can a person with paranoid schizophrenia live a long life and take good care of themselves?
I' often thought that my mother is schozphrenic. She thinks people follow her around and watch what she does, she thinks her family of origin have chealted her out of her inheritance, at one time she thought one of her daughters, my sister, plotted to take money from her. She very often makes sure to tell others how great she is, she has no empoathy with others. At times from things she has saiod, I think she hears eople talking about her. Even with all this, she takes very good care of herself, and held a job for quite a few years and did well at it. I have a difficlt rerlationship with her. I am searching for answers to help me understand her and har effect on me.
Hello Pamela
Can relate to your struggles in maintaining an ongoing positive relationship with your mother, who from your description, does seem to have many characteristics seen in sz or similar disorders of paranoid distortion of reality, although I am no expert.
The difficulties you describe that are particularly puzzling (and frustrating??) seemfrom your question to be the mixture of the above delusions in someone who 'can't be ill' because they are coping, keeping smart etc to outsiders often at the expense of feeling hard done by by their family.
It is a coping strategy in their untreated world of illness requiring huge energies of them.Women are often particularly good at it!
Very diffucult for a close family member whose motives may be misinterpreted and intended helpful gestures backfire.
My suggestion , from experience, would be the more you can accept an illness in your mother, and to yourself 'name the name even if not quite exact,' it may help you feel more relaxed and see your mother's identity and her illness as separate, so you may take her illnesses' outbursts less personally. You are both changed by the disease entering her life, unbidden and as yet untreated.
Good luck anyway
Chris,
facing accepting schizoprhenia diagnosis in son, as yet not confirmed, as 'he does not see himself as ill'
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