Paranoid Schizophrenia?

Does anyone have any experience with this? I just took the Minnesota Mutliphasic Personality Inventory, and it showed I was paranoid and schizophrenic. I never knew. Are there medications for it? How does it effect your life?

Hi, I'd suggest you go see your doctor and if possible / necessary a psychiatrist, but if your symptoms haven't been causing you any problems, then maybe you don't need to. At the end of the day there are medications (mainly antipsychotics) which they will probably want to dope you up on and the experience isn't usually very nice. In my experience and it is a common one, you will get significant weight gain, sedation, lethargy... and if you're really lucky you may even get tardive dyskinesia where you look like a complete nutcase with odd / bizarre facial movements, worm like movements of your tongue and allsorts of weird spasms that are sooooo delightful. This is rare apparantly, but I got the odd tongue movement experience on a lowish dose of chlorpromazine.... have to say I've found this one the best out of the lot that I've tried (abilify, olanzipine, risperadal) though as don't sleep 23 hours of the day and put on a stone in less than a month (have gone from 8 stone to 13 1/2 and at 5'3" that's alot. Some of the weight I put on because I was pregnant but alot of it was the medication. I have since lost 2 stone thank god but still nowhere near what I should be. It is very hard to loose the weight when you are still taking a medication that makes you want to eat a horse!

Anyway.... back to the test you did. I've done a couple of these myself out of interest and I have been told I've got everyone of the things I have done tests for. What are the odds that is true? They do say you should take the results to your doctor as they can make a proper diagnosis for you, whereas a computer programme usually cannot. That's only my opinion.... do what you think is best for you.

oboejive wrote:Does anyone have any experience with this? I just took the Minnesota Mutliphasic Personality Inventory, and it showed I was paranoid and schizophrenic. I never knew. Are there medications for it? How does it effect your life?

It can make you constantly suspicious that others are disloyal, insincere, holding grudges, or trying to harm you even when they're not. For me, it has seriously impacted my social life. There have been times when I've lashed out at people simply for saying "hello" to me, because I thought they had some bad motive behind it at the time. It's impossible for me to forget any time in which I've done something that hurt another person, because I fear that they may try to seek revenge or that it will come back to haunt me in the future; or in which someone inadvertently said something that mildly offended me, because I viewed it as a personal attack. There have been people who have tried to show friendship to me who I have brushed aside because I thought they did not sincerely respect me as a person, and had some ulterior motive behind their kindness, and as a result these people have come to view me as not wanting their friendship, which isn't true. There might be times that I hear someone make an insulting remark about someone else, and automatically assume that they are talking about me.

These are some examples of how paranoia can affect a person's life.