In an ideal world, everyone in recovery would be in remission.  Read my SharePost Optimism and Hope for Successful Treatment Outcomes that I first published here in 2007 when I started working for HealthCentral.

A recent study reveals schizophrenia patients and their psychiatrists differ in remission definitions.  How they depart in their thinking: the patients viewed better subjective wellbeing to be the most important factor while their doctors believed better symptom scores were the most important factor for remission.

(Schizophrenia patients, psychiatrists differ in remission definitions, retrieved on July 20, 2012 from www.news-medical.net/news/. . .)

It begs the idea that remission is a function of the effectiveness of the medication to treat a person's symptoms while recovery is a function of how the person lives his or her life and is able to manage the illness as well as activities of daily living (ADL) skills and long-term planning.

I write this SharePost because as of this July I've been in remission from schizophrenia for 20 years.  I credit my success in this aspect of my recovery solely with the effect of the medications I've taken over the years. 

For 20 years, I took Stelazine at a low dose and currently I've been taking Geodon since April 2007 so it's been over five years I'm on the atypical.  As soon as I started the cross-titer from the Stelazine to the Geodon [within three days] I noticed an improvement.  The new drug continued to work its charm up to the three years after I started taking it.

This is what I advised a woman a year ago: it can take a number of weeks for the medication to kick in and you do often have to give the medication at least three years to experience the full benefit you'll achieve from taking it.

At a certain point: you will know if you've gotten the best efficacy you can from the medication.  Discuss with your psychiatrist  as soon as you're given the pills the time when he or she thinks you can reasonably expect that you've gotten the most from the drug you possibly can.

A lot of you will need to revisit at that point whether you need to change the dose or change the medication depending on whether you have residual symptoms.  A friend of mine took Zyprexa and continued to hear voices so his parents paraded him through numerous doctors' offices until they found the psychiatrist who was a drug wizard who gave him the drug that stopped the voices totally.

How can you tell whether you should try a new drug that might halt the symptoms or keep on taking the current drug even though you have symptoms?  It might be a benefit to try the new drugs that come out on the market.  My other friend heard voices for 10 years and in that time his doctor prescribed each new drug as it came on the market.  One day, the latest drug completely stopped the voices and it was like a light switch went off and he had a new life.