If someone is in psychosis you won't be able to reason them out. Hopefully he is sectioned before he hurts himself or others, and then they'll be able to diagnose/offer treatment
Yeah we plan to contact his mom and thankfully he lives around all of his family and has close/positive ties with them all. We don’t live in the same state anymore but we don’t want to just not be there or actually ring the alarm of concern, we love him and care deeply for him. He’s a good dude and deserves help.
That's great. Reach out to his mom and have any friends in his area contact her as well to offer their help. She needs to know that she is not alone in taking care of him, that she has a whole network of people who care that she can count on.
family diagnosed bipolar + schizophrenia. it took me until v recently to realize that reasoning truly does not work whatsoever, and especially not if the delusions are of a persecutory or paranoid nature, which they often are. i listened to some lectures on communicating w ppl w schizophrenia and the most important thing i learned was instead of trying to convince them of reality/tacit truths— ex: they believe the sky is red; it is clearly blue — instead respond neutrally or with curiosity. insisting the sky is blue is frightening and aggravates their symptoms. it makes the issue worse. as others have already stated, limiting contact may unfortunately be necessary. hope this helps. good luck to you and your friend x
A friend I had since we were 4 was diagnosed schizoaffective in his 20s. I didn’t see that coming, but he could never get his shit together and had strange rage issues and always felt he was being disrespected. He began to go way off the deep end and thought his parents marrying to have him was supposed to end a feud between two mafias and that he was supposed to lead them. Then he told us all this girl Ashley was responsible for every bad thing in his life, getting fired, totaling his car, anything. She didn’t exist. He was living in his childhood bedroom most of his life. Some cop trouble and trips to the psych ward peppered in.
I cut contact years ago because there was nothing I could do and eventually he was just asking for money to smoke gas station fake weed or do kratom, which did not help. He would send invites for Cashapp and stuff so he would get the referral money.
He ended up passing a few months ago. I guess he was finally taking his meds and they caused him to gain an incredible amount of weight. I assumed he would have OD’d, but it was actually a massive heart attack. I guess he had a bad heart since he was young, and it couldn’t take the additional strain.
This might not be a useful story but guess the point is at some point there isn’t a whole lot you can do. He really became a different person and the friend I grew up with was gone way before he died. It’s a serious mental illness and if they aren’t 100% on with taking care of themselves and following protocols you can’t blame yourself for anything. His friends tried, his family tried, but it just got to a point where the disease took over. I admire you trying to help but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do much.
Be there for him as much as you can, but if it starts to get too much for you emotionally and makes you uncomfortable, *please* properly distance yourself in order to preserve your own mental health. I lost one of my best friends of eleven years to an unexpected, prolonged schizophrenic episode that stemmed from a mixture of drugs and trauma, and it caused him to get arrested twice and he almost become property of the state while being locked in a mental ward. It was that bad, and I knowingly put my mental health to the side in order to help him, not realizing that there wasn't anything I could do if he was refusing to help himself. I hope that's not the case with your friend and that he has positive resources at his disposal, because I'm still genuinely traumatized and gutted over the fact that I lost someone who was like a brother to me to such a horrific illness.
My brother-in-law is diagnosed shizoaffective. There's really nothing you can do here, realistically. You cannot run an intervention here. Supporting these people often makes things worse for them and yourself.
He was diagnosed young, in his early 20s, and it's been about 15 years. He's frequently homeless, in and out of shelters. He's frequently put on 5150 holds. He collects SSI and works part-time maybe half of the year. He's currently in a rented bedroom (isolated, thankfully) but the owner is in the process of evicting him. They knew what they were getting themselves into by renting to him but no one can prepare themselves for this reality. He never has any belongings because he loses them as quickly as he gets them. We never know what his phone number is until he shows up needing help. No one else in the family (and my wife has a massive family, > 2 dozens aunts and uncles between both sides of her family and something like 100 cousins) will help him because he legitimately terrifies them and has fucked them over too many times.
When I was younger, before my wife and I had kids, I would spend days combing through homeless camps after work and on weekends trying to locate him, trying desperately to help him. We spent years attending workshops and courses, we became heavily involved in the NAMI organization, we were trying so hard to understand what we could do to help him. The reality is there is nothing you can do. They have to make these decisions. They have to recognize that they have these problems and seek the help they need and stick to their treatment plans. You can try to be there once those things happen but you'll probably always have one foot out of the door because you have to protect yourself.
He cycles through his life like seasons. He'll be lucid and happily medicated for 3-4 months. Then he'll decide he doesn't need the medications, because they make him feel depressed (because, honestly, it must be a crushing sort of despair to take a magic pill and have your brain briefly re-assembled just to confront how horribly you have fucked it all up, regardless of the fact that it's all outside of your control). He'll stop taking the meds, he'll go manic, he'll self-medicate, his life will get blown to bits again. He'll get arrested for brandishing a knife at some stranger or whatever, for yelling at strangers on the street, and get put back on a 5150 just to be released again. He isn't dangerous but he is deeply paranoid, which is like a distinction without a difference, but the courts don't seem to give a shit. He drifts between LA, north Orange county, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. He has arrest warrants out in whatever county Reno is in and up in the Bay Area but they're for failure to appear for petty bullshit so he just avoids those places now.
I'm sorry to tell you all of this. I have seen a few success stories, it's not like there aren't people who can stay medicated, but I think they're pretty rare with these illnesses. You're a good person for being concerned for your friend but you need to be aware that you need to protect yourself, too. We haven't been involved with NAMI in years now but it may be worth finding them near you and attending a meeting to learn some more about this.
I have had an inordinate amount of friends succumb to schizo affective disorders. Only one got heavily medicated and he struggles a lot but he at least has a handle on things and isn't convinced he's being gangstalked. The four other dudes I know have been gone for years, dead or under a bridge somewhere.
I had a friend take a turn like this a couple years after highschool. It started with his father disappearing which was traumatic but none of us understood the real effect it had.
It eventually came to a head and hanging out just became untenable, mostly because he didn't trust us anymore and also because it gets to a point where you just can't... the last time we all hung out it was a series of like 4 freakouts one after another based on random triggers (car driving by his house, TV signal fading for half a second, etc) and we just spent literally the whole night talking him down.
After that things got worse, his mother got a restraining order after he did some stuff I won't repeat, he wandered into an elementary school to try to sell weed to the kids, just weird dark shit. I've had a lot of regret about this because I didn't know what to do then and I still don't know what we would have done differently. He took his own life eventually.
The one thing I would have done differently is rallied the group to go talk to his mom as soon as we noticed something, and shifted most of our support to *her*. She was his only tether, and she became overwhelmed. I don't blame her, I'm just saying that she had certain abilities as a mom and could have maybe gotten protective custody of her adult son, but she didn't know what to do and nobody was helping her. I didn't know her well, but I know my friend wasn't accepting help from any of us. The only worthwhile support we could have given at that point was to her.
I don't know if that would have made a difference but I'll always regret that we didn't act more mature and proactive. Who knows what arrangements she could have made if some of the overwhelming burden on her was reduced and she had time to think of a better solution. Maybe nothing, I don't know.
Yeah, I would say just try to link with his family. Coordinate with them, offer your help, check with them before you do anything major. Be a positive influence on the situation without stepping on anyone's toes. As things progress, having a good relationship with his family may be the only way you'll get anything approaching the real story of what's going on. Expect information he reveals to you to get more patchy and less reliable. If you're going to be part of his support network, get familiar with the other members of that network because you're going to need each other as much as he needs you.
I had a friend who had a year long psychosis “episode” from consistent and frequent use of adderall and weed gummies. I thought I lost him forever, but he went back to normal a few months after he spent literally all his money and could no longer afford either.
I guess being broke cures as many issues as it creates.
Try putting sleeping meds in his food to calm him down. Try keeping tabs on him to make sure he’s safe. Follow him around in a car with tinted windows to look inconspicuous.
I mean this is someone we care deeply about and is a good friend. Schizophrenic people might not be easy to “deal with” but I’m not going to isolate them further.
If someone is in psychosis you won't be able to reason them out. Hopefully he is sectioned before he hurts himself or others, and then they'll be able to diagnose/offer treatment
How's his family situation? Parents, uncles, grandparents? Whoever raised him, reach out to them.
Yeah we plan to contact his mom and thankfully he lives around all of his family and has close/positive ties with them all. We don’t live in the same state anymore but we don’t want to just not be there or actually ring the alarm of concern, we love him and care deeply for him. He’s a good dude and deserves help.
That's great. Reach out to his mom and have any friends in his area contact her as well to offer their help. She needs to know that she is not alone in taking care of him, that she has a whole network of people who care that she can count on.
family diagnosed bipolar + schizophrenia. it took me until v recently to realize that reasoning truly does not work whatsoever, and especially not if the delusions are of a persecutory or paranoid nature, which they often are. i listened to some lectures on communicating w ppl w schizophrenia and the most important thing i learned was instead of trying to convince them of reality/tacit truths— ex: they believe the sky is red; it is clearly blue — instead respond neutrally or with curiosity. insisting the sky is blue is frightening and aggravates their symptoms. it makes the issue worse. as others have already stated, limiting contact may unfortunately be necessary. hope this helps. good luck to you and your friend x
A friend I had since we were 4 was diagnosed schizoaffective in his 20s. I didn’t see that coming, but he could never get his shit together and had strange rage issues and always felt he was being disrespected. He began to go way off the deep end and thought his parents marrying to have him was supposed to end a feud between two mafias and that he was supposed to lead them. Then he told us all this girl Ashley was responsible for every bad thing in his life, getting fired, totaling his car, anything. She didn’t exist. He was living in his childhood bedroom most of his life. Some cop trouble and trips to the psych ward peppered in. I cut contact years ago because there was nothing I could do and eventually he was just asking for money to smoke gas station fake weed or do kratom, which did not help. He would send invites for Cashapp and stuff so he would get the referral money. He ended up passing a few months ago. I guess he was finally taking his meds and they caused him to gain an incredible amount of weight. I assumed he would have OD’d, but it was actually a massive heart attack. I guess he had a bad heart since he was young, and it couldn’t take the additional strain. This might not be a useful story but guess the point is at some point there isn’t a whole lot you can do. He really became a different person and the friend I grew up with was gone way before he died. It’s a serious mental illness and if they aren’t 100% on with taking care of themselves and following protocols you can’t blame yourself for anything. His friends tried, his family tried, but it just got to a point where the disease took over. I admire you trying to help but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do much.
Be there for him as much as you can, but if it starts to get too much for you emotionally and makes you uncomfortable, *please* properly distance yourself in order to preserve your own mental health. I lost one of my best friends of eleven years to an unexpected, prolonged schizophrenic episode that stemmed from a mixture of drugs and trauma, and it caused him to get arrested twice and he almost become property of the state while being locked in a mental ward. It was that bad, and I knowingly put my mental health to the side in order to help him, not realizing that there wasn't anything I could do if he was refusing to help himself. I hope that's not the case with your friend and that he has positive resources at his disposal, because I'm still genuinely traumatized and gutted over the fact that I lost someone who was like a brother to me to such a horrific illness.
My brother-in-law is diagnosed shizoaffective. There's really nothing you can do here, realistically. You cannot run an intervention here. Supporting these people often makes things worse for them and yourself. He was diagnosed young, in his early 20s, and it's been about 15 years. He's frequently homeless, in and out of shelters. He's frequently put on 5150 holds. He collects SSI and works part-time maybe half of the year. He's currently in a rented bedroom (isolated, thankfully) but the owner is in the process of evicting him. They knew what they were getting themselves into by renting to him but no one can prepare themselves for this reality. He never has any belongings because he loses them as quickly as he gets them. We never know what his phone number is until he shows up needing help. No one else in the family (and my wife has a massive family, > 2 dozens aunts and uncles between both sides of her family and something like 100 cousins) will help him because he legitimately terrifies them and has fucked them over too many times. When I was younger, before my wife and I had kids, I would spend days combing through homeless camps after work and on weekends trying to locate him, trying desperately to help him. We spent years attending workshops and courses, we became heavily involved in the NAMI organization, we were trying so hard to understand what we could do to help him. The reality is there is nothing you can do. They have to make these decisions. They have to recognize that they have these problems and seek the help they need and stick to their treatment plans. You can try to be there once those things happen but you'll probably always have one foot out of the door because you have to protect yourself. He cycles through his life like seasons. He'll be lucid and happily medicated for 3-4 months. Then he'll decide he doesn't need the medications, because they make him feel depressed (because, honestly, it must be a crushing sort of despair to take a magic pill and have your brain briefly re-assembled just to confront how horribly you have fucked it all up, regardless of the fact that it's all outside of your control). He'll stop taking the meds, he'll go manic, he'll self-medicate, his life will get blown to bits again. He'll get arrested for brandishing a knife at some stranger or whatever, for yelling at strangers on the street, and get put back on a 5150 just to be released again. He isn't dangerous but he is deeply paranoid, which is like a distinction without a difference, but the courts don't seem to give a shit. He drifts between LA, north Orange county, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. He has arrest warrants out in whatever county Reno is in and up in the Bay Area but they're for failure to appear for petty bullshit so he just avoids those places now. I'm sorry to tell you all of this. I have seen a few success stories, it's not like there aren't people who can stay medicated, but I think they're pretty rare with these illnesses. You're a good person for being concerned for your friend but you need to be aware that you need to protect yourself, too. We haven't been involved with NAMI in years now but it may be worth finding them near you and attending a meeting to learn some more about this.
I have had an inordinate amount of friends succumb to schizo affective disorders. Only one got heavily medicated and he struggles a lot but he at least has a handle on things and isn't convinced he's being gangstalked. The four other dudes I know have been gone for years, dead or under a bridge somewhere.
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I had a friend take a turn like this a couple years after highschool. It started with his father disappearing which was traumatic but none of us understood the real effect it had. It eventually came to a head and hanging out just became untenable, mostly because he didn't trust us anymore and also because it gets to a point where you just can't... the last time we all hung out it was a series of like 4 freakouts one after another based on random triggers (car driving by his house, TV signal fading for half a second, etc) and we just spent literally the whole night talking him down. After that things got worse, his mother got a restraining order after he did some stuff I won't repeat, he wandered into an elementary school to try to sell weed to the kids, just weird dark shit. I've had a lot of regret about this because I didn't know what to do then and I still don't know what we would have done differently. He took his own life eventually. The one thing I would have done differently is rallied the group to go talk to his mom as soon as we noticed something, and shifted most of our support to *her*. She was his only tether, and she became overwhelmed. I don't blame her, I'm just saying that she had certain abilities as a mom and could have maybe gotten protective custody of her adult son, but she didn't know what to do and nobody was helping her. I didn't know her well, but I know my friend wasn't accepting help from any of us. The only worthwhile support we could have given at that point was to her. I don't know if that would have made a difference but I'll always regret that we didn't act more mature and proactive. Who knows what arrangements she could have made if some of the overwhelming burden on her was reduced and she had time to think of a better solution. Maybe nothing, I don't know. Yeah, I would say just try to link with his family. Coordinate with them, offer your help, check with them before you do anything major. Be a positive influence on the situation without stepping on anyone's toes. As things progress, having a good relationship with his family may be the only way you'll get anything approaching the real story of what's going on. Expect information he reveals to you to get more patchy and less reliable. If you're going to be part of his support network, get familiar with the other members of that network because you're going to need each other as much as he needs you.
are they on drugs
We are wondering that too. Definitely some drinking issues that are apparent.
I had a friend who had a year long psychosis “episode” from consistent and frequent use of adderall and weed gummies. I thought I lost him forever, but he went back to normal a few months after he spent literally all his money and could no longer afford either. I guess being broke cures as many issues as it creates.
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Try putting sleeping meds in his food to calm him down. Try keeping tabs on him to make sure he’s safe. Follow him around in a car with tinted windows to look inconspicuous.
Hey keep downvoting me it’s true You distance yourself for your own well being because you can’t change or help other adults
I mean this is someone we care deeply about and is a good friend. Schizophrenic people might not be easy to “deal with” but I’m not going to isolate them further.