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Thanks so much, Lesley!

Thanks so much, Joe!! I hope it might give some people out there suffering a glimmer of hope to hang onto.

Thanks so much!!

Yes, it's pretty magical for sure!

Thank you so much!!

Oh, wow, so happy for you! Peace of mind is priceless! Have you heard of avatar therapy? It can potentially get rid of hallucinations in a matter of weeks. It works fully for some, partially for others, and not at all for others. There is a place in Canada that offers it. Not sure about other countries. avatar-intervention.ca/avatar-therapy Keep on taking care of yourself and enjoying your life, and I will too!

I'm glad I could help. Keep hanging in there. Life is mysterious and you never know what's around the bend. Remember, you're amazing!

You're very welcome! It's one of my favourites! I hope it can help you!

2 mg/day

Welcome! Thanks so much for commenting! I have successfully recovered, but not cured. I take an anti-psychotic, the same one since the disease first hit me in 1994. I will not be going off it now that I'm doing well! No way! If all I have to do is pop a pill to feel good, that's no problem. Maybe one day they will find a cure and then I can go off my medication! Here's hoping someday! I have never thought I had ASD. It's probably just an overlap of a similar symptom.

Thank you so much!

@@mindaid you deserve it you are a fighter! I am myself diagnosed, with paranoid schizophrenia and just resently since a few weeks I experience that my negative symptoms and depressive feelings seem to vanish so I know absolutely what you are talking about in your video! I Hope you stay healthy and take care of yourself mate 😊

@@MightyfReal1 Wow, I'm so happy for you! That's incredible! Thanks so much for telling me! One of the things I'd like to do is collect stories of people who are living symptom-free with schizophrenia and tell their stories in a book to give people hope that recovery is possible. I know not everyone makes a full recovery, and you can still live a meaningful live with a partial recovery, but I think people should still be told that a full recovery is possible ,because I don't think everyone knows that.

@@mindaid that’s brilliant!

Thanks for asking - some of my short-term memory was affected. It was hard to remember things I did the day or week before. I couldn't handle a lot of things happening at once. My intelligence was lowered somewhat. I couldn't do things like math in my head, which I could do before my disease hit. Conversations were difficult. Walking and navigating my way through space was was affected. I am in the 25% of people with schizophrenia who don't hallucinate. I was never classified as paranoid. I didn't have delusions of grandeur. Some of my thinking was affected for sure, but not all of it. Does that answer your question?

btw i'm taking a psychiatric drug too for 10 years

Yes, it can be very difficult for people for sure. I suffered and had a lot of difficulty for many years. Everyday things that healthy people can do without thinking become very tough for us to do. One foot in front of the other. Inch by inch.

Thanks for asking - to be honest, even though I have had schizophrenia for a long time, 30 years, there are still some terms I don't know/forget. I've heard of prodrome before, but not sure what it is. I could Google it. And I can never sort out what the positive and negative symptoms are. Mostly I like talking about my symptoms with how they make me feel instead of more clinical terms. But that's just me. I really should pay more attention to the clinical terms, especially being an advocate for schizophrenia. To answer your question, I had a symptom creep up about one a year over 4 years or so when I was going through university. The first year I was somewhat down on energy. I would get tired climbing some stairs. The second year I felt blunted emotionally. The third year I started not being able to remember some details about the day before - some short-term memory loss. The fourth year I was having some darker thoughts. But during those four years I could still do a fair bit. They didn't slow me down that much. I got most of my engineering degree, mostly As, I bicycled across Canada, I was on the university rowing team, I did a triathlon, and I paid my whole way through university and then some by being a student engineer on a highway crew in the summers. But in my fifth year of engineering the disease hit hard and my life became drastically different. I got on a medication fairly quickly and started recovering. I often thought what would have happened if I'd gotten on a medication during one of those earlier four years, if they would have been able to diagnose me that early and if they would have given me medication, and if so, how much that have helped me to recover sooner. The important thing to remember is we never know what tomorrow will bring and to stay hopeful. Who knows, we may have a cure for schizophrenia some day. Tomorrow hasn't happened, and things can change for the good. We are capable of so much more than we think. Navy SEALs are taught in their training that they are capable of 20x more than they think they are. Thanks for the question!

What is the "correct" route. My son was born with a high IQ and after being in prison for 2 years he came out with severe mental health issues. I'm sure being in prison played a part,but millions of people go to prison and come back "normal". They told me that he had multiple times of substance abuse. Where do I start helping him. He is currently in a hospital. He is taking respiritol.

@@jackieaugustus8085 First stop this drug, next enter him a social club and register him to a sport he like, then make him independent in that club, lastly watch his prognosis from a distance, and report back to me in a year

@@jackieaugustus8085 First stop this drug, next enter him in a social club, then let him choose a sport he like, and make him independent in that club while watching his progress from a distance, lastly report to me back in a year.

Sorry to hear. My feelings were definitely blunted. They improved glacially slowly over 3 decades, and now I have many good feelings, peace, contentment most of the time. I still get upset, frustrated, stressed, sometimes, but they are in the normal range now. I think it is very important to do things that you would ordinarily like doing, even if they can't make you feel great anymore, because I think at some level they affect you and make you feel good, even if you can't feel the good feelings. I did some things I wanted to do like travelled to Western Canada, donated to charities, even though I felt blunted doing them. But I did them anyway. So I could look back on my life and say, you know, I did those things even though I couldn't feel the best doing them, and I did them anyway. At some level underneath all your negative emotions, at a level that is hard to feel at the time, it affects you and makes some small, tiny imperceptible part of you feel good. Or maybe it's better to say that a future you will feel good that you did those things anyway. Please check out my best mental health and schizophrenia tips here: www.mindaid.ca/mental-health-tips This list is the quickest way into my brain with all the things that helped me during my recovery. Like "Love Yourself Like Your life Depends on It", a book by Kamal Ravikant. He said to himself hundreds of times a day, "I love me" over and over, and it changed his life. Not sure if any of this is any help to you. Please keep fighting and know that we never know what tomorrow may bring and to always stay hopeful. You matter, you are a masterpiece, and the world needs you. Every day when you walk around your community you are having a positive effect on people even if you can't feel it. You're AMAZING!

So happy that the medical keto diet helps with your schizophrenia! That is amazing! I didn't eat any special diet, but perhaps I should have. I tried to eat healthy, but I could have done better than I did. One of the things I did was "reflective rumination", as talked about in the book "What Doesn't Kill Us: The New Psychology of Posttraumatic Growth" by Stephen Joseph. This book helped me in organizing my thoughts, even though I didn't have PTSD (I had schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression). The book is written for PTSD from violent and non-violent events as well. "Reflective rumination" is taking your experience and trying to reframe it in a way where you learn from it and become stronger. I don't know for sure if this is what helped me. But I do know that I had an overwhelming desire to sit there and just think (reflect) a lot of the time. There is a negative, downward-spiral, "my-life-is-awful" kind of rumination, but there is also a productive, "let's-try-to-figure-this-out" kind of rumination (reflective). I would lay there thinking about things and little by little I was able to feel a bit better and think a bit clearer. Like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. After so many minutes of "reflecting", my mind would go kind of blank/white, and then I would get up and continue with my day, but all those little bits of pushing into clearer thinking added up and today I think fairly clearly (as much as any human thinks clearly, haha!). Is this any help? Please check out my best mental health and schizophrenia tips here: www.mindaid.ca/mental-health-tips

Thank you for the explanation. I am glad “What Doesn’t Kill Us” helped you. It’s interesting to hear what helps different people. I wish you good health in the future! Best, Caitlin