Hi guys... I thought it might be a good idea to share here how schizoaffective has impacted on our lives, and how the symptoms affect us, and various other issues, like prejudice etc.

So... I'll start off.

I was always an "odd" kid, and was diagnosed autistic when I was about three or four. My Dad refused to accept the diagnoses, because I was a very bright kid (when I finally started talking) and the family ignored some of my odder behaviours... particularly because my oddness was eclipsed by my mother's illness. She was either schizophrenic or bipolar. They never managed to diagnose her before her suicide, when I was nineteen.

My first "psychotic" break, I suppose, was when I was sixteen. I'll post a description later in this thread... for now suffice it to say that I thought I was literally "away with the faeries"... one of my many coping mechanisms to assure myself that I wasn't really mad, no matter the evidence.

I was very frightened of being considered like my mother, so I did a great deal of running... I went to university and blew my chances of being taken seriously as an academic when I told my tutor that I'd seen the devil playing fiddle outside the covered market. I did manage to graduate with a good degree, but never got an academic reference to go further. On the other hand, I did manage to have a son, who has been the light of my life. I was twenty four when he was born, and went directly into post partum psychoses. Fortunately it was a peculiarly positive kind of psychoses, I thought my son was an angel, and could communicate with me telepathically, could fly when I was sleeping, etc. I actually saw him flying towards me on several occasions.

About five or six months after his birth I went into a corresponding depression... the only thing that kept me going was the fact that I loved my son.

Since I was in my mid to late teens I'd developed the certainty that I was being observed, and followed... usually by the English government, occasionally by aliens... I was aware that most people wouldn't believe me, so I tried not to say anything. At my Grandad's funeral I was convinced that someone had put a bug in his coffin... one of my cousins, to calm me down, told me that he'd removed the bug and flushed it down the toilet. I was twenty at the time.

After a while I got involved in protest politics, which did lend some credence to my idea I was being spied on. I moved house I think on average every year to a year and a half, in order to escape my neighbours (who had been persuaded to spy on me, or so I thought) and to get away from the bugs that had been planted around the house. I used to go round whereever I lived with a portable radio tuned between frequencies on fm, listening for spikes in the white noise, convinced that these squeals marked the spot where the house had been bugged. On one occasion I climbed up into the attic, and "discovered" a bug right above the bed where my husband and I slept. (This was my second husband, he was very tolerant of my peculiarities.) He told me to put masking tape over the spot the "camera" was, and that he'd get a friend of his, who was an electrician, to remove the bugs. Of course my husband knew there weren't bugs there, but he was trying to make me feel safe.

In the past I've taken apart light switches, plugs, telephone connections, fuse boxes, looking for bugs. I'm amazed I didn't kill myself through electrocution.

On top of these paranoid thoughts, there was the problem that I couldn't have mirrors in the house. Other things beside my reflection used to look out at me. In a house I lived with a fixed mirror I simply hung a shawl over it. Therefore I've never become properly acquainted with the art of makeup, and my hair is fairly hit and miss. Now I have a small shaving mirror, which I look into when I have to. This is a major improvement since being on antipsychotics.

My curtains have been shut for decades. Only recently have I been able to allow guests into my house.

Visual hallucinations are generally quite fleeting... shadows of people from the corner of my eye, quick vivid flashes of colour and movement that disappear in a heart beat. Sometimes they become more corporeal. Sounds range from random words, to insults, to people laughing about me, commenting on my failures etc. When I worked in an office every time someone answered the phone, I could hear the person on the other side sneering at and criticising me. This made it impossible for me to trust any of my colleagues or work with them. It didn't help that I was genuinely being bullied in my last office.

I've had sensory hallucinations as well, touch, smell. My favourite aural hallucinations though are when I hear beautiful music... I don't get that one too often. Usually it's people swearing at me in a variety of languages.

When I've been very bad I've been unable to leave the home, and can't tell the difference between things that really happened and things I dreamt/hallucinated.

Anti psychotics have made a huge difference to my quality of life. I don't have the hallucinations anymore, and the paranoid delusions have greatly reduced in intensity.

Manic symptoms have been rarer than depressive symptoms... when manic I've given away large sums of money, and taken my son on exciting trips to different countries... Europe and Africa. It might sound weird, but my last manic episode occured after my husband died. I "realised" I was on a mission from God (won't bore you with the embarassing details) and that the world was going to end soon. That being the case I had to spend all my money in order to do the most good before the end came.

I spent all my money, the world didn't end, and it finally hit me that I wasn't going to see my husband again in the near future. That's when depression really hit. Losing my subsequent job didn't help much either.

When I was eighteen, twenty three and thirty six I made suicide attempts... I don't remember the last one. I was so crazy at the time... my husband was the only person who could bring me back. I should have been hospitalised at least twice (possibly more) but my husband took heroic efforts to save me from that eventuality. I'm amazed I've escaped it since he died (four years ago.)

Finally being diagnosed, and having meds to help cope with the worst of my symptoms has been life transforming. In the end being diagnosed schizoaffective has been a very positive thing. Not everybody has to know it, but at least I now have a name for the nameless opression that's overshadowed my life since I was sixteen.