In a separate thread sardean had said: I have also read that a person's schizophrenia can be in remission, but one may suffer from relapses. Rather than address the above in that thread, I thought it would be worth initiating a new discussion.

Essentially sardean, you are correct. A person can have a schizophrenic episode and then never again have another one; alternatively, they might experience an episode and then go on to have several more. Some of those recurring episodes might include positive symptoms and negative symptoms or just one of the two.

Generally, a person is considered to be in remission if they are aren't experiencing symptoms. If they do start to experience symptoms, that's considered a relapse. Relapses may require a hospitalization or a med adjustment.

Recovery is a more complex issue and part of the reason is because there are, of necessity, two standards of recovery. The first is a personal standard of recovery; the second is a clinical standard of recovery.

Whenever we do talk about any degree of recovery what we're really talking about is function. Schizophrenia or psychosis produces a period of severe dysfunction and unless we see that function improving or restored, we can't begin to call it recovery.

Improved function may be associated with taking medication but it's also independent of medication. For example, someone may be taking their medications exactly as their doctor has prescribed but they still might not be capable of functioning well. Other people may be taking their medications and functioning quite well with them. Still others might not be taking any medication yet also functioning quite well. There will also be yet another group of people who are not taking medication but are functioning poorly. You can have good or poor functioning with medication and good or poor functioning without medication.

We measure function according to an individual's ability to engage in life. Ideally, we want to see people who are capable of taking on productive activity -- either as a worker, a student or in a volunteer capacity. We also want to see people involved in healthy social relationships of varying degrees of intimacy. In addition, we want to see them living independently or interdependently. We also want to see an absence of symptoms or an absence of distress in the face of symptoms. Those are the sort of markers we would measure recovery against.

As you might expect there is a great range of personal experience. For example, many people are able to recover function to the extent that they can engage in productive activities and relationships but they may still use medications as part of an ongoing treatment plan. There are a number of other people who recover full function without medication or are able to maintain full function after withdrawing from medication.

To get a feel for the range of diversity we might see in recovery you might enjoy this blog: Voices of Recovery If you read through those personal stories of recovery you're going to find people who use medications and those who don't. All of them however, have experienced an improvement or restoration in function.

Another link you also might enjoy is this one: Schizophrenia & Hope That link contains a number of quotes from various studies that have been done in relation to recovery from schizophrenia.

Hopefully, all of the above will give you plenty of food for thought when it comes to thinking about your own recovery.

~ Namaste

As a ps: The links I've shared with you in this post are the same ones I shared at schizo.com that were promptly deleted by the site administration.