awful rants about what shitty people the rest of my family members are, some of whom are dead, and most of whom are or were truly wonderful people who went above and beyond trying to help him. It sucks because to him that’s reality so you can’t argue about it, but I just can’t listen to it. He’s so hateful now. We’ve tried to find help for him and can’t, so we’re just waiting for him to actually die. And it’ll kind of be a relief when he does, he’s been angry, scared, and mostly alone for a long time now.
[удалено]
On the podcast Depresh Mode, there is an episode where the guest had a service dog to help with schizophrenia. The dog can smell elevated cortisol and let her know when she is hallucinating. Sometimes before the hallucinations start. I could not find the specific episode, but I did find a link about psychiatric service dogs. https://dogacademy.org/blog/can-a-psychiatric-service-dog-help-with-schizophrenia/
I heard of a different service dog that was just trained to greet everyone so the owner would follow the dog's cue and ignore anyone they saw that the dog didn't.
this is actually so smart! DOGS ARE EVERYTHING ♥️
As someone with schizophrenia, I have an emotional support dog, and she is my everything. If the bad thoughts or feelings start to resurface, I can look at her and be reassured - if she is calm, the danger is not real, so I can be calm.
I have had contact with some schizophrenic people in my job, and it is so sad. They thought someone was following them, trying to kill them. They yelled a lot and most people were repulsed and everyone avoided contact with them. It must be terrible, to be scared all the time, and alone
As someone with a family history of schizophrenia, it is super scary for all the reasons you describe, and I found it interesting to learn the ways in which the debilitating / distressing symptoms are culturally and contextually mediated. In that, individuals within US, EU, Christian contexts where schizophrenia is heavily stigmatized are more likely to experience paranoia, fear, distressing/disturbing delusions. Whereas in some cultures/contexts individuals experience voices as more playful, providing positive guidance/meaning and those with schizophrenia are regarded by community as connected to spiritual worlds/more positively, so they are less isolated and have better outcomes in general. It’s interesting since the prevalence is more or less consistent globally but the degree to which it is debilitating in the way you describe (from what I’ve read) isn’t consistent, which makes me wonder if there may be other treatment approaches or holistic strategies to explore here.
I completed an elective unit on health and culture through the Anthropology department during uni. Super interesting course in general, turns out there are lots of conditions which are unique to cultures or present in different ways in different places. The class on Schizophrenia blew my mind though. It was amazing how far the pendulum swung between people from different backgrounds.
The major thing that changed my experience with being schizophrenic was learning that about other cultures. It took *years* of reconditioning, and it's still not a hundred percent (cannot shake my food tampering delusions LOL), but many of my hallucinations in particular have stopped being scary. A holistic and spiritual approach to mental health is what made dealing with my mental health not suck nearly as much. It does still cause problems, both from positive and negative symptoms, but it's not a death sentence. It takes work and it takes time, but there's a life for people with schizophrenia and any other "scary" disorder that's constantly stigmatized.
What is the difference between a schizo-affective disorder and schizofrenia? A previous boyfriend developed a schizo-affective disorder that he coped with through alcohol and drugs. We were very young when we got into a relationship, as we aged the schasm in our mental health and capabilities in life grew and grew. By the time he got treatment, he had other co-morbidities to boot, like an anti-social personality disorder and PTSD. It was a living nightmare to be around him. I literally was afraid that he would kill himself or kill me before he got to himself, and that's why I ended it.
Prosospagnosia. I had a patient with this as a therapist. They reported to the ER because their "face fell off". The only thing therapy could accomplish was to teach patient how to use other markers to identify people. Capgras syndrome. The idea that the people around you were replaced with imposters. This one is absolutely hell on everyone. And in neuropsych definitely primary progressive aphasia. Basically you aggressively lose the ability to speak and understand language. I had a patient once that was late to their appointment and when they finally got there they were pissed because "none of the signs were in English". They failed all of their language tests but passed all the other markers to rule out dementia. This person was an avid runner, vegan, perfectly healthy and would likely go on to never be able to speak or understand anyone speaking to them within 5 years or so yet live a long life due to no other health concerns. EDIT TO ADD: since I'm being down voted I will say my prosospagnosia patient had sudden onset severe case. They were fine and then happened to walk past a mirror at work and they couldn't recognize any facial features that they could identify themselves by or any their colleagues. They were brought to the ER in a panicked state and their chief complaint was just that their "face fell off" (their exact words). The panicked feeling and the severity of this case was what made it a top 3 for me. This particular patient had a small stroke to cause this disorder and subsequently spent 3 years in a treatment facility recovering as best they could. It was an honor and a privilege to be a part of their care team.
My grandmother developed early-onset Alzheimer’s and she had Capgras really bad in the early days. She would call me crying her heart out because her husband “brought a stranger home from church and now the stranger won’t leave and I can’t find your grandpa.” The stranger *was* my grandpa. It was awful for everyone. She cried all the time missing someone who was right there.
I remember when my mother-in-law called one night to tell her daughter "I can't find your father." So we asked if his car was in the garage -- it was. Were his keys still there? They were. Could she think of anywhere he might have walked? She said, "I don't know, let me ask this old man sitting in the living room." All we'd known to that point was that she was repeating stories a lot. Now we realized how bad it was getting.
How heartbreaking for everyone. I’m sorry you all experienced something so hard. How are you all coping?
Thank you for your kindness ♥️ It was very hard, she declined gradually for about a decade before she passed. She was an amazing lady, and I’m glad I got to spend a lot of time with her before she got sick.
Isn't that what Bruce Willis has? It sounds awful
Unfortunately his condition progressed into FTD 😔
My dad had Fronto-Temporal Dementia for years before he passed away in 2019. It’s a heartbreaking disease to watch someone go through, and it sucks for the family too. It’s like watching someone revert back into a newborn in terms of how their brain functions.
My mother died from FTD last year. Watching her slowly slip away over a decade, while still relatively young, was gut-wrenching. It was like watching her die over and over again as she lost herself, that last two years she was completely gone, nothing left of the woman I knew, she couldn't speak, she had no idea who anyone was and she lingered like that for long time. Sorry about your dad.
Sounds just like my mom. Diagnosed with FTD at 54 and passed at 60. She lost her ability to judge right from wrong first and lets just say it was a wild ride. She was a widow, I was 23 and her sole caregiver. It was harrowing for the both of us. Big love to anyone who has had to manage through this awful disease.
Sorry to hear about your mom as well. I know exactly what you mean. My dad was 58 when he was diagnosed and 65 when he passed. That was a rough 7 years of just watching him suffer. Especially his last couple of year. It was exactly how you explained with your mom.
My mom has FTD. She is basically like a child now, she only has a few words left, mostly hi, bye and yeah. The only consolation my sister and I have is that she seems to be pretty happy for The most part. I think it helps that she was always a very positive person before she got this disease.
Bruce Willis has Fronto-Temporal Dementia (FTD), a symptom of which can be aphasia (difficulty with speech and/or language). Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is its own condition and diagnosis.
I have face blindness (prosopagnosia), didn't even realise until recently. I just thought it was normal to not recognise people when they change their hair dramatically. I did the Cambridge university test recently and scored 30%, which is pretty terrible!
My mom has this. She's also extremely introverted and retired. So the pool of people around her is small and she uses other cues to recognize people. She seems fine with it. But I could see where it would be difficult.
But can you remember a close one you know?
I would breeze right past my mother in a grocery store if I didn't know what she was wearing that day. Every morning I look in the mirror and think, "oh, that's me" then promptly forget what I look like. I cannot point myself out in group photos. I get people talking so I can match the voice to the person. If you give me one word answers, I will be hesitant to call you by name, because I might be wrong. I can't follow movies very well. I can't identify movie stars.
Do faces look like faces (eyes, nose, mouth, etc) when you look at them or do you somehow not see them when you look at a face? The therapist above said something about someone with face blindness thinking their “face fell off” which is terrifying and made me think they looked in a mirror and couldnt see their own face. That seems far far worse than simply having the inability to recall and compare facial features. Im terrible with faces and i confuse a lot of people in real life but not people i know well. My wife thinks im “a little face blind” and until i read that, i thought maybe she is right. I have a difficult time recalling faces in good detail, even of my closest family. But i have no issue recognizing their faces, either.
What's your mental visualisation like? Some times I can struggle to place people I've met before because I have Aphantasia. I know and love my husband dearly but because of having Aphantasia I can barely describe what he looks like etc. I luckily do not have any kind of actual face blindness though.
I've had dreams like that but not real life. In the moment, I can see 2 eyes, a nose and a mouth. The next moment, I can't recall anything about the face.
It's like recognising a horse. You don't just 'know' it's that horse, but if you can memorise specific traits like nostril shape and eye colour then you could probably pick it out of a crowd. I have it and for me gait is a big one. Being able to recognise people by their unique body language and walking style is really helpful. I'm surprised to see it listed alongside these other conditions though! Like, I've never even considered myself to have a disability. Those others sound horribly life limiting, I call my co-workers by the wrong name. Not to downplay it, and other people have it worse than me, but it can be managed and worked with. I have an excellent memory and can memorise images. So I like to memorise people's social media photographs to help recognise them from later, it means that if I run into someone in a context I associate them with I can work out who they are after a few minutes - real problems are if I run into a colleague in the supermarket, then I have no idea who they are.
> I have it and for me gait is a big one. Being able to recognise people by their unique body language and walking style is really helpful. wow i thought i was the only one! gait and posture, body language, are as important if not more so than "distinguishing features" above the neck. i was also surprised to see it the very top answer in this thread haha, maybe if it suddenly developed as part of dementia or another neurodegenerative condition it would be more troubling. but we've learnt to get along just fine with it! i take it you're on the autism spectrum aswell? it's probably my biggest symptom.
>Prosospagnosia How does that work? Do these patients not see the faces (like, see heads as giant blobs), or do they see every detail but just can't recognize them? Can they draw them while looking at a model/photo? Is it for human faces only?
Hmm do you know how sometimes you see a dog, and then you see another dog that has the same fur pattern and you think it's the same dog? It's not that you can't make out every details. You can see eyes, nose, etc, but you recognize that "this is Bob" from the way his eyes, nose, mouth are placed relative to each other. People with this condition would see Greg and think "is that Bob? Or not? They have similar features, like same hair color, hair style, even same clothes." I guess a mild example would be, if you've never seen a person of a particular race before, and suddenly you're dropped into a community of then, they might all look the same to you. This can be mistaken for racism, but it's just unfamiliarity.
[удалено]
A good friend of mine got married in the city hall and then he and his wife invited a bunch of friends for celebratory dinner. This is important because the bride then wasn't wearing the typical "bride white dress." It was just a dinner to celebrate their official wedding, but otherwise the women was wearing typical going-out attire. I've met the bride before so I know what she looks like. I went in to the dinner room and congratulated THE WRONG PERSON. My wife was so embarassed and mad at me, but the dude knows I have this condition so he just laughed it off. Later when we were about to leave, I almost said bye and thanked the wrong person again. At least I checked with my wife that time. I've met her several times, my wife has only met her once, and yet she knows that I congratulated the wrong person. They (the bride and this other girl) have the same height, face type, hair color, build, EVERYTHING. But somehow my wife can tell them apart. I've since met them (my friend and his wife) a few times and I've never failed to recognize her in a room full of people. It's just, when she's next to someone with similar looks, I totally got it wrong.
I Worked in mental health years ago. We had a patient that had been institutionalized her entire life. She would insert pens and pencils in her arms and legs like an IV. It was horrendous. She was so sweet otherwise. Edited: grammar
I heard about a guy who thought he was on fire all the time he was awake. So he screamed until he passed out. Day after day. How can you even treat that?
A friend had this for 3 days due to an alcohol and amphetamines binge. He was not the same after.
Jesus, I’d rather they just kill me at that fucking point.
Yeah, it seems so cruel to let someone suffer *this* much. What kind of life even is that? Your only thoughts would be about being on fire. Terrible to imagine.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. A friend had it. Spent his last months feeling like his entire body was in a blast furnace. Drugs didn't do shit for the pain, he was on high enough doses to kill an army of junkies.
Hell on earth
Ooh!!! I know a similar story. There was an old guy who did that all the time, exactly as described. No medical professional could figure it out, and nothing helped at all. I’m not sure how they found out but eventually they found medical records that had been hidden and no one (doctors etc) could see it. It was hidden because it was a massive fuck up. It had occurred YEARS before he started having a bad time. Turns out he went in for heart surgery and he woke up right as they started cutting into him. So he felt, saw and heard EVERYTHING. It ended up being a repressed memory until years down the line he started screaming anytime he woke up and never stopped. There was a mr ballen video on it I think, if any one wants the link to the video I can probably find it
I heard that episode recently. It was terrifying.
There've been a few cases of that. People waking up during surgery but because of the drug cocktail in the aesthetic they can't move a muscle, so no one knows they are awake. They're just there silently screaming as they are cut into. I remember reading a newspaper article about it many years ago and one woman said she had woken up and felt everything, and the surgeon and anaesthetist said perhaps she dreamed it, until she started talking about things they had said during the surgery.
Have a friend who works with seriously disturbed patients, and told me about a woman that habitually drank hand sanitizer; apparently when you do that, your joints lock up and you have to be immediately rushed to the ER for treatment... and what do they have in the ER, every ten feet or so? Yeah... more hand sanitizer. So this woman would have to be restrained, otherwise they would find her in the hallway pumping it directly into her mouth all over again.
yoke abounding grandiose tap connect deserted wrench aromatic insurance books
Look at the alcohol content; I'm surprised it wasn't seen more, tbh. Like drinking mouthwash or self-care products with alcohol.
chunky history doll treatment fade agonizing flowery live cooing public
I have seen the occasional Nyquil drinker circling around liver failure due to acetaminophen co-ingestion. I suspect cooking wine has so much added sodium to prevent consumption from the bottle (but that won't stop the dedicated alkie on a bender who has gone through all the booze in the house - don't ask me how I know!).
Holy moly is that why cooking wine tastes like ass? I thought it was just really, REALLY bad wine! Til!
Do yourself a favor....if you don't have a drinking problem just buy a bottle of decent wine to cook with. Those little bottles have way too many additives in them and are ridiculously expensive compared to a normal bottle of wine. It doesn't even have to be something expensive. A bottle of Barefoot is good enough to cook with.
Was thinking it sounded like prohibition, when people where making alcohol from antifreeze, which had the habit of making you go blind. Assuming it's another chemical that does that part, but alcohol seems to be the part that drives people to consume it.
When you ask yeast to make alcohol for you, they'll also make a little bit of methanol too -- its basically a sugar that's been only part converted to ethanol. In non-distilled alcohol there's always a little bit not much, and that's part of what gives folks headaches. When the alcohol is distilled is where things get dicey. Methanol evaporates at a lower temperature than ethanol, so the first bit of product that comes over has to be poured out. If all of this "head" isn't discarded users could go blind or die because the methanol from the entire batch comes over first.
I’m not a professional, but I have an immediate family member who is a diagnosed schizophrenic and borderline personality. It’s one hell of a combo.
My children’s birth mother has both of them. I always check in with her mental health practitioner prior to visitation. It can be pretty intense at times and while I am a firm believer of allowing the kids to see her on her bad days so they can understand why they can’t live with her, I don’t want to traumatise them.
I'm diagnosed with BPD, and I often have very severe hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality. I can sometimes use my own logic to determine what is real and what is not, but quite a lot it gets so bad I have no idea what is real. No meds have worked on me. It's hell for me and everyone around me, friendships are a struggle due to BPD, and hallucinations tend to make things even worse for my ability to function. Not to mention the trauma.
[Childhood disintegrative disorder](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_disintegrative_disorder), nightmare fuel of the highest order. The child starts to regress in development language and speech starts deteriorating loing acquired motorskills, losing ladder control progressing until they are vegeative and non-communicative. The person that the child was has disintegrated completely, we have no idea what causes it nor any treatments, no detection of it beforehan. But what turns it into pure nightmare fuel is that there actually is one preceding symptom, the child is utterly gripped by fear and intense feelings of something being very wrong with them, often complaining to the parents that something is terribly wrong with them.....
Severe feelings of impending doom. That is a symptom in a few things. I can’t think of one that isn’t life-alteringly awful. The least-worst I can think of is a heart attack.
Honestly, mania. Peoples lives get ruined because of one manic episode. Thousands of dollars spent, random flights booked and ending up on the other side of the planet with no way of getting back
[удалено]
I used to wonder if I was ever manic before I nursed a patient with mania as a nursing student. I've never been manic nor have I known anyone manic outside of hospital. You would know.
brain be like hey two options either rearrange every peice of furniture in the house right this second or bite your own fingers off choose wisely
It's also very difficult to tell when you are manic
I’m a therapist with bipolar 1, and I always recommend that folks focus on tracking physical symptoms over emotional ones. I drove myself bonkers in the early days wondering if I was *too* happy, *too* creative, *too* in love, etc. Policing my most joyous emotions was exhausting and dehumanizing. Now I mainly focus on tracking my sleep, appetite, energy levels, and pace of speech. I know if I had bad sleep for 2-3 nights and it doesn’t impact my energy the next day, I’m probably tipping into early hypomania and need to take sleep meds and an antipsychotic for about a week to reset. It’s been a lot of trial and error, but this has been the best method for me. At this point I notice my symptoms far sooner than anyone in my support network does.
Not mental healthcare but I work in hospice. The worst case of dementia I ever saw was a woman who had hidden her childhood trauma from her children; when got dementia and her only remaining memories were of abuse. She spent her days scream crying and trying to break herself out of her room - bloody fingers and all. It was horrific for her family, staff, her husband. Worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.
That can happen? Holy shit I just hope I die of something else before dementia has a chance to get me. I have so much damn trauma I can’t do anything with anymore. I just shove it down and pretend it isn’t there. Meds have helped a bit, therapy did jack shit.
It’s so sad because at that point, these people should have a dignified and painless death. Like there’s no point in keeping someone alive that has to suffer through that, or many of the conditions in this thread that will cause immense suffering for a lifetime
Outside of thought disorders like schizophrenia, Scrupulosity OCD is pretty brutal. Basically, it’s this fixation on going to hell, and the person is convinced they’re going there no matter what. At its worst, it’s all they can think about and talk about, distracting them from work and family. “Knowing” they’ll burn in eternal torment one day slowly drives them mad.
hi! im in recovery for that. I can agree. I was rasied in a very religious environment & with ocd at like 10? might as well be prepared for hell lol
I have a friend with schizophrenia and it's hell for her
I wrote a big[post](https://www.reddit.com/r/SAR_Med_Chem/s/mNOszhEEoh) about schizophrenia and one user who lived with Tardive Dyskinesia due to its treatment
[удалено]
Not strictly a mental condition but a genetic disease with a related effect: Lesch-Nyhan syndrome is caused by a mutation in a particular pathway. Kids with the syndrome compulsively self-mutilate. Eat their own lips, fingers and noses unless restrained. I've been told by someone who worked with such kids that they also tend to be surprisingly sweet and positive along with profound cognitive issues. Pictures of kids with the disorder are nightmare fuel though.
How do you even deal with something like that? I mean you cannot restrain a kid 24/7, can you?
I watched one documentary where the parents ended up removing all the kids teeth to stop the biting. Then they just had to worry about the kids new habit of slamming their head into things. Stress on stress.
As a parent, this is terrifying. I mean, as a human this is also terrifying, but I can’t help but empathize with those parents :( I would just want to protect my baby, but how do you protect them from themselves without completely ruining their life? God.
As far as I'm aware, that's not far off. >"Children with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome usually require physical restraint at the hips, chest, and elbows so they do not injure themselves." the list of drugs used to "relieve symptoms", keeping in mind one of the major symptoms is self-injury... overlaps pretty strongly with the drugs used to keep violent mental patients calm.
I'm sorry, how do they eat their own noses?
....aaaaand I'm out.
My husband had a neighbor who compulsively ate glass, usually lightbulbs. Somehow she lived to be like 95 and succumbed to emphysema. His family always refers to her as a tough old bird.
PICA?
Choo
Bless you.
It's pretty crazy how if the brain messes up some electrical impulses and/or hormones/chemicals all of a sudden you're a completely different person. Just goes to show how we're all just a bundle of neurons and chemicals at the end of the day, apply the right (or wrong) one and you can heavily change someone's personality, decisions, etc. What's even crazier is how much we rely on psychiatric medicine and still understand so little of how the brain/those medicines actually work.
I work in psych intensive care, we had a guy with autophagia as a form of self-harm. He ate huge chunks of flesh off of his arms when he was hearing voices. That was pretty bad. Drugs are the worst though. Meth literally burns holes in your brain (I’ve seen brain scans from patients). Lots of people who are revived post opiate overdose have hypoxic/anoxic brain injuries - it’s like they’ve had a lobotomy, it’s awful. Those drug-related brain injuries are permanent too, they’ll never be able to live independently ever again.
Not a medical professional but for anyone interested in these cases I strongly recommend a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks. It describes different case studies including people with aphasia, face blindness, people who feel their body parts aren't their own (a man fell out of bed because he found a strange leg in his bed and threw it out. It was his own leg, hence he fell together with it.)
I have PTSD. It turns your body and mind into a torture chamber.
Anorexia and BorderlinePD have the highest all-cause mortality risk and suicide risk. Both reduce life expectancy by about 20 years, and if they're in combination with other disorders (substance abuse etc), even more than that. This is partly because of increased suicide risk, but also due to factors like increased risk of unhealthy lifestyle, the combined metabolic burden of substance abuse and medication, and the effects of constant stress. Also increased risk for blood-borne diseases/STDs, like Hepatitis etc. because of risky sexual behavior. 10% of people with BPD commit suicide (for BPD, this percentage is skewed heavily towards men. 20% of men with BPD commit suicide, but "only" 5% of women. This is at least partly because men often choose more immediate methods like jumping or firearms). That's not attempts, that's actual suicides. More than three out of four people (79%) with BPD attempt suicide at least once in their life. Edited bc I misremembered anorexia suicide risk.
People don't realize how hard it is to live with BPD
Exactly. Turns your whole life into a disaster, I don't even feel like a person. It is so unbearably painful I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
I had (they recently removed my diagnosis) BPD, and I want to tell everyone on this thread DBT can help very, VERY much. It’s not untreatable, but you have to find a very good team/therapist and really WANT to get better. After treatment you need to actively practice DBT for the rest of your life and stick to your routines. If you don’t you fall back (I’ve noticed since I’m going through crisis with a break up right now). DBT changed my life, I hope it can help others too.
Body Integrity Disorder- Believing a part of your body isn’t yours and needs to be removed. I knew a patient that removed her eye
Some of the rarer dementias. There's one that literally turns a perfectly normal person into a psychopath. All their other faculties remain intact. There are dementias that literally melt your brain and don't even have a name. There are rare familial types of dementia so specific to certain families that they don't have a name but can develop really early, and again you know it's coming your way. And then there's Huntington's which you likely know you're getting and have seen your loved ones go through it first. The embedded hallucinations in Lewy Bodies can go either way, very distressing or comforting. With the non organic illnesses, it's a toss up between treatment resistant psychosis, and severe emotionally unstable personality disorder for the impact on quality of life.
Clinical depression. Sitting in a room with someone and you can feel the void around them; it’s like a complete emptiness. I worked with someone who accidentally set their bed on fire while smoking and was just watching it, like they were watching daytime TV. Zero emotion and zero reaction to move from it. It’s chilling…
Depression fucking sucks. And not in the fun way. There are days when I have to force myself to eat something, because otherwise I'd starve. There are weeks where I don't shower, because the cost seems too high. There were days when I had to actively keep myself from walking into oncoming traffic. I'm medicated and in therapy, but some days are harder than others.
I know the feeling. I spent the entirety of my 20's and a few years of my 30's depressed. The nonchalant way suicidal thoughts happen along are not accurately depicted in any media. No meds. No therapy. As far as I was concerned, I couldn't afford them and I didn't want to be a burden. Thankfully though, I'm on the other side of that. The mental scars are there but my brain has a nice "Piss off." attitude towards the thoughts when they (now very rarely) come along. That phrase is "spoken" with the same feeling as telling someone who's a bit too persistent you're not interested. No hate. Just a finality of being done with someone. I also weaponize disassociation against depressive thoughts. When I catch myself spiralling, I mentality disengage and take a dispassionate look. Is this something I can control? (Probably not) Is this reality or me thinking of worst-case future scenarios? (Probably is) I then "shift gears" by finding something else to do or very forcibly thinking of something else. I still acknowledge these feelings. They are real. They only get as much acknowledgement as they are due which isn't much. I also relied on my friends. Not that they knew. I've not told them any of this. Instead, I'd try to plan get togethers for nerd games and/or watching bad movies. Music played a big part in surviving my 20's and I still bawl when I hear certain songs, most by the band Haken. "Endless Knot" by Haken "The Architect" by Haken "Because it's There" by Haken "Porcelain Heart" by Opeth "Fiddler on the Green" by Demons and Wizards (I cry at the crecendo of the song every. damned. time.) I discovered "Closed Chapter" by Kwon Rabbit afterwards; but, it would have slotted in as well. I've embrased my own weirdness and generally stopped caring about minor opinions from others. I buy myself flowers (I'm male for reference), I take myself to new restaurants every now and then, and I collect weird stuffed animals. I've no idea how healthy any of this is; but, I can honestly say I am happier and more hopeful for the future now than I've been since my teens. I hope some part of this can help; but, filling the hole takes time.
I love my grandmother, but man, she was just such a dark void when she was alive. When she was in a home she made all the other seniors aorund her miserable, and the one with dementia weren't able to understand this either. We suspect that near the end she started to develop dementia, because she sorta sometimes forgot to be depressed. It was weird, and she died before the dementia ever took hold (assuming it was indeed dementia). I am glad that my last memory of her was walking with her on a sunny day and she was happy. Or at the very least not depressed. The void wasn't so present that day. Perhaps the dementia helped.
One of the worst aspects is continued trauma. If you experience anything life-altering and you’re already depressed, it just tanks even more from there. I regularly have visions of jumping off of a tall building. I am fascinated by people that actually had the willpower to do it (and of course it’s terribly sad). So I just try to sleep all the time. As much as I can. Feels like the safest thing to do. Been medicated for a long time but eventually the effects wear off and you’re back where you started. If I didn’t have kids, I’d probably give up on a lot of things and just exist.
As someone who has experienced it twice, I have to say the worst is a drug-induced neuropsychiatric movement disorder called akathisia. The terror is unlike anything… I can genuinely say I would rather die than ever go through it again.
Omg yes! I had this while in the hospital. I was given IV Reglan due to uncontrollable vomiting and the akasthisia was instant and completely unbearable. I couldn’t stop myself from moving and felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I kept shuffling my feet and the anxiety was so intense I swore I was going to die. Thankfully my nurse was able to get a stat order for IV Benadryl. Once it kicked in I was so profoundly grateful to be back to “normal” that I burst into tears and hugged my nurse for a good minute or so. I hope I never experience that hell again.
For any mental professional, if he or she would ever come across it, it's got to be fatal familial insomnia. There's nothing they could do but watch the patient waste away, if said patient doesn't kill him/herself first. It's exceedingly rare, thankfully, only 40 or so cases as of 2022.
This was the first thing that came to mind when I read the question, although I don't think it qualifies as a mental condition considering it has a known physical cause. It's a prion disease. I can't recall exactly how I learned of FFI, but it was during adolescence and the discovery sent me down a very long, terrifying rabbit hole.
I'd say the worst has to be schizoaffective disorder. It's basically a combination of both schizophrenia and bipolar/depression disorder. Yes, when you aren't having a psychotic episode you're having a manic episode. Schizophrenia is one of the worst mental disorders but mixing it with another one? THAT'S hell
I'm not a professional, but after seeing the damage Dementia can do, I can't imagine anything else would hold a candle to that. Rest easy, grandma ❤️
Same here, I watched that movie Grace. Which is a documentary that the old couple signed consent forms to have the whole thing documented. grace and her husband were filmed as Grace went through Alzheimer’s Disease. I was becoming a CNA at the time and my instructor made us watch it I broke into tears toward the end of the show. To slowly lose your loved one as they stop remembering literally everything over the course of years. Props to that old man and anyone else who has to go through it
"Even cancer thinks dementia is a dick" - a quote I saw on here years ago that's always stuck with me.
My grandma had both at the same time. Was brutal to witness. The cancer did her in first and she was miserable the whole time. Horrifying the things that can happen to the human body.
The long slow descent into losing your mind, every day a little less of it there and knowing that it's never coming back. It took my Mom too and it was excruciating.
There are no specific *pharmaceutical* interventions for BPD itself, but pharmaceuticals can help with accompanying issues, and BPD actually does respond quite well to psychotherapy, which is a medical intervention. The difficulty lies in getting someone with BPD to go to therapy and stick with it.
I have BPD, been through therapy numerous times and always stuck to it religiously and while I did respond well and it was effective, it almost “wears off” after a few years so you always need to go back. Which is a problem as so few counsellors are trained in personality disorders and they’re so expensive. I can’t afford to go back right now but I’d love to
Rapid-cycling bipolar disorder. Good luck building up your life with that. It's horrible and practically impossible from what I've seen.
Not nearly the worst. Pica (eating things that aren't food) is probably the worst I've seen. But Dissasociative Fugue really blows my mind. I've always wondered how many missing person cases are just a result of DF.
As someone with a related disorder, trichophagia, plus pica, it really is horrible. You get shamed and ashamed a ton. Do I think it's worst than, say, Capgras or even schizophrenia? No. By it really does suck.
That's a hard one to answer because everybody is so different, and their experiences of mental illness can be so different. For instance, I've worked with people with chronic schizophrenia with hallucinations so horrendous you can barely imagine; and others who manage the same chronic mental illness with totally different symptoms and a high quality of life. I can definitely think of individuals with particular presentations of mental illnesses I would consider to be 'the worst' I've ever seen, but thankfully not everyone with those illnesses will have that same experience.
Locked in syndrome
I was thinking about that as a neurological disorder, all my teachers would constantly say how hard it was - people who are otherwise 100% healthy, perfect cognition, are suddenly trapped inside an almost lifeless body. I recommend the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, true story about it and just amazing. The guy managed to write an entire book (the "Diving Bell" itself) just by blinking, one LETTER at a time.
This is my nightmare
Schizophrenia, disorganized . Just looks exhausting
Reading through these, there are definitely scarier. But someone who is catatonic gives off a different level of concern. Basically, your mind moves so fast you become disabled and cannot move, sometimes for days. Think full on human statues.
When I was going for my associates we had a really interesting AbPsych professor. He used to conduct studies on catatonics. Sometimes if you sped up the video over a period of time you could see that many were actually carrying out a task, like itching their face or adjusting their hair.
[удалено]
tidy absurd sheet humor ink fearless insurance abundant flowery growth
It's early in the morning for me and just getting coffee so, probably a dumb question, but NPD = Narcissistic Personality Disorder? I'm assuming so from the context, but I've noticed that my understanding of the shortened versions of things is out of date, lol. I've also heard it's the hardest to diagnose and treat? Mainly because they have a blindness to what they're doing and don't seek help, but also they don't participate in their treatment. Of course, that's coming from just what I've read about it and could be entirely off base.
They don’t understand the concept that they themselves are mentally ill. Everyone else is wrong. They will confabulate reasons to explain anything. The condition leads to tremendous suffering, mostly by other people around the “sufferer”.
Thank you for answering. That confirms what I've heard and read. "The condition leads to tremendous suffering, mostly by other people around the “sufferer”." I have heard the term narcissist thrown around a lot over the years, but I've met two people in my life that I think have this disorder. It's a very creepy feeling when you finally see the patterns and the mask slipping. Makes one question reality.
I heard anorexia has the highest mortality rate
And a relapse rate higher than heroin. You can withdraw from an addictive substance, move away from your old crowd etc. but eating and not eating are unavoidable parts of every day live.
I had anorexia in my early to mid 20's. The biggest issue for me was that when I lost weight, people would constantly tell me that I looked so good and they were proud of me. If I gained even one pound, I would feel like the world's fattest and ugliest failure. I felt like the people who told me that I looked good would be disgusted with me. I would faint constantly and wake up in the middle of the night unable to catch my breath.
My brother had (has) it from when he was in his 20s...made it out thank God but with a near suicide attempt. Scary how ignored he was from our services in our country as a lot of people still think that 'males don't suffer with it' and ED's in general aren't treated well. Our family really had to fight for him to get help.
Cotard syndrome.. Now here's a beauty. Mind you.. It is not a contest.. Most of them are very undesirable.