Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe mental disorder that affects the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, perceives reality, and relates to others. Schizophrenia isn’t as common as other major mental illnesses, affecting less than 1% of the U.S. adult population, but it can be one of the most chronic and disabling.
Contrary to popular belief, schizophrenia is not a split or multiple personality. Schizophrenia involves psychosis, a type of mental illness in which you can’t tell what’s real from what’s imagined. At times, people with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia lose touch with reality.
Their world may blend confusing thoughts, images, and sounds together. Because of their distorted reality, people with this condition may show strange and even shocking behavior. A sudden change in their personality or behavior is called a psychotic episode.
The severity of schizophrenia varies from person to person. Some people have only one psychotic episode, while others have many episodes during their lifetime. In between psychotic episodes, you may lead a relatively normal life. Still, others may have more trouble functioning over time, with little improvement between full-blown psychotic episodes. Schizophrenia symptoms seem to worsen, then improve, in cycles known as relapses and remissions.
If you have schizophrenia, you should know that taking your medication as prescribed is very important. But it’s not always easy to know whether your current plan, which includes any medications you’re using and mental and behavioral strategies, is working well. It might also be hard to tell if something you’re experiencing is a medication side effect or a disease symptom. Or you might have trouble remembering to take your medication. Self-monitoring can help.
Self-monitoring refers to tracking your own health by keeping a record of your daily activities, your mood, and/or any other things that might tell you that you’re at risk for a psychotic episode. Some people with schizophrenia benefit from tracking changes in sleep patterns. Others might need to focus on whether they’re getting enough exercise, keeping up with basic hygiene, remembering to pay bills on time, or having good social interactions with others.
You should work with a mental health care provider who can help you identify what’s most important for you to monitor on a daily or weekly basis.
The overall goal of self-monitoring is to catch any changes in your habits, mood, or behavior that may show that your condition is worsening. That way, you can take action before your symptoms get worse. Don’t change any of your medication doses unless your mental health provider tells you to do so. Always check in with them to discuss the next steps. You might just need to go over some coping techniques or learn new ways to ease stress.
How to Self-Monitor Your Schizophrenia
Many experts who treat schizophrenia believe that self-monitoring is useful, but there isn’t any standard way to do it. Ask your provider if they have a preferred method, such as a worksheet or app. It’s perfectly OK to make up your own tracker, but it’s a good idea to first discuss what you should be tracking. These will be different for everyone with schizophrenia but might include:
- Taking your medication regularly
- Possible medication side effects
- Daily hygiene practices
- Handling regular responsibilities/activities (showing up for work, tidying your home, etc.)
- Sleep habits (especially any changes)
- Social habits
- Feeling stressed, anxious, or agitated
- Trouble concentrating or speaking clearly
- Seeing things that aren’t there
- Hearing voices
- Paranoid thoughts
If you’re most concerned about remembering to take your medication, ask your pharmacy about “compliance packaging,” which is also called adherence packaging. This is when the pharmacist (or company that ships drugs to your local pharmacy) packages your medication in blister packs or pouches that are organized by the dose, day of the week, and even time of day, making it easy to tell if you’ve missed a dose.
When it comes to tracking moods and behaviors, start by asking your doctor or therapist if there’s a specific tracking worksheet they’d like you to use. If not, a blank journal might do, or you could create your own daily tracker with a list of the things you want to monitor, along with space to rate them and/or enter notes.
The easiest way to self-monitor might be to use a smartphone app designed for this purpose.
Source: webmd.com
