10 replies to this topic

[puddle of fire]

anyone else receive schizotypal personality disorder as a dx?

 

I 'qualify' for schizophrenia even though my doc shuns using the word. She says I have a very mild case of it but hesitates using the word LOL.

 

Anyone else have this issue with dx? or issues with this dx?

 

dx: schizotypal personality disorder, GAD, ptsd

meds: risperdal 3mg, klonopin 1-2mg

[Wooster]

I'm curious about whether your doc thinks you seem to meet criteria for schizophrenia, but just doesn't like to label your symptoms that way... or whether you have have things that might look like schizophrenia but are actually more like schizotypal personality disorder.

[kateislate]

Well from what little I know a consensus seems to be forming that schizotypal is in fact a milder form of schizophrenia. Something like - what Asperger's is to autism, schizotypal is to schizophrenia.

 

So it makes perfect sense to me that your psychiatrist would say in the same breath: "you have a very mild form of schizophrenia" and "you're schizotypal." The distinction between the two not being so much in kind, but degree.

 

On the other hand - if she really meant you technically "qualify" for schizophrenia - i.e. your symptoms were (at least at some point) severe enough for long enough to meet the criteria - then technically you should be diagnosed with schizophrenia and not schizotypal.

 

I guess. But honestly - why do that if you're overall day-to-day picture looks much more like schizotypal?

[onderdonk]

yes, first time I got this diagnosis I asked what does it mean, and the pdoc refused to tell me, he said he knew I'd go home and research the hell out of it.

That was maybe 15 years ago.

Once I was told by a girlfriend's pdoc that "let's be clear, schizophrenia is way up here, (holds his hands above his head), and what charlie has is somewhere about here, (holds his hands halfway as high), and if we could take what charlie has and put it in a bottle we'd be richer than bill gates".

I like to call it "optional schizophrenia", or "schizophrenia lite".

I guess the first time I noticed my wierdness was more controllable was in a psych hospital at 12 years old; me and another kid had been having a war, attacking our counselor who had just taken us on a walk out in greenwich village, and we were in the elevator attacking him physically, and he yelled "stop!" and I just stopped, and my partner, he didn';t come close to stopping; had to be put in a quiet room and later sedated with a needle to the ass. And the counselor later said to me, most kids can't just stop like that, the way you can charlie.

I noticed a year or two ago, when I discovered youtube, that if you type in "schizophrenia", the people are in pathetic shape, mostly confined in a hospital, smoking cigarettes, very confused, highly drugged, and generally quite sad personalities, sad and lost. And it is night and day to compare this to typing into youtube "schizotypal", where the characters are characters, elated, happy about their insanity, not so lost, not so sad, not so frightened.

 

I pursued shamanism for a long time, and said that it's close to schizotypal personaity disorder, but better controlled and then encouraged. The series of books on dream yoga encourage what I think is really schizotypal personality disorder.

 

I told my boss at a sales job I lost a couple of years ago, that I practice irrationality, which in your culture is called schizotypality.

 

I am also sometimes diagnosed as having full paranoid schizophrenia, but that's when I'm strung out and very upset about something, usually the bugs crawling all over me which I swear are real parasites in my gut, escaping into my skin (cause I have it totally controlled with diet these days) but medical science insists it's "textbook insanity".

Edited by saveyoursanity, 06 February 2013 - 11:20 PM.
edited out self-promotional link. You may put that in your signature if you so chose, but only there.

[puddle of fire]

thanks everyone for responding. I read recently about the schizo spectrum thing so my diagnosis makes more sense.
I've tried to edit this post 3 times but I'm obviously disorganized.
Thanks Vape for showing me a greater array of the spectrum disorder.

I've thought of my condition as 'schizophrenia lite' as well, onderdonk. I enjoy certain aspects of my MI and have told my doc that it's "fun" having bizarre peceptions and delusions. But it can be scary too like when I'm afaid that people are plotting my death. The meds have been helping and I'm compliant so far...

dx: schizotypal personality disorder, GAD, ptsd
meds: risperdal 3mg, klonopin 1-2mg

Edited by whyisntnothinggoingon, 07 February 2013 - 01:15 PM.

[thesystemisdown]

I can personally relate to the schizotypal PD diagnosis.

I was diagnosed schizoaffective (paranoid, bipolar) and after a 6 month observation in a psych hospital (vountary) and ECT (for depression, also voluntary and extremely helpful) it was downed to bipolar disorder 1 and schizotypal PD. This was in 2008, before the DSM5 had been revised so much.

I currently hit pretty much all of the criteria. I think of it mostly as "eccentric". My psychosis is argued between the schizotypal PD and bipolar disorder, so it's odd. The pdoc's and tdoc's still argue schizoaffective vs schizotypal + bipolar.

It gets confusing!

 

Vapourware had a really great post, though.

[scatty]

I always look to YouTube to give me accurate portrayals of all kinds of illnesses.  (Is there a sarcasm smilie?) 

[b@shitcrazy]

Scatty...... nice ;D hahahahaaa

[radicalfeminist]

I noticed a year or two ago, when I discovered youtube, that if you type in "schizophrenia", the people are in pathetic shape, mostly confined in a hospital, smoking cigarettes, very confused, highly drugged, and generally quite sad personalities, sad and lost. And it is night and day to compare this to typing into youtube "schizotypal", where the characters are characters, elated, happy about their insanity, not so lost, not so sad, not so frightened.

 

Not that this needs to be clarified at all, I think everyone has summed up the sentiment that basing your knowledge of an illness on a couple youtube videos is very narrow-minded, but the videos that I am quite sure you are talking about I saw in an intro abnormal psych class a few years ago (and its quite likely that this series is shown in most beginner abnormal psych courses). The teacher presented them as very outdated and not at all consistent with what schizophrenia and other disorders look like in today's world and the outcomes of those patients are certainly not congruent with the prognosis of most people with those diagnoses at any point in history. Those videos are also mostly limited to those who are confined to inpatient facilities for life, which is certainly not the case for everyone and I'd hate for people to promote that idea of any illness. So, to summarize, these are outdated videos (from the mid 60s to the mid 80s) when mistreatment was rampant and pharmaceutical and therapeutic treatments were severely limited. Now, that's just the case for the ones that are real because many "documentary" film series' are actually not authentic footage. The reason there is so little footage, especially modern footage, is because of patient confidentiality issues. Those patients certainly were not in any shape to consent properly and the papers were probably signed by family members, which makes me uncomfortable, but oh well.

Edited by radicalfeminist, 11 February 2013 - 03:06 AM.

[onderdonk]

hey I didn't mean that's my only understanding on sz, from watching youtube. I read the boards and the memoirs and stuff, meet the people when I go on 72 hour hold, etc. My point was the difference between two different things on you tube: schizophrenia and schizotypal. night and day difference, within that one medium of youtube. I thought it was an interesting difference.