Once again, thank you all and for those who have professional experience in this area, I just may call upon you. You all have been a source of strength and comfort during this hell I have just been through.
We saw her last night and she’s 100 times better than what we saw the previous night. It was just an amazing transformation. She smiled and even grinned on occasion. She was completely lucid and spoke clearly. Of course she is still scared and we still don’t know what the future holds, but it looks a hell of a lot better.
Talking to the nurse here in the hospital , they’re suggesting that there is a chance that the marijuana use over the past two years may have triggered this and if that is so, that a full recovery may be possible. Interesting also in that she had already quit for several days prior to commitment thinking her weed was laced.
That’s good news, Dutchman. I watched a lifelong friend have a total breakdown: delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, and violent when his weed supplier disappeared. Turns out he was smoking synthetic marjuana as a substitute. He refused to believe the stuff was posion, but it is illegal now and he is back at work and functioning as thought it never happened. No way to prove that either marjuana withdrawal after 25 years caused the break, or if the synthetic stuff was to blame, but he never did anything harder than those substances when he snapped.
For what it’s worth, I was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic in 1982. Today I’m a tax-paying self-supporting individual with a full and richly rewarding life and I haven’t taken a psychiatric drug in 30 years. As others have said, don’t assume that the diagnosis means a specific trajectory.
Try to see your daughter as a person, with thoughts and feelings and concerns. Not symptoms. One of the worst things about having a psych dx is that people who care about you often tend to see anything other than the most even-keeled placid calm as “uh oh, that’s the mental illness acting up”.
Ask her if she’s ever heard of salvia. Salvia + weed = badness for some people.
And yes, marijuana has been linked to psychosis. Every time I tell people this, they tell me to sit down somewhere. But it is something that people should be aware of. no matter how lame I may look to the “cool” crowd, I refuse to partake in the stuff.
I’ve seen this several times, also eventually it can really exacerbate anxiety into paranoia and night terrors. I have client who was just hospitalized for a psychotic event triggered by that “artificial pot” stuff.
I am glad to hear she was more lucid and smiling on your recent visit. When she gets discharged continue to be there for her, in good and bad times. Do not create a scenario where she gets attention and support when she is ill, and left on her own when she is well.
No good comes from that situation.
I definitely see your point Mona, however I can see that she may want to keep some distance. If she’s anything like me she doesn’t want her parents to see her in less than optimal circumstances.
Her recovery is remarkable, but she is discouraging our visits and maintaining private messaging through Facebook. A day pass is imminent. She’s clearly accepting where she is at the moment. She’s also excited about moving to the city about 4 hours away when she gets out . I’m to keep that “on the down low” however.
I did have visions of constant vigilance to ensure she continues to take her meds if neccessary. That might go out the window.
She’s presently on risperidone and ativan. The former concerns me, because all her life she has been meticulously perfect about keeping her weight trim.
This is based on second-hand reporting (the schizophrenics I know can’t really tell where their thoughts first jumped the shark as it were, only when they noticed and when they were able to get help - there may have been years in between, specially depending on where and when they grew up*), but the behaviors described as being “possible indications of schizophrenia” are suspiciously close to your standard “moody teenager”; the onset/detection of schizophrenia is usually at the end of the teen years. So it’s not really something that’s going to be easy to detect, it’s hard to tell whether you have a teen that happens to be moody and spend a lot of time in his/her room and who will eventually rejoin the family, or one who will need medical help in order to do this.
That’s one great thing about this mess: as worried as you are, Dutchman, your daughter is being cared for.
