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I am in my late fifties, and I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia: Paranoid-Type, at age eighteen. All my adult life, I have lived with the specter of mental illness. And this is no walk in the park. Even though I've rarely gone without having my material needs met, this disease is serious business, and it ruins many people's lives.

Ruination of one's life can be prevented. The beginning is to accept treatment and get the symptoms under control. Yet, for many people, this is a tall order. Compliance with prescribed antipsychotics is often the biggest hurdle for a person suffering from schizophrenia.

(Another hurdle that may exist concurrently is to prevent harm to oneself and others.)

There are reasons for the common "noncompliance" with treatment. The absence of basic insight about the presence of psychosis is one of those reasons. The patient's mind has disconnected itself from reality. And because of this, the patient is unable to recognize that their thinking is not accurate. They may believe it is the world that has gone crazy, and not them. To the patient, this internally generated false version of reality is correct. The disease blocks perception of itself. 

If the person's mind could incorporate the idea that they are delusional, it would be a resource that might allow getting well. And, in fact, once medicated and in safe surroundings, this basic insight begins to filter into the mind. When the patient is released too soon, it is a problem. A patient should be kept in the hospital long enough that they can gain an understanding of what happened. The shortsightedness of saving taxpayer dollars is responsible for this. You're not in the long run saving any money if the patient returns to the hospital three weeks later. 

Sometimes when a patient is mostly recovered, they mistakenly believe they can ride out the disease without medication. Disaster commonly follows. 

It is an all-too-common syndrome: "the revolving door syndrome" where a patient becomes ill, goes into the hospital involuntarily, is put on medication and gets stabilized, is released, and then quits his or her medication, only to relapse again. This happens to some patients on a repetitive basis. It ruins the patient's brain, and this ruins their future chances at forging a decent life. The insight is sorely needed that we have to remain medicated. Or else. 

#2: 

Medication side effects can induce massive physical and mental suffering. Counteracting this suffering or tolerating it, can be extremely challenging, especially in the first few years of being medicated. Side effects can cause some to resort to excessive eating, smoking, coffee drinking, alcohol drinking, or use of illicit drugs. Any of those can cause serious physical harm. 

When first medicated, some have an alarming weight gain, in which weight is increased by a third within a few months. Medication can cause damage to bodily organs. If medicated, a patient should have regular blood testing to screen for organ damage. 

The perceivable side effects can be hell on wheels. The horrible, drugged feeling, the restless feeling (like you want to jump out of your skin) and in some cases, tremors or uncontrollable movements, can be so awful, it could cause most people to not tolerate medications. This is a valid reason. Yet, medication could be necessary to think and act normally. It is a substantial dilemma. 

My solution for myself: ignore, tolerate, adjust, and use mindfulness. I should explain the adjust part: This is where I work with the doctor to put me on meds and on dosages that I could tolerate. It is where the meds are adjusted to be effective yet not to produce any more suffering than I have to undergo. The mindfulness part and the tolerate and ignore methods are skills that I've taught myself over a period of more than thirty years of being medicated. I plan to incorporate some of these ideas and how I implement them into future writings.