Apathy in Psychosis - Day 28 of "100 Symptoms"
Channel: nednednerB the Schizophrenic
Date: 2019-04-25

What do you care about? Have you ever experienced apathy? That is when you don't care. When you can't be moved to care. When you don't care to be moved.

It might happen to many teenagers and young adults on a multi-daily basis, but it also happens to people who have encounters with mental illness and psychosis. Apathy makes up one of the disconnects involved in schizophrenia.

Usually, acute psychosis is so excitable and frantic, and motivation and willpower are typically so driven, the individual is in a rush and cares a lot about their delusions and preoccupations. At this point, they are probably far from apathy.

However, insert 2.5-18 months and grams upon grams of pharmaceutical drug partly purposefully designed or refined for its overall sedating qualities, I was sure apathetic. I went from feeling like I was really on the verge of saving the world... to not giving much of a poop about anything anymore.

I went from afraid of corrupting my mind by watching TV at all... to doing nothing but stare at the screen with a glaze in my eyes, watching reruns mostly of a few shows, for hours each day. In the long run I can agree this post psychotic low was to be preferred to the outcome I had without medication, but it was hard, you know.

To be so sedated and drained, and separated from my manic and sensory highs, I did feel like nothing mattered. I grew in apathy. It is a kind of "side symptom" of the whole situation, where primary effects of psychosis and medication effects kind of level a person. It's a big reason people quit their medications, because they want to feel something more variable and bright instead of static and dim.

I have found some balance and would recommend patients taking medication to stick with it. Be stable as possible, then talk with a trusting doctor about lowering dose to feel more "awake and alive." However, I do think that simply time and processing of the mental illness will reduce the apathy. It isn't just a medication side effect. It's a whole complex side symptom as I said.

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I have schizophrenia every day. Even though I was diagnosed in early 2000s, I experience and manage symptoms daily. So here are "100 Symptoms!"

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