Has anyone had any experience of negative schizophrenia?

A family member suffers from it but refuses to get help or medication. Is in denial about the whole thing.

Firstly your family member is very lucky to have such a caring relative as yourself. It is very important that your family member gets help with their condition because evidence indicates that delaying antipsychotic treatment of schizophrenia may result in worse clinical and social outcomes. However, ultimately unless your relative is going to harm themselves of another all you can do is support them and wait till they decide to get help. Many people with mental health problems feel embarrassed and this stops them from the getting the support that they deserve. However as you probably know this is not their fault and do not need to feel embarrassed and your support and encouragement will be very helpful in the person seeking treatment.

Schizophrenia can have two types of symptoms and those symptoms are positive and negative. Positive symptoms include the Presence of abnormal functions such as: Delusions of grandeur i.e. thinking that they are God, delusions of persecution i.e. thinking that everybody is out to get them and auditory and/or visual hallucinations. Negative symptoms are when normal functioning is absence: a person displaying negative symptoms may displaying inappropriate emotions i.e. they may laugh at something sad. They may lack motivation. They may experience catatonia and maintain physical positions for days or hours. Antipsychotic medication has been proven to be effective in treating negative symptoms of acute schizophrenic episodes.

This is a debilitating illness with no cure.
Non Compliance of their meds plus additional polysubstance abuse are usualy the catalyst for relapse.
It destroys families and especially their children.
My partner's sister was diagnosed with Bi-polar when she was 43 years old. It was later changed to Schizo Affective Disorder which is the worst of the worst mental heath diagnosis you wanna hear.

Never once had any association with Mental Health. Did not do drugs or steroids ( which at first , the authorities were trying to identify, because of her age and the sudden onset.)

An extremely intelligent person who is an Artist, Sculpturist, writer, business manager/owner, immaculate dresser, articulate, indulges in fine restaurants and theatre, has two children, one a a professional surfer and the other a daughter who is a singer in a band and involved in live theatre.

She has "lost" over $350,000.00 worth of assets as a result of her illness. She has lost her home an her assets due to her manic phases, giving to everyone plus selling her home to the boyfriend that she was with to plunge in his business. This also included in her manic phases of excessive shopping and resort accomodation via her credit card for her children, including large purchases for them, like cars etc.We have had 8 admissions with her now and they cover two states in my Country in Australia.

We purchased an investment unit for her in a coastal township and she is no longer there. We do not know where she is.

We begged the hospital to assess her when we knew the indicators were apparent that she was not well.

We sat at the Accident and Emergency begging to take her in cos at that stage, she was paranoid, abusive and way out from reality. They would not admit her because she was not suicidal, did not give a **** about her psychosis, Well, we already knew she was too mad to commit suicide, because her mind was that scrambled, she would not have had the ability to put a plan like that together, but we wanted her to be admitted so she could get the jab in the **** (largatil) which lets her sleep for a full day to make up for the days she has not been sleeping and then a re-evalution of her meds and her dopamine levels, which are detected thru blood tests.

You are up with a life time of manipulation and hard times, especially if they will not accept their illness. If they are not prepared to take their meds, and understand that they have an illness, just like another person such as a diabetic that needs insulin injections 3 times a day, you are going to suffer, like we do.

She has run away from her family. We think she is up North somewhere in far North Queensland, not bathing, drinking with undesirables in the street and sleeping who knows where.

It is so sad, she is such a beautiful, attractive, intelligent, classy lady who is very much loved. Unfortunately, we also become her enemies when she is sick as we are the worst in the world when we have to re-admit her.

They say that suicidal thoughts usually engage them when they have laspes of cognition, but all we are praying is that she will come home, she now is a grandmother, and she is not aware.

Hope this helps. Good Luck