I just read a really excellent book which covered all aspects of schizophrenia, schizoa affective disorders. It's called "Surviving Schizophrenia", by Dr Torrey, and it de stygmatises the illness, explains treatment options, and gives advice to family members caring for a loved one on the schizophrenic spectrum. It also wades through the literature on meds, and helps make sense of it. I can't recommend it enough.

Oh, and it's the book I'm going to share with my family so they have more insight as to what's wrong with me, and why it's not their fault, or mine.

By the way... being on meds for me hasn't been anything like Buddha suggested. I don't feel that my emotions have been flattened or deadened (loss of affect, emotion and volition are all symptoms of the disease anyway, as patient accounts from the pre med era prove) In fact I feel that the muddle and confusion has been largely expunged, leaving me free to think and feel more clearly and deeply than before. Don't get too discouraged by anti medication advocacy. If I had a choice between being on meds and thinking clearly, and not being on meds, psychotic, and convinced that the medical industry was out to get me, I think I can safely say I'd sooner be on meds.

Prior to meds I had difficulty leaving the house, couldn't shop, couldn't plan a menu, couldn't wash dishes or put the bins out. I spent a lot of time in my room when my son was at school, and peed into a bucket because it was too hard to walk to the bathroom. Once every couple of days I'd empty the bucket.

As you can imagine, a house full of rotten food, and stale urine wasn't a nice place for anyone to live.

I'd sooner be "misdiagnosed" and on medication that gave me my life back, and allowed me to be a better mother than in cognitive behavioural therapy (which didn't do anything for me while I was psychotic, because I honestly thought it was a plot to brainwash me.)

You need to treat the immediate symptoms of psychoses, hallucinations, delusional thinking. Only then will cbt work. And yes, it does... when you're not overwhelmed by voices, paranoia and such exhaustion that you can barely concentrate till the end of a sentence, and have no idea what the therapist is talking about.