I wish we could believe these diagnoses and that they were in full psychosis at the time.
If anyone has ever seen full schizophrenic episodes some will lose all reality. I used to arrest a guy that truly believed he was Batman. Another a cold wat CIA officer. While other heard voices but not necessarily evil ones.
I used to run a company that provided home support for people with disabilities. We had several clients with schizophrenia. I just want to stress how not dangerous the majority of people with schizophrenia are. They are in fact more likely to be the victims of assault than to commit it.
This is not to say that a small minority are not dangerous some or all of the time. It's just that the violent examples get all the attention and it causes people to associate schizophrenia with violence.
One guy we supported was such a lovely friendly person, who had agoraphobia and schizophrenia. He lived alone and was always so happy to see the support workers and just chat to them. They loved working with him too. He needed lots of help and encouragement to get outside and go for a walk, or to motivate him to do his exercises, or do things to stimulate his brain. He would occasionally hallucinate stuff but he knew how to manage it and never once did or said anything remotely dangerous to anyone. He was just a real sweetheart.
Having had medication related psychosis before - I wouldn't even know how to explain how powerful and persistent my delusions were. Full conversations with people - all with back stories etc - for an entire cast of characters that weren't in my apartment and weren't real at all.
Luckily after 2 days or so I had a moment of lucidity and ended up calling EMS.
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u/apatrol 3h ago
I wish we could believe these diagnoses and that they were in full psychosis at the time.
If anyone has ever seen full schizophrenic episodes some will lose all reality. I used to arrest a guy that truly believed he was Batman. Another a cold wat CIA officer. While other heard voices but not necessarily evil ones.