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With schizophrenia, how to help takes on a greater magnitude when someone you love is experiencing the condition. What do you do first? Where do you go for help? Schizophrenia is a much-misunderstood, multi-faceted mental health disorder that requires coordinated, comprehensive, and professional treatment for the best outcomes. Here are some considerations for how to help someone facing schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia: How to Help
It can be challenging to help someone facing schizophrenia. While the condition may be newly diagnosed, the topic of schizophrenia and how to help may confuse and frighten you. You may want to do all you can, yet wonder if you’re providing proper assistance.
Educate Yourself
As a caregiver, loved one, family member, or someone living with a person facing schizophrenia, you’re understandably interested in learning more about schizophrenia, its symptoms, and its impact on individuals. Think of this as continuing education, since new developments are constantly occurring.
Schizophrenia: What Is It?
Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder that affects some 3.2 million adults in the U.S.. It affects how the individual behaves, thinks, and feels, yet that doesn’t mean the condition has to control their life.
What Causes Schizophrenia?
The causes of schizophrenia are not entirely known. Yet experts say schizophrenia can be triggered or caused by genetics and the environment.
If there is a family history of schizophrenia, others may be at higher risk of developing the condition. The genetic risk for schizophrenia is complicated. Genetics play a substantial role in this mental health disorder, but how different genetics contribute to schizophrenia risk is not straightforward.
Similarly, naturally occurring brain chemical imbalances could increase the risk of schizophrenia.
Other risk factors, in combination with genetic ones, may trigger schizophrenia. These include head injury, using hallucinogens or mind-altering drugs, stress, toxins, or virus exposure during the brain’s development stage.
What Are the Symptoms of Schizophrenia?
While symptoms vary from one individual to another, sometimes significantly, there are two schizophrenia symptom types: positive and negative. It is essential to know that not everyone with schizophrenia will have most or all symptoms. Furthermore, the way the person experiences these symptoms can change over time.
Positive schizophrenia symptoms include additional behaviors and feelings not usually present. These are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, behavior, and thinking.
Negative schizophrenia symptoms are those that reduce behaviors and feelings usually present. These include the inability to do daily tasks, losing interest in everyday tasks and activities, difficulty carrying on conversations and other speech problems, avoidance of family and friends, and lack of emotion.
Get Professional Help
No one you know, and certainly not you, has all the answers about schizophrenia. How to help best is by advocating for the person to seek professional diagnosis and treatment from mental health professionals. They are the experts, and you can feel confident that by seeking care from them, you and your loved one will get an accurate diagnosis and be able to do something about schizophrenia.
What’s involved will likely include the following:
- The doctor will order tests, a physical exam, and screenings. The goal is to rule out potential other conditions. Since there is no definitive cause of schizophrenia, diagnosing the mental health condition is an elimination process.
- A psychiatrist will conduct a psychiatric evaluation. This entails observing the individual and asking questions about their moods, demeanor, thoughts, and other criteria set by the American Psychiatric Association.
- Do you know the different types of schizophrenia? What about typical signs of those types? Most people don’t. And the person who may have schizophrenia cannot self-diagnose. Only a mental health professional can adequately give a diagnosis of schizophrenia and differentiate between the different types of this mental health disorder. And only then can appropriate treatment be decided and begin.
Offer Emotional Support
If you want to help the person with schizophrenia, providing a non-judgmental and compassionate environment for them to express their feelings is vital. Remember that this is a scary time for them and you. While you may not know precisely what they are going through with schizophrenia, how to help them shows in your emotional support. Your calming, loving care is more important than you realize.
Foster Communication
Another tip is to encourage open and honest communication. Actively listen to their experiences. It may be difficult for them to articulate their thoughts and feelings. It may also take time for them to process their thoughts enough to tell you about what they did today that affected them positively or negatively.
For example, they may be frightened or angered by other people’s reactions or their lack of knowledge and empathy.
Promote Medication Adherence
When dealing with schizophrenia, how to help the individual also includes discussing the importance of taking their medication and supporting them in adhering to their prescribed treatment.
Antipsychotic medications help make psychotic symptoms (delusions and hallucinations) less frequent and intense. Antidepressants and mood stabilizers may also be prescribed to help prevent episodes and help with other symptoms. these medications are usually prescribed for daily use in liquid or pill form. Some schizophrenia antipsychotic drugs are injectable, given once or twice a month.
You can also encourage the person facing schizophrenia to share medication decisionmaking with their doctor and healthcare provider. As a caregiver, you can be included in this discussion. The goal is to determine the most appropriate medication type, combination, and dose for the individual.
How to Deal With a Schizophrenic Person
First, remember that the person is an individual who is now experiencing schizophrenia. They are not a disease. They have a condition. Treat them with the utmost respect and dignity as you would want others to treat you.
This is crucially important when the person experiences a schizophrenic episode. These are wildly unpredictable and can frighten the individual going through the episode and everyone around them. Watch for early warning signs that the episode is about to occur. These include:
- Sleeplessness or sleep difficulty
- Stress
- Fear
- Concentration difficulty
- Confusion
- Fatigue
- Loss of energy
- Increased annoyance or short-temperedness
- No interest in daily activities
- More frequent experiences of hallucinations or delusions
What Will Help Schizophrenia?
There are some practical things to help schizophrenia that loved ones and family members can do.
- Assist With Practical Needs: Help them manage daily tasks, such as organizing appointments, managing finances, or finding housing options.
- Encourage Participation in Psychosocial Treatments: While undergoing therapy, the person facing schizophrenia may be offered treatments to help them solve daily challenges. Such treatment can also help them better manage their symptoms. Treatments include psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and training in behavioral skills.
- Check for Support Groups: Education and support groups are offered through the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). There are peer-led support groups for people with schizophrenia and NAMI family support groups for the loved ones of those with schizophrenia.
- Seek Support and Take Care of Yourself: Good self-care is crucial for loved ones and family members of those with schizophrenia. To be there for them, you must be healthy and well-adjusted. Ensure you maintain friendships, take time for activities and pursuits you enjoy, and keep a positive attitude.
- Stay Informed About Breakthroughs in Schizophrenia Treatment: Research is ongoing into effective treatments for schizophrenia, so it’s essential to be current. Since schizophrenia is a lifelong condition, the struggles your loved one goes through will continue. Yet, medical breakthroughs occur—even in areas where remission and cures are unlikely.
- Take the Next Step: For schizophrenia, how to help means taking the next step. Whatever stage you or your loved one is at now in trying to cope with schizophrenia’s many and varying symptoms, learning about treatment options can be a life-affirming approach. It isn’t one to take lightly, yet it can make a tremendous difference in their quality of life and sense of self-purpose.
In need of resources for a loved one with schizophrenia? Call our treatment experts at FHE Health. We’re always available to help you explore options and answer any questions you might have.
