Posted by bleauberry on September 6, 2009, at 15:40:58
In reply to Suggestions re: Someone Who Refuses Medications, posted by mrm12333601 on September 1, 2009, at 14:22:53
This has been an extraordinarily productive thread. In the course of strongly held personal opinions as well as documented case studies including famous people, a big picture of schizophrenia has been painted in this thread. Within that picture I see the following summaries. These should be very helpful to the thread author. Very respectable job. It would not have been so without the varying viewpoints or case studies.
1. Schizophrenia displays a wide degree of intensity from patient to patient.
2. Schizophrenia displays considerable variation of intensity at varying patient timepoints.
3. An unknown percentage of patients benefit greatly from their meds and prefer them.
4. An unknown percentage of patients do not benefit from their meds, but their surrounding family members see it as the only option due to lack of awareness of other options.
5. An unknown percentage of patients do not benefit from their meds period.
6. Weaning off powerful meds too quickly can cause a new tragedy to occur.
7. Weaning off powerful meds carefully can result in a benign outcome.
8. Happiness and functionality can be achieved without meds by utilizing a number of other strategies.
9. Schizophrenia is a term to describe a cluster of symptoms, but treatment fails to look at basic environmental causes of those symptoms.
10. Every case is different, and in this case we all made many assumptions and opinions based on a complete lack of case details.One final interesting tidbit to add. As the child of a trauma physician, my father to this day still speaks of the significant increase of mental illness traffic into the emergency room when it was a full moon. It was as predictable as a clock. Perhaps treatment could also take that into account, and provide extra care and attention during those times each month.
poster:bleauberry
thread:915268
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090902/msgs/915912.html