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Notes -
I just ~successfully talked my schizophrenic estranged best friend out of killing himself, or at least stopped him midway through the process. I suppose my involvement is a mixed bag, because I was the one who initially diagnosed him as a schizo and sent him to a shrink, which is why he he had antipsychotics at hand alongside benzos and SSRIs. Eh, you can't win them all.
It would be exceedingly rude of me to bill him for the services, so I'm going to go home and take a well deserved nap before I have to go back to work.
At least I know I'll be a good (licensed) psychiatrist, they call on me everytime someone with some kind of psychiatric comorbidity acts up and I get them calm and compliant in minutes 🙏
One of my good friends from college has a brother that is schizo in the US. They are at their wits end dealing with him. They are Indian and have been considering flying him to India and having him committed to an institution there. For various reasons it is mostly impossible to permanently involuntarily commit a person to a mental institute in the united states.
It does seem like one of the worst possible mental disorders to have. One of my Dad's best friends (lets call him Mark) had a son that was schizo. Mark was stabbed on two different occasions by his son, before his son eventually committed suicide. I have a cousin (Adam) who is potentially schizo, and has become very religious. I yelled at my Dad, cuz my Dad was talking with Adam and dropped that I'm an Atheist. Like do you want me to get stabbed Dad?
Anyways, good job, and best of luck in that line of work.
Thank you!
Schizophrenia is an exceptionally shitty illness, especially since it has no outright cure and you can only try to contain disease progression. It takes about 25 years off your life on average from the combination of meds and poor life decisions.
The meds are often terrible to be on too, they just beat having uncontrolled schizophrenia.
Atheists truly are the most persecuted minority, about tied with Gamers 🙏. I'm glad you didn't get stabbed, and while my friend isn't normally violent, who knows what the fuck can happen during an episode. Assuming I have the luxury of choosing a specialization in psych, I'm going the ADHD route, the biggest headache the doctors have is teen pregnancy and poor compliance with meds haha.
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I watched him take out like 40 pills, 10 of them each would be dangerous, and I have no idea what I could have done if he'd taken them all before I could stop him, short of forcing him to puke and giving CPR 👀
The part where he threatened to go for the knife was the worst, though I didn't think he would actually stab me. God knows he's as thin as a beanstalk, so I'd take my odds in a fight.
Like the worst part was when I initially assumed he'd already ODd and was waiting for the ambulance, and he excused himself to drink water. Imagine my reaction when I noticed he wasn't back in 10 minutes and when I went to find him, he's busy making that cocktail for himself. When he gets better I'm going to whoop his ass myself for putting me through this 🙏
Do you know if anyone's around to watch him at the moment, like a family member or another friend? It's probably incredibly impractical for you to do so (and it's not really your sole responsibility), but it definitely doesn't sound like a good time for him to be left alone. After someone tries to make a death cocktail for themselves and threatens to use a knife when prevented, suicide watch seems like a perfectly reasonable measure.
Oh I left him with plenty of company, more than he'd like for sure.
I made sure I was there until his parents arrived, and they arrived to find an ambulance waiting for them, but he wouldn't get in on my say so and believe me I tried.
At this point his family are fed up with him, and the mental health facilities around here are pretty poor. I'd encourage him to be committed, but I don't think it would work and he doesn't deserve to be locked away indefinitely.
His dad is a doc too, so it's his headache how to proceed. I just spent 3 or 4 hours there, leaving only when help was at least theoretically available, and I have work later anyway.
I honestly don't have any clue if we even have an equivalent for suicide watch, but I wouldn't put much stock in it either. You guys underestimate how shit the psychiatric services are in the third world!
Oh trust me I know, I grew up there (and had an impossible time finding any halfway-decent mental health services there when I needed it). By suicide watch I just mean an informal one made up of friends and family.
Glad to hear you left him with company, and good on you for talking him down.
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