Paranoid schizophrenia

[cali]

Paranoid schizophrenia


Definition
By Mayo Clinic staff

Paranoid schizophrenia is one of several types of schizophrenia, a chronic mental illness in which a person loses touch with reality (psychosis). The classic features of paranoid schizophrenia are having delusions and hearing things that aren't real.

With paranoid schizophrenia, your ability to think and function in daily life may be better than with other types of schizophrenia. You may not have as many problems with memory, concentration or dulled emotions. Still, paranoid schizophrenia is a serious, lifelong condition that can lead to many complications, including suicidal behavior.

Symptoms
By Mayo Clinic staff

Signs and symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia may include:

Auditory hallucinations, such as hearing voices
Delusions, such as believing a co-worker wants to poison you
Anxiety
Anger
Emotional distance
Violence
Argumentativeness
Self-important or condescending manner
Suicidal thoughts and behavior


http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/paranoid-schizophrenia/DS00862

I called it early on in the Jared Loughner case. I think we'll find the same diagnosis for James Holmes.

And the only thing to politicize about this is our lack of decent mental health care. And that one can blame repubs for more than dems, but neither party has done enough.

[flamingdem]

1. Also the need for families to lose their shame in favor of seeking support

His mom seemed to know it was her son, no surprise, not to blame her of course but was there anything she could have done to protect her son and others?

[Brickbat]

4. It is extremely difficult to get someone committed or even seen for an evaluation if they don't want

one. Terribly difficult to impossible. It's a delicate balance between protecting someone's human rights and protecting him from himself. If this didn't come on until after he turned 18, his mother could do little.

[laundry_queen]

6. Yep.

I know 3 people in my circle of aquaintances who have sons diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. All 3 sons weren't commited until they had psychotic breaks, despite the mothers calling police constantly about threatening or strange behavior. 2 of them stabbed themselves before they could get commited. The other one had a standoff with police. Even AFTER all that, they only stayed in custody at the mental hospital for a few days. One of the moms has now changed her mind and denied that her son has P.S. and blames it on drugs, while her son goes off his meds and terrorizes his family, because she is worried about the 'stigma'. Being addicted to drugs is 'easier' to explain to people. Very sad. There needs to be some kind of screening for this to catch it in its early stages, but I'm not sure how. And BTW, this is in Canada where I'm guessing it's easier to get that kind of help since it's covered by our health care plan. I can't imagine how difficult it must be in the US if you don't have insurance.

[Nay]

32. Yep indeed. Here in the US, only cadillac health care plans (I have one) offer any mental health

coverage at all, and the time and money limits placed on it will not allow for paranoid schizophrenics, etc., to be committed for an appropriate amount of time, nor will it allow for multiple admissions when they go off their meds, etc. And after a child is 18, the family can do nothing at all until the child harms himself or harms others. It's even hard to get a restraining order.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

10. I don't think we should give them a choice. nt

[Marcia Brady]

26. Involuntary commitment

Went the way of the dinosaurs back in the '60's or '70's. Personally, I never thought it was a good idea to put delusional people in charge of their own mental health.

[kestrel91316]

8. There is absolutely NOTHING family members can do to "seek support" in the form of mental

health care for an adult who doesn't want it. And if the person in question believes, due to their mental disease, that the world is crazy and they are sane, there will be no seeking help.

[LadyHawkAZ]

14. Unless you have a lot of money and good insurance

there's no way to get help for a minor child either. Welcome to the Best Health Care System In The World™, aren't we all so proud of it?

[wellstone dem]

31. Absolutely right

Children can wait 3 to 5 months in Minnesota for an appointment, and Minnesota was rated "#1" in health care in the US.

[NotThisTime]

34. Well, we have decent insurance, and even still when the 17 year old won't go, there's

nothing to make them go. As parents you cannot force them unless they are making very specific immediate threats to themselves or someone else, you go to the police, they don't have enough actionable information at the time they need it. The kid thinks he's just fine and dandy while his life is entirely falling apart... like someone said, put someone with a mental health crisis in charge of their mental health, not a good idea.... We have enough to get a restraining order, but we don't have enough to get the kid forced into some kind of treatment plan.... From what the mother of this young man said, I bet she has walked in these shoes.... it is devastating, and there is absolutely no help from anyone.

[Igel]

17. Varies by state.

The one state I know much about allows relatives and mental health professionals to seek the appointment of a guardian and/or custodian for those incapacitated or to compel mental health treatment.

It's not a simple process if the person's done nothing illegal, but it's possible to get the court to order a mental health evaluation. It can become doctor versus doctor, but the matter can be revisited and make any later infraction grounds for involuntary mental health treatment.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I agree.

And I'll add that paranoid schizophrenics are among the least likely of people to seek or comply with treatment. The treaters are always incorporated as part of the psychotic's delusional system.

[cali]

5. yep. highly non-compliant. I don't think there's a single MH agency in the country

whose most non-compliant clients aren't paranoid schizophrenics.

[kestrel91316]

9. We learned this, to our dismay, in dealing with our mom for decades.

My sister FINALLY got medical power of attorney in the last 5 years of her pathetic life. When she was in assisted living and losing mental capacity due to strokes we were able to get antipsychotics into her, though it almost seemed silly at that point. I'm sure it made her caregivers happier because she caused less trouble.

[cali]

18. I'm so sorry. that must have been terribly painful as well as

frustrating.

[kestrel91316]

22. Thanks. I got over the hurt of the whole situation years ago,

and when she passed away a year ago I couldn't summon a single tear. I had used them up over her years before.

Mainly I felt a huge relief for my sister, who was the one who had to deal with her, as her conservator and the one who lived nearby.

[Scootaloo]

3. No, he suffers from White Guy Mass Murderer Syndrome

You know, when the media takes a well-planned, carefully orchestrated attack that costs the lives of so many people, and decides that because the killer isn't brown and isn't named Abdul Mohammed Reza Mohammed Akeem Mohammed, he simply must be a crazed lone wolf who never ever had a political thought in his life ever.

It's a tragic illness that seems to be growing ever more commonplace.

Thank goodness he doesn't also suffer re-vitiligo, I can only imagine the field day the media would have condemning him and asking who was helping him .

[Democrats_win]

7. Mayby it's anxiety over his situation as a PhD candidate in neuroscience.

It's ironic that I recently heard someone say that people in neuroscience were having trouble getting jobs. A google search does suggest this. For people with any PhD, getting a job can be a little tricky because they are looking for a very specific job. Then add in the fact that they often work for the government instead of private firms. Recall how the government has been cutting jobs.

Obviously we don't know the specifics of James Holmes case. It could be related to the academic side given that he has withdrawn from school. Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting ) says that the apartment where he lived was exclusively for students and staff of the University of CO medical center. Maybe he was stressed because he might eventually loose his apartment now that he was no longer a student.

Much to be anxious about. Still, why not suicide? Why this movie? Paranoid schizophrenia seems like catch-22. He wasn't crazy until he became a mass murderer. The road less traveled made all the difference?

[Igel]

19. Lots of unknowns.

Guy in my grad dorm studying for his first semester law exams went bonkers. (Not the official diagnosis.) 2 a.m., studying in his underwear, he started shouting at the top of his lungs. Ran down the hall, ran into the woman's section of the dorm, found a balcony and jumped.

Balcony was on the 2nd floor and he landed in the bushes below, and continued to scream inchoately.


At the end of that year, a chem (biochem?) student jumped off the top of one of the buildings (more like 6 floors, that one). Splatted on the cobblestones below. His advisor was leaving him behind. The advisor was going to a different country and couldn't take him. With the advisor went his funding, the lab, and the expertise. He went from a year from graduation to years from graduation.


A friend's roommate in the dorm vanished one day. He was studying for finals and said he was going to the bathroom. Left his book open, an open can of soda on his desk, and his desk light on. A few weeks later he sat down at our table during breakfast as though he was just coming back from the men's room. He was wearing the same clothes he wore when he left; they were clean but he needed a haircut. Never did say where he was. If you asked he'd just look at you for a few seconds and then pretend he never heard the question. He went on leave the next term. Probably a good thing.


The following year somebody noticed that one of the men's showers in the dorm had been running a while. Hard to tell something like that--most visitors to the men's bathroom don't necessarily stay as long as some guys shower, and if you take a shower you probably can't know if it's the same person in another shower stall or not. This shower had been going for at least an hour. Guy in it had cut his wrists and bled out. Med student, I think. Was on the point of failing out and couldn't take it.


Grad and professional school--everybody should have a full battery of mental health tests performed between acceptance to a program and being allowed to take classes.

[HiPointDem]

11. The following disorders are proposed for deletion from DSM-5: 295.30 Schizophrenia - Paranoid Type

295.10 Schizophrenia - Disorganized Type
295.20 Schizophrenia - Catatonic Type
295.90 Schizophrenia - Undifferentiated Type
295.60 Schizophrenia - Residual Type
297.3 Shared Psychotic Disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5

[Jackpine Radical]

12. I think the DSM committee is looking at a new classificatory system for the psychoses.

In any case, the whole DSM-5 revision project is turning into a huge mess & embarrassment to psychiatry.

The worst of it is happening in the personality disorders and psychosexual disorders.

The whole field is in an uproar, with people like Allen Frances, the chief editor of DSM-4, seeming to devote full time to writing articles & editorials about how the whole system has gone off track & is not incorporating sound scientific knowledge.

[hamsterjill]

13. Perhaps, it is some form of mental illness.

I don't really have much experience in my own family of dealing with mental illness issues. I respect what I'm reading here from those posters who have had personal experience.

So, allow me a serious question here. If indeed, for the sake of argument, this shooter (James Holmes) is proven to have a legitimate mental disorder, couldn't it still be a possibility that he could be even more influenced by inflammatory talk by radio/talk show idiots than someone who did not suffer from the same mental issues?

Again - I'm not YET making a connection between Holmes and the Rush Limbaugh comments. I'm still in the "possible theory" category, but I'm ASKING if it could be a factor. And I believe the answer is yes.

My real point here is that if that is a real possiblity, it makes it all the more incumbent on people like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, et al, to be more responsible with how they conduct their shows. Will they ever change their formats? Of course not. They like stirring up hate. It's their schtick.

But, I for one, think they have some degree of responsibility for situations where their hatemongering results in violence. I don't know how to legally define that degree of responsibility, but I believe they have a degree of responsibility.

[Igel]

20. It's possible.

But not necessarily pertinent.

My BIL thought that the nextdoor neighbor was a member of the British royalty working for the CIA. Hard to find that in Limbaugh's rants.

He also thought God told him to kill all the male members of his family that weren't already "born again Christians." Fortunately, the special ray gun that God said was under his car seat wasn't there--which my BIL interpreted as a test of his faith. Yeah, my BIL was locked up and a court ordered him medicated.

The point is that the mental illness can make things up or take what's heard and twist it in weird ways. What set my BIL off might have been some Sunday morning televangelist or a billboard on the interstate, or maybe somebody saying "God bless you!" when he sneezed.

Or it may have been something the minister said years before when he attended his grandmother's funeral. He can't say at this point. And there's no way of knowing. There's no way of getting into my BIL's mental illness sufficiently to uncover what's going on.

Blame the mental illness and the guilty. Don't take somebody's mental illness and make it into a cudgel for blaming those who are innocent curmudgeons.

[Marcia Brady]

30. Sometimes crazy is just crazy

And, much as we'd like to, we can't blame it on any one thing or any one person.

I really hope that no one can ever use cases like this to curtail anyone's free speech rights, because there could be no good outcome for that.

[hifiguy]

15. Agreed.

The more that comes out about this guy, the more he sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic. Paranoids can be meticulous and organized unlike more disassociative schizophrenics. He's also in the wheelhouse in terms of being in the age range when such disorders fully manifest themselves.

[FedUpWithIt All]

16. The boy in the Chardon Ohio shooting also suffers from Schizophrenia.

He's expected to fill an insanity plea soon.

We ignore the very real suffering of the mentally disabled at our own expense.

[uppityperson]

21. More accessible affordable non-stigmatic mental health care won't stop everything but it would help.

[mzmolly]

23. Was the shooter in colorado diagnosed

schizophrenic?

I would think a schizophrenic would have trouble planning and carrying out an organized mass murder?

[cali]

25. actually people with that diagnosis can be very organized and have no problem planning

Look at Ted Kaczynski who was diagnosed as such by a court appointed psychiatrist. He planned meticulously and got away with it for years.

[mzmolly]

33. Kaczynksi worked via the us postal

service. His plan was not as elaborate and organized. He also lived in a shed in the middle of the woods etc.

IMHO, Holmes will prove to be too organized and coherent to be a schizophrenic.

[steve2470]

24. I do think you're correct, based on my very limited knowledge nt

[Electric Monk]

27. I don't think it's that simple. Not by a long shot. nt

[barbtries]

28. this is certainly what i thought.

yet he was so meticulous. his planning went on for weeks or months. this is what gets me. sociopaths can seem so normal, but my perception of schizophrenia is that it is very symptomatic. apparently his mother knew he was ill, but what about the people in the PhD program with him? he's out buying guns, tear gas, armor (all legally!) - wouldn't there have had to be obvious signs of a serious illness?
how many people were not surprised it was him? what if anything could have been done to keep this from happening? how could he have amassed all this stuff and just be allowed to in light of an obvious mental illness? and if it was not obvious, is it schizophrenia?

[Tx4obama]

29. Getting help for family members is NOT as easy as most folks think, see link below

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002989720