From Waking Dream to Reality

By Petter Nilsen

From waking dream to reality is a book about living with a mental health problem. The Author tells about his experiences with hospitalization, anxiety, depression, paranoid schizophrenia, coping and therapy to name some of the topics. The book includes a psychologist, a psychiatric nurse, his parents and a friend. It focuses on different aspects related to mental illness. The book has different approaches from the other persons that have written in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483565620

Book preview

I

Briefly about paranoid schizophrenia

Early on in this book, I would like to provide a more detailed description of the disease paranoid schizophrenia, to give some understanding of this disease and what it is like to suffer from it.

Paranoid schizophrenia often sets in when people are in their thirties or older, and a key symptom is that the person suffers delusions while fully conscious. People with this diagnosis may hear commanding or threatening voices, but it is also possible to have the diagnosis without hallucinations. Sufferers will often have delusions of being persecuted or poisoned, ideas which others find meaningless. Some will also feel they have a special calling in life. This calling can often be so grandiose and improbable that it makes no sense to other people.

Within the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, a distinction is made between positive and negative symptoms. A negative symptom is that no emotion is communicated through body language and facial mimicry. Seen together, negative and positive symptoms mean that a person diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia will show a social or work-related failure to communicate. Many with this disorder will suffer a great deal of anxiety and depression, and will try to withdraw from other people.

The disorder creates disruptions in the person’s thoughts, senses, relationship to self, to other people and to everyday activities. With regard to factors that can trigger schizophrenia, one often talks about the stress-vulnerability model. It refers to the fact that if the stress level increases, the patient becomes more vulnerable to symptoms. The disorder is also seen in light of the interaction between biological, psychological and psychosocial factors.

Prognoses for paranoid schizophrenia vary, and roughly one in four patients recover. Early treatment is important for the outcome and for increasing the chances of recovery. It is assumed that between 12 000 and 16 000 people in Norway live with this disease. It affects men and women equally, but it often begins earlier in men. The diagnosis is made on the basis of long-term symptoms. Transitions between paranoid schizophrenia and other mental disorders are fluid, and the diagnosis is made after a discretionary assessment.

Conversation therapy, physical activity and the right diet can assist on the way to recovery. One can learn to live with the disease in the best possible way and thereby reduce the symptoms. Schizophrenia patients often have a defect in the brain structure which doctors believe is the cause of the disease. This defect is thought to have occurred at birth or due to a virus. The disease can also be caused by environmental factors which the person has been exposed to at some stage in life.

The most common and most effective treatment for this disorder is medication, but psychotherapy and support groups are also important forms of treatment. Some people can life a good life with this disorder, and some make a full recovery. However, there are also some who never get much better, and who have to live with periods of psychosis and illness for the rest of their lives.

Part 1:

My life from onset of the disease until I was admitted

Onset of the disease

I was first admitted to psychiatric hospital when I was 19 years old, and for the third and last time as a 28-year-old. The diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia was only confirmed during my final hospital stay. In this part of the book I will discuss what I think are the reasons why I developed a psychosis and subsequently was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

I have had impaired hearing since birth, and was encouraged from early childhood to wear a hearing aid. I tried that a few times, but it did not feel comfortable, so I stopped wearing it. Reduced hearing and no hearing aid became more of a problem during my teenage years. It was harder to ignore the feeling of not being able to hear properly. If I was with a group of people and couldn’t hear what was being said, I tried to cover it up, often pretending that I had heard it all. But as reduced hearing affected me more and more, I preffered to spend time with as few people as possible.

One might say I developed a kind of social anxiety. Since I found it embarrassing to be hard of hearing, I tried to pretend I didn’t mind if I missed something that had been said. This problem escalated at upper secondary school (age 16-19 in the Norwegian system), particularly in the second year, when I had moved to Stavanger with my parents.

By then I had developed social anxiety, was often absent from school and avoided other social interaction. I also felt depressed and had by now developed a kind of general anxiety. Some of my teachers saw this and tried to get me to talk to a psychologist at school. I believe much of the reason why I did not want to see psychologist or seek help, was that I felt mental health problems would make me different from the others. To admit that I needed a psychologist, would be a sad day indeed.

At this stage I think I suppressed my problems, quite unwilling to accept that I needed help. Admitting my need for help seemed like a very big step. I gradually dropped out of school after that second year and spent a lot of time alone in my room. After a while, things got so serious that I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Stavanger.

Even though I had struggled with mental health problems for a long time, I had been careful to hide it from my parents. It was therefore like a bubble bursting when I told them that I often suffered from anxiety and felt very depressed.

The main problems that led to hospitalisation that first time was anxiety and depression. I also had panic attacks and did not know how to handle them. To my way of thinking, just admitting that you need professional help, is to break down a huge barrier.

If you have a physical disease, you see a doctor and have no trouble talking about it. But with mental health problems, particularly in the beginning, it seems tempting to explain your feelings in other ways.

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