Treatment Adherence

When someone with schizophrenia stops taking medication or skips other treatments, it can be frustrating and difficult for loved ones. You may naturally feel powerless. However, you have more influence than you realize. Here are several ways you can help.

• Make your support contingent on adherence. It’s common for loved ones to support the person financially and provide them with a place to live.
• Help them find effective treatment. Get your loved one involved in therapy and working with an experienced psychiatrist.
• Set up reminders for medication. Use pill containers, checklists and signs to make remembering to take medication much easier.
• Try injectable medication. With an injection, the person does not have to face the decision every day about taking medication, and remind themselves every day that they have an illness.

Will Marijuana Help?

When it comes to mixing marijuana and schizophrenia, the facts could not be more clear. They go together like gasoline and a lit match; Dangerous! Unfortunately, people with schizophrenia sometimes turn to marijuana or other street drugs in an effort to self-medicate. What kind of results do they get? Study after study shows marijuana to be an instigating factor in the onset of schizophrenia and a trigger for schizophrenic episodes.

In one example, a study interviewed 50,000 members of the Swedish Army about their drug consumption and followed up with them later in life. Those who were heavy consumers of marijuana  at age 18 were over 600% more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia over the next 15 years than those did not take it. Experts estimate that between 8% and 13% of all schizophrenia cases are linked to marijuana / cannabis use during teen years.

Use of street drugs (including LSD,methamphetamine,marijuana/hash/cannabis) and alcohol have been linked with significantly increased probability of developing psychosis and schizophrenia. This link has been documented in over 30 different scientific studies over the past 20 years.  

Marijuana is not the answer.

How It Feels - Schizoaffective Disorder

Kathryn Lum explains how it feels to have schizophrenia. This is an excerpt from an episode of Mental Health Matters, a program about mental health.