What’s the point of having a panel of therapists if we don’t utilize them to share information about mental health illnesses. In this episode, we do a deep dive on schizophrenia. We talk about what schizophrenia is, how common it is in society, and what life is like for those that have it. Was there anything in this show that surprised you? Do you think you know someone that has schizophrenia? How would you handle yourself when interacting with someone that has it?
Tune in to See Schizophrenia Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Think about these three questions as you listen:
Do you know what schizophrenia really is?
Do you realize this is within likely your own neighborhood?
that is a life with schizophrenia really like?
Links referenced during the show:
Intro Music by Reid Ferguson – https://reidtferguson.com/
@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
https://www.facebook.com/reidtferguson
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg
Audio Podcast Version Only
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Episode #235 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, you have found Through a Therapist’s Eyes. This is episode 2 35 on July the sixth. Actually already we keep moving right through this year, man. July the sixth over halfway through it is already halfway through 2023 nuts. Mr. John Pope hanging out with us over there. How are you sir? I, I am doing outstanding.
Had a busy week. Busy week. Busy day actually. Yeah. You said day. Busy week or busy day? Busy. Busy
John-Nelson Pope: weekend. Busy day. Well, we
Chris Gazdik: were both here on July 4th. That’s right. We both worked on the fourth. That’s right. You have had a busy week through therapist’s eyes. We are gonna be talking about schizophrenia today.
Listen to these questions. Do you know what schizophrenia really is? That’s something that I wonder and think. I suspect a lot of people really don’t know what that even kind of is. And then do you realize why? This is within, you know, [00:01:00] normally your own world, your own neighborhood, your own circles. Like you do find, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll kind of talk about how, kind of, how common this is.
Even though it only affects 1% of our population. It’s not something that’s just obscure and doesn’t happen. And then what is it really, like, what is a life with schizophrenia really like? So again, this is through a therapist size. We are. Live on Thursdays on YouTube live. Check us out on that. I think you’ll enjoy interacting with us there.
Contact also at through a therapist size.com is a good way to email us to get interaction. We like that. We have the panel. Victoria hasn’t been with us for like a month actually. That’s right. Where has she been hiding you? Come back Victoria, right? Where are you at? Girl course we had guests and we had different scheduling weirdnesses and you know, then she had a childcare thing.
I dunno, that’s swear guys. She’s around. She’ll be back next week. Five stars on Apple Review. Tell all your friends, help [00:02:00] us grow the show. We want your help in 2023. So The human emotional experience is what we endeavor to figure out together. That’s what we’re about. So what do you think about this topic?
Man’s schizophrenia and we’re not providing any Oh, we don’t provide the service of any kind as well. Even though you get information directly from a panel of therapists in your own. Well, I’m
John-Nelson Pope: very home. I’m very excited about this topic. Are you really? I’m a of. Of a split mind about it.
Chris Gazdik: Why? How so? What do you mean?
No, I’m joking. That was disassociative with a disorder. Joke.
John-Nelson Pope: Joke. Yeah. No, I’m, I’m excited about it because even though it’s not pervasive, it, it’s significant. In a, I think in terms of, of, I think we may all know someone that has this
Chris Gazdik: condition. Yeah, that’s the thing. You know, I was, let’s, let’s go there for, for a moment.
Cause I spent a little bit of time on it in the intro, you know, with the question that I had, how did I pose the question? Mm-hmm. Do, do you [00:03:00] realize this is within your own neighborhood, your own circles? Like I, I literally had just somebody today that I met as a new client and she told me that I could, I could say this.
So, hey there, I hope you’re with us by the way. Mm-hmm. No, she, she has a family member in her own circle mm-hmm. That had schizophrenia. And I was like, wow. Like how ironic is that? I’m, I’m talking to a new client and I have this topic and part of what I wanted to do is to kind of. Take away the myth, the the mm-hmm.
The, the weirdness that people have. Like who has schizophrenia? Like, does this ever happen? This is a weird thing. And, you know, that’s the really, that’s the crazy people, isn’t it? And it’s like, that’s not it at all.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s right. And, and I think media in our movies and in our culture, we have some misconceptions.
Mm-hmm. And, and we carry that in. In terms of a, of a, an understanding, I think we, we have a misunderstanding.
Chris Gazdik: We have a misunderstanding of what. This is for sure. [00:04:00] And so we wanna, we wanna blow that up a little bit. We actually
did a show on schizophrenia a long time ago. Yeah. It’s been a few years ago. So she picked the topic.
Mm-hmm. I didn’t pick the topic I wanted to do. Maybe. Well good on LaDonna. Right? Good on LaDonna. Cuz it, it’s something that It will get lost, like it doesn’t get talked about a lot. So I also have a family member in my own family, we believe had some sort of psychotic disorder. And I think when before the mics came on, did you say that you did as well or, yes.
John-Nelson Pope: Yes, I did. I, I, but that person has long passed,
Chris Gazdik: so Right. And so is my Aunt Mary. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s just, it’s just amazing to me that this affects about 1.5% of our population. Mm-hmm. But that 1.5% represents how many people would you think in the United States?
John-Nelson Pope: Oh, it’s over 3
Chris Gazdik: million people, right? No, like 35 million if I got the numbers right.
Oh, where is that? Oh, no, you’re right.
John-Nelson Pope: 3.2. 3.2. So it’s [00:05:00] the size of Houston. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, Texas. Okay. That’s a lot of people. It’s a lot of people. Yeah, it’s a lot of people. 3 million folks have this type thing, but 1% is kind of more on the rare side uhhuh, and I honestly wonder if it is quite that rare. You know, maybe we’ll, we’ll get to talking a little bit about that.
Well,
John-Nelson Pope: I suspect it might be a little more than that, and I, and I think there’s, and I think we’ll get into that.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I, I just, I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s, there’s a little bit more that that, that we don’t realize happens that is, is we just have kind of a lack of identification. Mm-hmm.
Given that You know, people feel like this is one flew over the Coco’s Nest. This is something that well, we’ll get, we’ll get into it. So broadly, John, I’m just kinda curious. I was even wondering like I. In our field, we see a lot of [00:06:00] this in inpatient facilities. Mm-hmm. For sure. Right. You know, in
the mental health system that I worked in, you know, we had, we, we had some of this early on in my career, and then we got away from that with, with the way that mental health care is delivered, at least in the states the way this is.
But if you don’t work in a, in a crisis facility or a rehab center or whatnot, You might not come across it as much. Mm-hmm. Working in mental health. So I am very curious to you Yeah. In your well-traveled experiences, like you’ve been doing this for a minute. Yeah. And I think I know most of your experiences and stuff, but I am literally not sure if you’ve ever had a schizophrenic patient or not.
Yes.
John-Nelson Pope: Okay. I have, and I was, it was before I was trained formally in, in terms I was in, in pastoral. I was a naval chap, a navy chaplain, and I was assigned to the Psychiatric ward of the Naval [00:07:00] Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. And so
Chris Gazdik: that’s enlisted people?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Enlisted people. Yeah, officers. But in this case, it was an actually he was a newly minted semen.
No kidding. Yeah. Just recruit. And he had, well, okay. Okay. And he had just He started becoming delusional. He started becoming paranoid. He was diagnosed and was placed on the, on the ward. And he actually had a job at for his temporary duty. Yeah, he was, he was basically inpatient, outpatient, worked at the hospital and I worked with him.
He actually worked at the hospital. Yeah. Well that, it’s interesting. This was back 35 years ago. Yeah. And so he was given a job. Yeah. And he was able to do some minimal amount of work, but he found it, he was, had so much medication that it was very difficult for him to concentrate at the
Chris Gazdik: time. Oh, so you’re saying he was [00:08:00] diagnosed and then put in He was diagnosed in mental hospital.
And treated. And treated. And then given a job. Given a job, but he was still Kevin enlisted. Yes. Diagnosed schizophrenia kept him as enlisted until he
John-Nelson Pope: got better. That is shocking. See, that’s the thing is back in the day, wow, they would keep people that with H I V for example, that was during the, the, the heyday of unfortunately of aids really.
And so the Navy would not let people leave the service until after they made sure that they. Their health was taken care of. Those issues were taken care of. And so a person would be, for example, with h I v, would go into full-blown aids. They would treat them and, and not medically retire them until the last
Chris Gazdik: moment, until they were better or until a better or worse terminal.
Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. That is not the way we do now. No, that has changed. Interesting. Yeah. You [00:09:00] know, it, it’s interesting. My, my, my surprise was such that, you know, how would we have an enlisted. Member of the military have such a significant, cuz this is a serious issue. Schizophrenia is not a simple mental health issue.
It’s not like, you know, it’s, it’s a heavy diagnosis, a bi mm-hmm. A biological reality that your body is really struggling in, in, in some very serious, and that’s the other
John-Nelson Pope: thing I think, I’m sorry. No, go ahead. Well, there’s an organic aspect of this and they could do brain imaging and MRIs and CT scans and we’ll see the differences in the brain structure as a, as a result of, of someone having schizophrenia.
Chris Gazdik: Correct. The, and, and well to get back to my thought real quick, and then we, we will, we’ll go there with maybe transition into what this is. Right. So at, at first when I was listening to you talk about an enlisted service member, I was kind of surprised in that how would we have somebody with a significant.
Syndrome or [00:10:00] issue. Diagnosis like this, but then occurs to me, well, because you’re enlisted, you, you train and you begin to serve. And then it begins to manifest well, and Right. He was 19. Right. And this is about the time that it begins to manifest. Yes, exactly. 17, 18, 20, 22. You know, in that early lifetime frame, this is when you’re perfectly fine, normal, normal thought process, normal cognition, normal sensory experience.
And then boom, this starts to come out and your brain starts like being very, very different with, with reality testing and the various things that we see with this. So yeah, in the military, treating them while they, he’s enlisted at that time of manifestation is really
John-Nelson Pope: pretty cool. Well, And then I also had someone in my congregation that was okay.
She actually, I had two overall really? But I’ve been a [00:11:00] minister for 44 years. Yeah. So, I mean, I’ve seen a lot Yeah. In terms of that. But, and they were both women. One was a young woman, it was about my age at the time, and she she had this, she was very prim and proper. And suddenly within a period of six months to a year, she had developed, she became promiscuous.
She was hearing voices, she was reacting. They kind of ruled out bipolar eventually, and for, and she had to be institutionalized for a few years. And she had this awakening that said, I can’t, I’m hearing these voices. I. I, I want to act on ’em. I’m not going to. Right, right.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. And yeah. You know, it’s funny, I, I just flipped through and I, I was listening to you tell that story of what you experienced with this coming out, you know, and, and I start flashing back to these different folks that I’ve worked with.[00:12:00]
You know, one. I forgot that about him. He was a, he was a teenager. Mm-hmm. And, and we end up identifying, I think, accurately schizoaffective disorder. Mm-hmm. Which is actually a combination of bipolar and what we’re talking about today. Schizophrenia, which is a pretty hard thing Yeah. For a teenager to start experiencing.
Can you imagine? Oh yeah. I mean, do you. That’s what we’ll get to when we talk about like what is life really like? Like we’ll get into that. Like what it this, can you just imagine reality testing? Meaning you don’t know if what you are feeling on your skin is real or not. You don’t know what you are seeing in, are these bugs the room is real or not?
You don’t know cuz there’s olfactory. What you’re smelling. Is that real? Mm-hmm. Or not? And of course, hearing it’s, and, and the
John-Nelson Pope: hearing is the most common.
Chris Gazdik: Auditory hallucination. Auditory. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So what is this, John? What is schizophrenia? How would you, how would you be able [00:13:00] to go at the definition without, without the prep?
I’m cheating. Okay. You can cheat. You can cheat. Go go with what you do. It
John-Nelson Pope: can be, it can be positive symptoms and by positive, it’s not positive. It’s, it would be manifested such as hallucinations, visual audio. Usually auditory hallucinations, olfactory hallucinations. It would be a sense of disorganized thinking speech, right?
Word salad. Basically when somebody was, it would be tangential. It would be hard to follow a person’s conversation. That would be manifesting signs and symptoms of schizophrenia. There could be an overreaction of, of, of emotions, or it could be a negative re symptoms. Symptoms, negative symptoms, okay.
Would be flat affect, right. For example there might be a sense of, of, of a withdrawal, not not having [00:14:00] contact with interaction with people. So there’s
Chris Gazdik: almost good stuff. You know your stuff, man. Banging. Yeah. Impressive Mr. Pope. And I could tell you, you look on the YouTube live, he is not reading and he’s going smiling, going code that really well with that.
Yeah. Do, do you remember the different types of schizophrenia? Were they disorganized, catatonic yeah. What are the other ones? I’m gonna
John-Nelson Pope: cheat. So catatonic would be more the, the,
Chris Gazdik: oh, disorganized.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Paranoid. Paranoid and paranoid is, is very difficult because one of the things that happens is that there can actually be a violence as a result of, of, of a person having that Paranoid ideation or it becomes homicidal ideations.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Well, they’re protecting themselves. Yeah. Yeah. They become paranoid that the FBI’s coming after them and then they’re gonna protect themselves. Yeah. My Aunt Mary had a little bit of that paranoid variety. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it mixed all in well together.
John-Nelson Pope: And you get, you get the the idea of the person putting up let’s say I knew [00:15:00] somebody that put up aluminum Foil when you talk about tin foil, but aluminum foil up on the windows to make sure that nobody was going to, to protect themselves from the, the cia.
And this person had her husband’s ashes on the mantle and she said, he talks to me all the time. Yeah. So. It was,
Chris Gazdik: it’s a lot.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. And other than that, she,
Chris Gazdik: it’s fine. And, and go. She was nice to talk, to Go a little further with that. Yeah. What do you mean? Other than that she was, she was,
John-Nelson Pope: I. She could cook, she could bake, she could she could drive and volunteer.
This was at, at church. And she was, other than that area, she was fairly mundane.
Chris Gazdik: What’s, and, and people would not. Think that way. Mm-hmm. Listen, I, the case that I was thinking about was a, a, a college kid that I was working with in [00:16:00] therapy, Uhhuh. I do not recall what he came to a therapy session for, but it was just stress, just turmoil and, you know, and various things like that.
Right. And so, you know, I started working with him and it, it was like, you know, he was fine. We had normal conversations talking about stress and worry and you know, his, how to manage the way he was feeling. And I was kinda younger clinician kind of as well. This was a while ago. And so he could relate to, he could relate to us.
We were probably, probably not too far out college. Let me see, when, when was this? It doesn’t matter, but I’m curious. Yeah, I mean, I was about five, six years out of grad school, so. When I had started to do therapy here, late twenties, trying, I was late twenties, early thirties maybe. Yeah. Anyway, so he appeared normal.
John Uhhuh. I didn’t know what was going on, and, but it was a, some oddity to him and there was, there was some of that disorganized thinking that was starting to manifest or that was a part of [00:17:00] his presentation. But then as we began to deal with a specific, Problem that he was having with his academic career.
He was upset with a, with a particular professor, and I stumbled upon this entire delusional, wholey , created, and became clear to me fabricated reality about this professor. And he brought in a videotape and a, and a box of matches and a note, and I actually kept this because I was so stunned at like, wow, this I, I diagnosed and figured out this psychotic, delusional state that this.
Seemingly otherwise normal looking and sounding guy was, was, was struggling with. And it was bizarre. And then from that we began to kind of identify a little bit of the more reality that he was dealing with, with his family
and some of the otherwise disorganized thought that he had. And there was some things that I think I, I had missed.
But yeah, man, it, it [00:18:00] connected. Things that were not connectable in his relationship with this professor. Mm-hmm. In a delusional way. I mean, it was, he was full-blown psychotic and I didn’t know it. That was my, my main point. Mm-hmm. With, with that, with that case. Yeah. It’s not exactly obvious some of these symptoms.
John-Nelson Pope: No, no, it’s not. Because they can present, let’s say in many areas is absolutely fully functioning. Functioning baseline normal. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: But, Not, yeah. But these things are absolutely a part of it. So, interesting. Functioning on a fundamental level decreases though, as things progress. These signs with hallucinations and that you were talking about with the positive and negative are there for about six months at least.
Manifest in late teens to the mid thirties. Mm-hmm. So this could be anywhere in your twenties. Mm-hmm. That this begins to pop out normal until it pops out and then it pops out. It’s like, you know, there’s not some people sort of rare though, can recover completely, which is interesting. And that, yeah.[00:19:00]
And then the psychotic symptoms do diminish over the course of a life cycle. And I’ll tell you, I was just listening to our podcast, skeptic, God of the Universe, John. And they were talking about this, the, the, the schizophrenic reality because of tumor uhhuh, so that they found, that’s right.
John-Nelson Pope: Do you remember the show Charles Whitman was the, the shooter in Austin?
Yeah. At the University of Texas. And he, he had a tumor basically after when they did the autopsy after, right After he had died. But he had killed a bunch of of people. Yeah. But that’s a result of, of, of tumor affecting one’s making one
Chris Gazdik: schizophrenic. Well, making one schizophrenic. That’s what was interesting to me to hear.
Now, he’s a neurologist. He doesn’t specialize in the mental health. The diagnostics. Kara supposedly does. Kara Santa
John-Nelson Pope: Maria, but she’s, yeah, she’s got an agenda. [00:20:00]
Chris Gazdik: Well, well there’s that. But Hey Kara, come on the show. We’ll talk to you. It’ll be really cool. But, but anyway, what I was really thinking a lot there is Dave Paul.
I was teasing . Yeah, I know you are. We, we love them all. Syndromes. Instead of diseases. Mm-hmm. Is what he’s kind of maintaining. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of the mental health Exactly. Conditions are in diagnostics of exclusion, uhhuh of other medical realities now. Right. I don’t know how I feel about that.
I feel it’s a little bit off Uhhuh, but he was talking about. Looking at the neurology and the brain imaging and the tumor reality and the different medical thyroid, maybe that Uhhuh contributes to creating schizophrenic like symptoms. So is he talking about,
John-Nelson Pope: Did you see this show, or did you, did you know what I’m talking about?
I did, yeah. And I’m wondering if it’s like a, a perfect storm of, of symptoms that come together and, [00:21:00]
Chris Gazdik: well, I, but I, I, I think that it, there can be a perfect storm with medical realities. Yes. Uhhuh and. With the people that I’ve worked with that have been carrying this diagnosis, Uhhuh, there is no tumor, there is no medical, there is no workup that was done.
Yeah. That found anything significant. And this is the common set of symptom sets that were there. Yeah. And it’s schizophrenia. Yeah. So I think, I don’t, I think he’s a little bias. Yeah. In his, in the medical realm of what. Medically creates schizophrenia that it’s only a syndrome. Otherwise, uhhuh, I think that we just don’t understand the medical, mental
John-Nelson Pope: health care.
Well, was there was an another idea of, of an inflammation, right? As being one of the causes Right. Or contributing causes of. Of
Chris Gazdik: this. And so the idea is you rule inflammation out, you rule tumors out, you roll, you know, brain injury out. You rule other things out, and [00:22:00] then because of the exclusion of these medical things mm-hmm.
You can then say schizophrenia. Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Which, okay, I got, I
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Right. How do you feel about that?
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I far be it from me to. Yeah, I, I can’t, I can’t comment on the medical aspects of it, but I can comment on, on thinking that I think it is a real thing and that it might be discrete from, let’s say, having like Charles Whitman and having a tumor.
Cause that it has to be more than that, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I think there are plenty of people that if you did an imaging of the brain, you would see some structural differences, but But there, that would be within the brain itself. So I, I, I just, I think that maybe it’s maybe there’s something that, that’s there.
It’s organic genetic [00:23:00] something.
Chris Gazdik: And it’s interesting, we have a YouTube, we have a YouTube live comment that that talks about. You know, can you have other mental health issues that hide schizophrenia or can it be identified easily? And, and I think that’s, that’s what we’re talking about right there.
There’s this blending that does happen. Yeah. Yeah. You,
John-Nelson Pope: you, you could have other, you could have a lot of anxiety and be, and have schizophrenia. You could, you could also an aspect of depression. You could, you could, well, those are
Chris Gazdik: part of the negative symptoms.
John-Nelson Pope: Negative symptoms, and so it ki let’s say you have a major mood disorder and it’s severe, and you would resemble, in some cases a negative presentation of schizophrenia or catatonia.
Chris Gazdik: So, so what is this really like? Let’s, let’s, let’s hit into the idea that we, we’ve hit this as a little bit common Uhhuh more than we would think. We’ve hit the idea of like, [00:24:00] kind of a little bit about what it is and, you know, I love this dialogue Uhhuh, we just had about tumors and other medical things that blend in.
What, what, what I, I, I, I wanted to dispel the belief that these people are crazy. And that they just act like fools or act nuts like you. Right.
John-Nelson Pope: There’s no intentionality in it. Is that what you’re saying? I
Chris Gazdik: think so. Yeah. I think so. Go, go with that. No, I, I,
John-Nelson Pope: I don’t think they’re acting this way on purpose or that they have they’re, they’re not all cra It’s not craziness.
Yeah. It’s different. Yeah. It’s
Chris Gazdik: I, I really kind of feel like, I think craziness
John-Nelson Pope: is, is not a good definition for anything. What does that
Chris Gazdik: even mean? Yeah. I, I really kind of feel like there’s, there’s, there’s a little bit of like wow factor. Yeah. When. If you can just imagine like, part of what I feel like I’ve been able to do really well throughout my career is put myself in people’s [00:25:00] shoes to genuinely try to experience what their experience and I, and I’ve done this with, with particularly that teenager, that Uhhuh that I worked with, he, he, I, I, I saw, was able to kinda like, Get into his experience and the way that he described what he was talking about or what he was experiencing, and particularly being early on and we had such a good rapport in therapy that he was willing to talk about what he really, really experienced.
And I, and I was able to like be like, wow. So here I am like this. Guy, I’m gonna call him. John in honor of you, John. Oh, thank you. I’ll say, I’ll say John was this teenager and you know, he’s thinking fine. He’s in school, he’s interested in girls, like he’s doing all the things that you and I and we all know that are part of normal development as a young adult.
And then he begins to have like these experiences that are just obscure, very random and not very often, but just like I heard shit in the hallway out there and mm-hmm. [00:26:00] I went out to check and there was nothing there, but there was a, there was like, I heard a voice. Mm-hmm. And then you just didn’t even think about it and you left it be, and you went along with your what, what life, but then you began to hear things.
Particularly intrusive at night that are intrusive, and there’s a directive thought that says, go get the dog and put him out. Kill him. Like this is a, I’m hearing this and I don’t know what to do with this, John. I don’t know. If it’s real. If it’s not, can you even begin to imagine how much that would freak you out?
Yeah. It’s gonna make you a little anxious and Yeah. When you begin to realize, it makes you scared too terrified. Yeah. There’s something really, really, really wrong with me. Mm-hmm. And I think that that’s what begins to happen as you begin to [00:27:00] experience these odd sensory. Auditory, visual or olfactory, your textile, those are feel, smell here.
See, those are your senses. This is a sensory issue where your mind is literally playing tricks on you. Yeah. If it were like able to understand, oh, it’s not a big deal, your mind is just doing this and it’s not real and, and it wouldn’t be much shame about it or wouldn’t be much fear about it, I would think schizophrenia would be like not a big deal.
Yeah,
John-Nelson Pope: but there’s also imagine also an aspect, do you imagine? Yeah, but there’s also that aspect, which is the urgency and the commands D directive nature of this. Sometimes. Sometimes, and that’s gotta be overwhelming
Chris Gazdik: for someone. Very much, much so. There is shame involved in it. There is embarrassment, there’s terrified fear.
There’s these very real experiences that get elevated. And then to one of our YouTube listeners was saying, same thing, [00:28:00] some folks just don’t think they have something as wrong with them. That’s what she said. Mm-hmm. And you’re right on. Cast mm-hmm. In, in the way that, that people are experiencing this in their real life.
As this develops, there’s like, I’m not crazy. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m holding onto my sanity, but I have this experience. It’s really weird. I don’t understand it. It makes me fear full and I don’t want anybody to know it’s happening, so I’m not gonna let anybody know. But I’m okay. I can get along.
I’m normal. Like, and you just go in and out of that, in and out of that
John-Nelson Pope: in, well, and that’s, it’s interesting because both with the young Navy se semen, he was from, actually from Montana all places. But there was a, my church member. And she would she would struggle and nighttime was the worst part of it and would tell her to do things.
And she had noticed herself having a personality changes. Yeah. And and she hated [00:29:00] that. And, but then she also felt. Compelled to to, to do many things that she normally would not. She’d become promiscuous and at one level in one time, and she said, I have to do something about this. And so she started complying with medication good and good.
She ended up being able to be a successful author. And right. Wrote children’s books,
Chris Gazdik: so, well, it’s a, it’s a good segment, right? Yeah. It’s a good segue to we’ve got on the show notes, listed an article. So Neil’s gonna join us a little bit to kind of help us understand like, there’s a lot of successful people that have engaged in life, but yet have these sensory experiences mm-hmm.
That are, are full-blown schizophrenia and It, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing to think about. So like, is there hope with this? Like, you know what there [00:30:00] is? Yeah. Because if you, if you get supported and you get to like, recover, like, you know, my teenager that I was working with, I think I named him John. Mm-hmm.
You know, John got very violent in school. Good name. It is a good name, right? Yeah. You like that name? But he got very violent in school because he was having a hard time dealing with his peers. He didn’t have a hard time accepting and feeling comfortable with himself. And so, you know, he, he started acting out and getting in trouble.
But we really got him calmed down and say like, look, this is okay. We can manage this, we can treat this, we can engage with this, and you don’t have to hide this like you were before. And I’m telling you, it was amazing to see him calm down and really get well. So people can be authors, people can be successful.
Neil, who we got that was famous, that had schizophrenia I’m curious, I don’t know how to tackle this list. There was a lot of people on the list.
Neil Robinson: Did you actually look at the list before
Chris Gazdik: you began or, I did. I did. I went about, I went about halfway, three quarters down. [00:31:00] Maybe you give us a name, John, if you recognized one of ’em and I, or I do we’ll, we’ll look a little bit in, more in depth at what their deal was.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. So we’ll just, just start going down list. Lionel Aldridge
Chris Gazdik: don’t know him, you? No, he was a football
Neil Robinson: player. Oh, okay. Okay. Sid Barrett.
John-Nelson Pope: Sid Barrett. No. He was
Neil Robinson: a founder, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd.
Chris Gazdik: Oh yeah, I read that. Okay. Stay there for a second. How, how did that, how did, how did the he function?
What was the Well, he, he
Neil Robinson: basically left after the The next frontman, David Gilmore took over and then he also had a lot of things with serious drug abuse and he was never actually, there were reports he had it, but he never actually confirmed it. But then as he grew and went, he had a lot of issues with a lot of other health issues as well.
So, but yeah, he was one that they never officially diagnosed him.
Chris Gazdik: There was but su of, but suspicious, suspected that as such. Okay. Yep.
Neil Robinson: All right, so next one is Charles Buddy Bolden. [00:32:00] He was you know that one? Mm-hmm. He was a jazz, jazz music pioneer. He was diagnosed at 1830. Artistic
John-Nelson Pope: are, are we starting to see a little trend?
Neil Robinson: There’s a couple of trends when we go through this that you’ll see some things. Yeah. He was a jazz musician diagnosed at 30. Yeah. Edward Einstein.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s Albert’s.
Chris Gazdik: We know Einstein.
Neil Robinson: Yep. He got diagnosed at age
Chris Gazdik: 20. This is his son, Albert Einstein’s son. I was surprised when I saw this list and I’m like, oh my gosh.
Neil Robinson: All right. Then we got Zelda
John-Nelson Pope: Fitzgerald. Yes. That’s she was they were the Fitzgeralds. They were he was an author and she was, they were married and she was a
Chris Gazdik: creative. Did you know she had schizophrenia? Yes. Oh, you did know that? Yes. Impressive.
John-Nelson Pope: Okay. F Scott Fitzgerald was the husband and he had his issues and struggles with alcoholism.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, he, he wrote the Great Gadsby, right? Plus
Chris Gazdik: a bunch of
Neil Robinson: other books. So,
John-Nelson Pope: Tinder is the Night was another
Neil Robinson: one. All right, so [00:33:00] Peter Green.
John-Nelson Pope: Peter Green,
Neil Robinson: no. Yeah. Guitarist and founder of Fleetwood Mac.
Chris Gazdik: Created a pretty, oh my goodness. Pretty big band.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. He was diagnosed at 31. Darryl Hammond.
John-Nelson Pope: Darryl Hammond is supposedly, yeah, Saturday Night Live.
Mm-hmm.
Neil Robinson: Comedian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He, that was a surprise to me. Killer. Killer
John-Nelson Pope: Clinton.
Neil Robinson: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, he had great, killer Clinton was a skid. Skiddy did. No,
John-Nelson Pope: no. He, I’m saying I’m an old guy. Okay. Killer Clinton was, he was an outstanding imitation. That, that was his, he
Chris Gazdik: Oh, okay. Okay. He did Clinton invitation imitation.
John-Nelson Pope: John. He was great.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. He was diagnosed in early during childhood. Oh
John-Nelson Pope: my goodness. Childhood. That’s
Chris Gazdik: kind of early. Yeah. What the heck? Okay.
Neil Robinson: Yep. Tom Harrell, he was diagnosed in his twenties. He’s a composer and a jazz musician. Okay. Are we
John-Nelson Pope: looking at creatives?
Chris Gazdik: Creative people, right? Yeah. Which is part of what I think a list like this does or helping us to understand, you know, you are not alone.
As with most [00:34:00] things in mental health, you feel like you’re alone, but you’re not alone. And, and the reality of it is, is as this gets managed mm-hmm. And we’ll talk a little bit more in a moment about, you know, what do we do to treat this and whatever, but, you know, you can live like mm-hmm. This, this is not a, an ender, a life ender reality in the way that you can operate.
You can be. Very creative, highly successful, and gauge life and excel. Mm-hmm. In, in some ways that maybe otherwise you, you wouldn’t honestly.
Neil Robinson: All right. We’ll kind go through this a little bit. So let’s see, kind of John Hinckley Jr.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Now that’s not on the wonderful, wonderful side uhoh because there’s some violence and in fact there’s, sometimes there’s where the paranoia becomes so, or the delusions.
Chris Gazdik: You had said that early on with the
John-Nelson Pope: paranoia. Right, that it can, it can manifest itself. And in fact, there was one of the professors at Texas a m and Corpus Christi [00:35:00] her her husband was killed by their son. Because he, wow. He, his schizophrenia was, was untreated. He, there was some drug use and self medication that was involved
Chris Gazdik: and untreated.
May not have known this was kind of going on. And again, I, I think, I suspect it was kind of resisted, didn’t accept his, his didn’t accept it, didn’t his condition,
didn’t understand it. And it says it’s self preservation. Like I am gonna protect myself. Yeah. From the things that are attacking me, which in this instance I’m believing because my delusional state is you.
Mm-hmm.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. And you’re a threat. I mean, it’s a threat. You’re right. Yeah. Do you know
Chris Gazdik: who that is? No. What, who he tr
Neil Robinson: John Hinckley Jr. Oh, I do not. He tried to assassinate Reagan.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, really? Oh, really? Yeah. That’s
mis
Neil Robinson: shooter. Yeah. And actually because of him, he was basically diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, which you might mean something, but he was.
No. They changed a lot of the, the definitions, legal stuff because of him and insanity [00:36:00] pleas and stuff like that because of him and those. Oh, really?
Chris Gazdik: They, they just now he’s out on
John-Nelson Pope: parole now, I think. Is he finally? Yeah.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, it looks like he is back in 2016, it looks like.
John-Nelson Pope: So that’s when he first had started having the parole, but he’s now, I think he’s living at his mother’s right
Neil Robinson: now.
Okay. So I’m gonna go, I’m gonna just kind of go through these, these people and kind of just. See if anyone out to, yeah. He hit through him pretty quickly. So Jack Kerouac. Yes.
John-Nelson Pope: Author? Yep.
Neil Robinson: Author. Author. He, he was diagnosed at 21.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s fifties on the road, I think was, yeah, that’s exactly right.
Neil Robinson: Veronica Lake
John-Nelson Pope: was an actress.
1940s. Yep.
Neil Robinson: Yep. She was she was diagnosed here in childhood. Mary Todd Lincoln
John-Nelson Pope: is Abraham Lincoln’s wife. Yep. And she was, Different,
Neil Robinson: not, not officially diagnosed, but they think sh they speculate that she had it. That’s right. She
John-Nelson Pope: was into to seances and spiritualism Lincoln. [00:37:00] Lincoln’s wife. Lincoln’s
Chris Gazdik: wife, Mary Tyler.
Holy crap. Really? Yeah. Dang.
Neil Robinson: Rufuss May, he was diagnosed at age 18 and he is a clinical psychologist. I saw
John-Nelson Pope: that. Oh,
Chris Gazdik: okay. Yep.
John-Nelson Pope: What if he’s related to Rollo May.
Chris Gazdik: Keep going though. Get through this quickly. Go ahead. I’m sorry. It’s all right. John Nash, you guys should, yeah, that’s where we wanted to bounce back to, and he’ll end this all with him.
Neil Robinson: Okay. Then there’s then a bunch more. Ingo Stenberg, a drummer for some band. Skip Spence, another songwriter. Gene Tierney was an
John-Nelson Pope: actress, actress, 1930s and forties. Van
Neil Robinson: Gogh probably one of
John-Nelson Pope: the most famous artists, you know. Wow. He had a lot of, he’s good friend.
Chris Gazdik: Isn.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. But he also, there was a lot of stuff within that was very interesting.
But Wesley Willis, who was a. Songwriter back. He was diagnosed at the age of 26. Brian Wilson was one that I thought was interesting.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s right. He lay in bed for like a year or two. Just because of, [00:38:00] of dealing with this.
Neil Robinson: Did he really? Yeah. That’s crazy. But yeah, he was 30 and he got diagnosed in his thirties, so yeah.
So yeah,
John-Nelson Pope: he dropped out.
Neil Robinson: Interesting. Very interesting. But yeah, so John Nash is, I think, the way you wanna go next. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You know, it’s, it’s, listen, a really good, thanks for your help, Neil. You know, the, the, the really good way to get a good sense of what it is that we’re talking about here, is the movie A Beautiful Mind?
Yeah, it it, I say that because it’s been a while since I watched it, but I did this show. On schizophrenia a few years ago, and I, and I, I remember rewatching it for that show to remind myself what that show really did. And I, I’ll tell you, you will enjoy the movie. Mm-hmm. Just because it’s a good movie.
And if you didn’t know it was about schizophrenia, you’d be surprised that it was even about schizophrenia. Mm-hmm. You know, and, and, and it’s a true story. This guy John Nash got highlighted and you, you will see. I don’t want to talk too much [00:39:00] about it cause I want people to watch it, to get a good mental health understanding.
In a realistic way. What happens for this kid who’s living a normal life and begins to graduate with a really high level academic reality. I think it was from Harvard and and, and he just became psychotic. Go, go ahead. No,
John-Nelson Pope: I, and I think his, his hallucinations are depicted as visual primarily in the movie.
Right. But, but they were au auditory for the most part, but it was, but the paranoia was there.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, really? Yeah. His real story was, real story was more auditory than visual. Yeah. Okay. But, but interesting.
John-Nelson Pope: I didn’t know that the paranoia was, was more was, was certainly there more pronounced. Yeah. And the, the sense of the.
The, the spies and you,
Chris Gazdik: well, I guess it’s hard to depict auditory hallucination. That’s, that’s what the director said said on the video. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that makes sense that they did that. So
John-Nelson Pope: that was the license
Chris Gazdik: on that one, but other check it out because this, [00:40:00] it was a really good way, the spot toand what it is that we’re talking about.
Yeah. We’ve got a good YouTube question as well about does illicit drugs cause this? So when we’re talking about diagnosing this, figuring this out, I wanna be a very clear, resounding, like no. Mm-hmm. No. We, we don’t know really of any connection as far as I’m aware of that using heroin or psychedelics or any of this type of thing.
But
John-Nelson Pope: when do people do this? For the most part, it’s when they’re young. Right? And so it could manifest it. During this time, it may just be causation is not correlation, is not necessary. What is it that they say? Correct.
Chris Gazdik: The, the, the correlation to causation is not there. Yeah. Not there. Like there’s not a correlation here with drug use.
In, in, in initiating, yeah. An onset of schizophrenic experience. And I think that’s a true statement you know, to hold, well, hold me to it. Mm-hmm. Cuz I think it’s a true statement. Do do you see an [00:41:00] increase
Neil Robinson: in drug use because of possible?
Chris Gazdik: That’s the thing. It’s the opposite way. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Neil, that’s where I’m going to, there’s a belief that that may be a causation correlation because I think what happens is people start to experience this, they start to freak out.
Out and you’re already old enough probably experimenting with weed or alcohol in some regard. Mm-hmm. And then you start using to cope and boy, then you’ve got more
John-Nelson Pope: of a problem. So this is going to your point that you think it’s more It’s more common that, that it, I wonder, yeah. Was because I do, you’re thinking that that people, because a lot of the people that I see have really struggled with with illicit drug uses or overuse and abuse, and I’m wondering if there’s a sense that maybe it’s something’s going on inside of their, their mind.
Yeah. John, because it’s a beautiful mind. Right. And they’re feeling like they’re losing. Their ability to [00:42:00] Right. Or their, their
Chris Gazdik: control. And, and and, and I could see where people would just cash out. Yeah. Check out, cash out. Yeah. Drug out. And, and, and then we then, and now you’ve got a compounded issue because drugs are not gonna help this condition.
No, that’s for sure. You know, regular and illicit drug use. And then you’ve also got, what is this like, and what is this like for families to deal with? Well, there’s a lot of non-compliant treatment. There’s a lot of like, I am fine, there’s nothing wrong with me. A huge system of denial begins to take, take, hold.
Just
John-Nelson Pope: think the, the unhoused people, a lot of unhoused people are having to struggle with This homeless, you mean? Yeah. Homeless, all those folks. Yeah. I’m, I’m using a term of art now, I guess. Health, you know,
Chris Gazdik: let me think about that for a second. Go go further with that, because I, I’m doubtful actually, I, my, I, I’ll just tell you my immediate response is Uhhuh. I, I, you know, I’m not an expert on the homeless
population, but I almost feel like trauma [00:43:00] is a way bigger thing with a homeless population. Okay. In schizophrenia, I do.
Yeah, trauma that rather than bipolar or, or, or damaging things to our mental health like schizoaffective or schizophrenia. I, I, I, I really feel like, so you
John-Nelson Pope: think people that maybe are self-medicating that may be, that have had trauma? Yes.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. What, what say you
John-Nelson Pope: I’m kind of thinking that, that people that are.
Struggling in their lives and they become paranoid or, or develop delusions or something will self isolate.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. A lot of times and voluntarily just enter into the homeless population. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Kind of drop out. Well, you’re probably right. I, you know, I, I’d be curious to see, you know, kind of if there’s been people that have tracked that, studied that and checked out, like Uhhuh 1.5% of our population, at least in the States, that’s schizophrenia.
And I don’t think that’s probably too different around the world. No, I think really,
John-Nelson Pope: I [00:44:00] think if it truly is some sort of a genetic or organic basis, yeah, I think it would probably be pretty evenly
Chris Gazdik: distributed. I think it is. Yeah, I haven’t, I can’t say that I’ve looked that up and stuff for this show, but I think, I think that it is and, and thus you’d see the same thing in populations around the world with homelessness.
Yeah, yeah. You know, propagating out that way to that manifested outcome.
John-Nelson Pope: But I now the cultures may, may deal with it differently. Oh, I’m sure.
Chris Gazdik: Right? Yeah. So I’m sure. So let’s, that’s a good transition. How do we deal with this, John? What do we do with treatment? What, how, you know, what do we do with these folks?
John-Nelson Pope: Well, one is, I think, is to, to treat them as wonderful people and just people that are having some, certainly like a medical issue or psychological issues that they would not be ost ostracized. That they would not be mistreated in the, the, the. [00:45:00] Prison system. For example, the legal system, right?
Because they get caught up in that, right? It’s horrible that,
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, they, they, they, you know, some people that are insightful and it’s true. When you hear that statement, give them respect. Our prison systems are wrapped up with addicts and mental health patients. Right. You know, in a lot of, in a lot of regards.
Yeah. You know, I, I wanna make, it’s not, it’s certainly
John-Nelson Pope: not penitentiary. It’s not a pen penitentiary kind of thing. It’s not a
Chris Gazdik: good treatment facility, that’s for sure. Not a good treatment facility. You know, and, and, and I wanna, I wanna do a little advocation here because, you know, when you look at how our families managing this and how do we treat this, like, you know, we’ve had a whole different progression, at least in the states, and I think around the world, much similar of what we, we did.
What, what we used to do is just put these people away. Yeah, we, we had the, the traditional insane asylums, uhhuh, and if you had schizophrenia or something like this that we just didn’t know how to manage or how to [00:46:00] control, we slapped your butt up into an insane asylum. And we had them all across the nation.
In, in, in North Carolina. I believe that was Butner, North Carolina up there at Butner. Yeah. We had, we had good old Western Hospital, western state facility in, in West Virginia. Yeah. And, and Broughton, was that Yeah, that’s in Lenore
John-Nelson Pope: Hickory. My,
Neil Robinson: my wife’s dad worked there
John-Nelson Pope: for a while.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Yeah.
Where Neil’s telling us it’s in Lenore Hickory in North Carolina. But Morgan too. These were bad places, John. Yeah, yeah. These were rough places, scary places. You didn’t wanna work there. You would get regularly assaulted, like people died and were killed in insane asylums. And then that’s what, that was our treatment.
You know, we, I suspect we do like phlebotomies and things like that, right? Well
John-Nelson Pope: that, and that goes right into, through the
Chris Gazdik: right, just
John-Nelson Pope: right drilling holes right between the
Chris Gazdik: eyes. You know, we got better and figured out some antipsychotic medications. Look at one flew over the coopoo nest, and [00:47:00] that gives you some advancement.
Well, E C T,
John-Nelson Pope: For example, eec but I’m, I’m also. Wrapping people in, in wet blankets, cold, wet blankets, trying to do that kind of shock treatment. Right.
Chris Gazdik: That was more 19 century, honestly. It probably helped with brain inflammation. Yeah. We didn’t know it. And lobotomies probably helped with tumors, you know, with sometimes successful treatments.
We didn’t know we were breaking up a
John-Nelson Pope: tumor through the orbit of the eye. I
Chris Gazdik: mean, it’s just right. But then we got better and we, we, we figured out let’s close these bad places and we’ll do community mental health systems and we helped. People that were struggling with this get onto medication. Which is very important.
Psychotropic medication, antipsychotic medications, and then had case management that tracked you, followed you. We supported people living at home. We supported people living in the community. And that worked well when I started my career in the eighties and nineties. But it’s kind of, and now what has happened, John, who
John-Nelson Pope: it’s, [00:48:00] well, we’re in managed care to a certain extent and it’s gone away.
Away finding he’s gone
Chris Gazdik: away. Yeah. Now we don’t really give them very much services and we don’t really treat them. And so it’s very much only acute. We dehumanize
John-Nelson Pope: them. We dehumanize them be,
Chris Gazdik: but we, but we give acute care, Uhhuh, if you’re a danger to yourself or others, we put you in a hospital and we keep you there for a month or two or three.
Yeah. You know, maybe several months long off, you know, for long, long-term care for people that are really, really sick. But then we discharge them and mm-hmm. Send them back home. And so families struggle and. Tremendously. And again, this is much more common than you would think. So many, many, many millions of people across our nation and many, many millions across the world.
On top of that struggle with how do I manage my Aunt Mary? How do I manage my brother? In the case of my client this morning, mm-hmm. Throughout the course of [00:49:00] their life as a family member, and it’s tough. So we need better answers than what we’ve come up with is what? I guess I would lead us to think about, yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. I feel humbled by this because I don’t sense that I’m at all prepared to, because I think we don’t know enough right now. We don’t know enough effective therapies psychotropic interventions. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. What do you
John-Nelson Pope: mean? Well, I just think that there’s so much we have still have to learn about it.
Chris Gazdik: So true. But I think we know some to treat now to some, at least to some extent. But
John-Nelson Pope: there’s some serious side effects to the medications. There’s people. Okay, true,
Chris Gazdik: true. That. Yeah,
John-Nelson Pope: go on. They’ve, that sometimes people feel, hopefully the medications have improved, but a lot of times people feel like they’ve, they’re not as quick in thinking and that [00:50:00] they’re in a, a chemical straight jacket.
And I think that’s, and, and yet they would choose to, to be medicated because they wanna be able to be productive. More
Chris Gazdik: productive. So I feel, I feel your pushback and, and I, I, I get that. I, I think you’re right. I, I, I definitely see that. I mean, I. We have about all of mental health. A lot more to learn. I think that of all the medical conditions and all the medical realities, mental health is one that we know of, you know, the, the least about.
Yeah. But I think that we do have treatments out there and, and these medications that we have available do work. They do stabilize the functions of the brain to avoid, you know, reality testing problems.
John-Nelson Pope: And there is evidence-based Efficacy for C B T R E B T talk therapy.
Chris Gazdik: And that’s where I would go in that, you know, I mean obviously the talk therapist is gonna kind of [00:51:00] land there, I guess, to some extent, but, you know, I just wanna simplify it a little bit, John.
I think if we took the mystery away from this, And we, we, we helped people as I was able to help that teenager to relax and calm down about what this really means. So we take the fear out of what it doesn’t mean. Yeah. For your life when you’re showing Demmy,
John-Nelson Pope: Demmy it de demy demi de mythologize it.
De
Chris Gazdik: mythologize it. There you go. Yeah. That’s what we are apologizing the seminary. Help us understand the basics of what this is because the, the fear drives us, I think, way more than the disorder itself. Mm-hmm. The shame drives us way more than the disorder themselves when we’re talking about psycho psychiatric diagnoses mm-hmm.
That are significant like this, I think they get, they, they, they, they find themselves bigger than what they need to be mm-hmm. In the life of a person. So where if we can find some acceptance, it is a much better prognosis. [00:52:00]
John-Nelson Pope: Right. E Exactly. And some folks are so creative, they, they give to society in wonderful, wonderful ways.
Chris Gazdik: Sometimes we sound amazing list, you know, amazing list of people that you would,
John-Nelson Pope: music, literature, science economic theory just all of this painters. Just enriching life. And so, in a sense, perhaps some of the things that they are seeing and experiencing in their own lives, they’re able to express and they enrich our lives.
I think
Chris Gazdik: so, yeah. These are a part. These, these, these are people that are a part of us. Yeah. You know, it’s a pretty debilitating condition, but they’re a part of our community and I think that when we take the mystery out of us experiencing the person as much as the person experiencing themselves, I wonder what we would be able to accomplish with their prognosis and their healing.
Mm-hmm. You [00:53:00] know, I, I don’t, I don’t think it has to be as big of a deal as people really believe it to be. Yeah. John Nash, even without medication, You know, medications is only one choice and only one option to help us manage mental health. Yeah. It’s not the solution.
John-Nelson Pope: He he won the Nobel Prize.
Chris Gazdik: Yes.
Yeah. Did amazing things in math and, and, and, and computing or whatever that computing, math, I
John-Nelson Pope: don’t know. And theory and just, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Amazing stuff. Yeah. Amazing stuff. So I, you know, it, it’s, I, I feel like I’m getting on a high horse. I’ll calm myself down, but I, I, you know, because I, these folks get demonized, I think, and, and really kind of marginalized in, in, as you were saying, John, we just don’t accept them.
Yeah. Right. And, and they’re struggling people that we need to get over that and, and accept them. Now, I will say this as well if, if you know anybody in your family or yourself as you’re, as you’re managing and coming across this, let me make a marking bold statement here. If you combine significant mental [00:54:00] health disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar and schizoaffective disorder to name a few.
With substance abuse, addiction, drug, alcohol, weed, you have a bad, bad prognosis. Mm-hmm. That is not gonna go well for you. Mm-hmm. What we really need to be able to manage is sobriety. Mm-hmm. So that you’re not coping with the struggles that you have while you’re managing this issue. In addition. Yeah.
That’s a bad combination. Mm-hmm. Don’t do that. Fair statement. Fair statement. Right. Schizophrenia, you know, we used to call it dual diagnosis. Mm-hmm. Remember the right, the days of dual diagnosis, man, they were some of the most strugglings people. I mean, significant manic behavior and addiction issues, significant psycho reality testing and illicit drug use.
I mean, it’s just they, they were not functioning well.
John-Nelson Pope: I, I agree. I agree.
Chris Gazdik: And, and, and didn’t recover very well. It, it, mm-hmm. It made [00:55:00] things worse for them. So I will say that pretty good thing. I don’t know, John, any any other thoughts, comments? I think we’re winding down understanding schizophrenia, understanding a significant mental health condition what to do with it, how to manage it.
This was a, we haven’t done a diagnostic show of pure diagnostic
John-Nelson Pope: show now. It was, was fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it. But again, we’re learning so much more day by day, and so hopefully, and preferably we’ll be able to, to have people that that may not have to, to struggle as
Chris Gazdik: much. As much. Yeah. You know, I can tell you it’s been an honor to work with people in therapy.
I talk about that a lot because it really is, and they’re heroes. They, they really are amazing people. Yeah. And, and the people that I’ve been able to work with, with this in a successful psychodynamic outpatient, just talk, therapy practice, man. I mean, it, it’s, you can do that. Mm-hmm. You can do that. I, I think
clinicians, even in our own field, get a little fearful or tripped out about [00:56:00] this.
Like, what am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to deal with this? It’s like, Talk to people. They’re people. They’re people. Yeah. That’s all. And they’re scared. Yeah. And we need to calm ’em down and figure out how to manage the moment, right?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. For them to live in the moment and be in the moment.
And be well,
Chris Gazdik: and be well. Right. So I hope this has been helpful. Comments, thoughts, contact us at through a therapist eyes.com. This is not mysterious. We want to, how’s the word? John de Mr. De
John-Nelson Pope: mythologize. De mythologize
Chris Gazdik: de mythologize. Schizophrenia. Hopefully schizophrenia. So we
John-Nelson Pope: accomplish that. So take, take the, the, the otherness of it away and just make it into something that, That is part of our lives.
As a
Chris Gazdik: community. As a community. Okay. Good deal guys. Stay well. Take care and we will see you soon next week.