A question for people who have schizophrenia?
Answer:
It depends upon the severity of the illness, and if the patient is taking drugs perscribed for the condition.
For more help, call the mental health hotline. There is no charge. National Alliance for Mentally Ill: 1-800-950-6264
No one chooses to be ill or be well, it is an illness. It may sometimes be hard to tell what is real and what is not real.
Please urge your friend to get help.
Have you seen "A Beautiful Mind"? This was based on a true story, although it does have some hollywood theatrics.
Good luck!
My uncle currently is schizophrenic and after a while of having it he has learned how to cover it up in public although it can be very hard if it is a serious case. Im not sure if it gives you the mind state of a child, i just know that my uncle is very perinoid sometimes and its scary even with meds. Good luck.
No, it does not make your IQ low. Some of the most intelligent people have schizophrenia.
I don't have the disorder myself, but mental illness is part of my studies.
Schizophrenia presents with different symptoms in different people. There are some behaviors exhibited by some schizophrenics that may appear childlike, but the motivation for the behaviors, the "mind state", is not at all similar to that of a child. There are also many common symptoms and behaviors that are not childlike at all. So the answer to the first question is definitely no, schizophrenia is not associated with a childlike mindset.
Masking the illness in public depends on the severity. I've met a couple schizophrenics who can complete just about any routine task in public without any trouble at all. I've also met a couple with severe disease (nonstop delusions and/or hallucinations) who cannot go out in public at all. The illness varies so much between patients that some are completely functional and some are completely non-functional.
I have schizo-affective disorder and MPD as well. My personality split when I was 7 and so the actual " me" without the alternate personalities is still 7, and the other personalities are the ones with all my social skills etc. So yes if none of my alternates are up front and only my base personality is present, then I do appear very childlike.
At the same time though, the MPD is a seperate disorder from the schizo-affective disorder... so you can't base all schizophrenics on my testimony. All schizotypal disorders have disorganized thinking and/or delusions. We think differently than "normal" people... in fact I'm not quite sure how normal people think to be honest... it baffles me how people can NOT overemphasize certain points or obsess over certain details...
As for covering it up... that's where my alternates come into play. Certain people only see certain sides of me. A select few, usually those I'm closest to, see more than one side. But again this is part of the MPD, so for a straight schizophrenic it may be different.
My mother is schizophrenic, and she absolutely covers it up in public...well, she used to. Now that she's in her 60's it's become bad enough to be more obvious, but as I was growing up, she hid it very well.
It has different effects on different people. My mother's "theme" was religion, as many people's are, so she was not childish in her behaviour, but there are many different forms of mental illness, and lots of subtle differences between each that an everyday person like you & I can't really tell the difference between, so there's no reason why a person acting in a childish manner could not be affected by schizophrenia or something similar.
I hope you're ok in whatever situation has brought about this question. All the best.
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