Do people with mental health conditions e.g pyschosis/schizophrenia often have trouble accepting their illness?

To the extent where they refuse to take their recommended medication.If the illness comes to light later in life,is it harder for them to come to terms with?

Ive been told this.Some of them do.

They refuse to take their medication because it acts to make them into zombies and who better to tell you that than the person experiencing it - as only they know. To psychiatrists if you are zombified then that is good and you are getting "better". Brain scans on monkeys given these tablets have shown extensive brain shrinkage caused by them.
Post mortem brain shrinkage found on human schizophrenics is always taken as a sign that it is the schizophrenia that caused it - when only TREATED schizophrenics have had these brain scans. Drug companies will do anything to hide these findings

I have a friend who has paranoid shizophrenia; he was 21 when he found out and looking back he feels the onset came after the use of LSD. He would often have moments of profound coincidence in his car; by this, I mean he would be thinking of something really specific and the car radio would report something close to what he had on his mind. He took it very seriously, it bothered the hell out of him. He thought it was the united states government toying with him. This caused him to seek treatment because he couldn't handle the anxiety. I can't remember the name of his medication but it made him gain weight. Serious weight. So if your friend is just being stubborn because hes been fine without medication for so long, than I am sure age could play a factor. And if he thinks the medication is a method for the government to supress him, than he will probabaly just have to come to terms with it. After 5 years of battling the system my friend has finally gotten disability; he couldn't maintain a job even with medication.

I have bipolar and did go for years of not getting treatment, and going back and forth between whether or not i believed that I had it.

Some illnesses it is the nature of the illness. With bipolar, there is parts of the manic episodes where it feels like nothing is wrong, and am that function better then most. Thing with mental illnesses, is they involve having very skewed perseptions of things at times. And depending on the nature of those perseptions, can think you are fine and others are wrong, or they are the ones with the problem or that they are out to get you or are otherwise just messing with you and so on.

Also there is just the lack of PHYSICAL proof. If someone said oh you have diabetes they could show you the blood work and numbers on that. There is nothing like that for mental illness. So it leaves a lot of room for denile. Trust me they are not illnesses that you would want to have, so there being room for doubt, and no proof to substanuate the illness, it does become easy to tell yourself you are fine, and maybe just went through a rough patch dealling with things but are past that now.

I agree with Billy Budd. I've talked to a lot of people with mental health conditions. A large proportion have strong opinions against taking their medication because of the adverse effect that medication has on them.

As far as their condition is concerned I find that they learn to live with it quite quickly, though mostly wish they didn't suffer from it (but not all). People with these conditions are usually very introspective and try to deal with their problems by looking at themselves and finding ways around the real life problems which they experience as a result of their difficult feelings (such as anxiety and depression) and attitudes.

insight into their illness is often very difficult for people who suffer from psychosis or schizophrenia as often they are very paranoid and deluded and dont believe they are unwell. the older they are when they are diagnosed (if over 50 schizophrenia is known as paraphrenia) can make it very difficult to accept as they have never been ill before so as far as they are concern how can i be 'mad' now! its also had for people to accept having a mental illness because of the sad but true fact of other peoples ignorance towards mental illness, even though we are living in the 21st century were alot of previously unacceptable things are now acceptable, mental illness is still taboo to alot of people. unfortunately alot of psychiatric medications have adverse side effects including weight gain, dry mouth, drowsiness etc so for people who dont believe they are ill they think they dont need to take them. medications are improving and you can also get depot injection every couple of weeks or once a month so you dont have to take tablets at all. alot of people live a very happy and 'normal' life with schizophrenia or psychosis.i hope my answer has helped answer your question!!

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