I have a psychiatrist for over a year, it will be 2 years in April
I still don’t have a diagnosis
Because I know a schizophrenic in my country that had to wait 2 years to be diagnosed I guess I will have my diagnosis at this time, but I’m the same time I’m unsure and wonder if I’ll have to wait longer
Honestly I have enough to wait
So I wonder how long did it take for you to have a diagnosis?
A few years, was diagnosed in 2019 but before that I don’t know.
It only took an hour for me to get the sz diagnosis. It was during my intake interview. They could tell right away I was paranoid about people reading my thoughts and I admitted that I was hallucinating.
it took two to three visits for them to tell me I had sz but then since then they don’t think I have it and keep going back and forth so I don’t have answers but I know I have psychosis so thats why I am on meds. my first episode happened 15 years ago.
It was about 8 or 9 months after psychosis onset. Before that I had a diagnoses called schizophreniform, which is the precursor to a schizoaffective or schizophrenia diagnosis.
I thought you were taking an antipsychotic though?
Yes, I take Risperidone
But I don’t have a diagnosis
Last time I asked my psychiatrist if she knows what I have,she said she doesn’t know
That’s super strange 
A very long time
I fell through the cracks several times
Knew nothing about mental illness at the time
I was first hospitalized for a psychotic break in 2021ish? And I was in and out 4 times that year. First it was major depressive disorder with psychosis. Later on with my community mental health team it switched to bipolar with psychosis. And that stuck for a while. Even though I was having psychotic symptoms out of mood swings. My pdoc was a treat the symptoms who cares the diagnosis.
It was finally changed to schizoaffective when I made note of my symptoms once again. And then was switched to schizophrenia later on. I have a new pdoc now. And I’m not a fan. The emergency pdoc appt I had with a different pdoc than mine was fantastic! She listened and let me vocalize what I wanted. Anyways, ramble ramble. It took a few years to get here.
Hmm I was in psych ward in 2005 for 3 months and didn’t get diagnosed. then in 2009 at 21 years old in psych ward I got diagnosed in 2 weeks maybe 3
Well, my prodromal phase probably started when I was 17. I was diagnosed at age 19 but my mom told me in my twenties that she thought something was wrong with me in high school. No one in my family would have ever guessed it was schizophrenia. I had problems when I was 18 and was acting a little weird.
I saw my first therapist when I turned 19; I saw her for about 4 months and then the head psychiatrist at the clinic called a meeting between him, my parents, me and my therapist. He talked to me about 15 minutes and then told my parents I needed to be hospitalized immediately which was a big surprise. I remember when he told me this my therapist started crying because she had no idea how bad off I was. So I went to my first psyche ward.
The funny thing is I took this all in stride, I never questioned why I was acting weird but on the other hand hard when I started seeing a therapist it was like no big deal; just an appointment once a week and I didn’t think I was crazy. My parents drove me up a hundred miles to the psyche ward. I can see why some people over the years here on the old forum thought it was the medication that made them psychotic because that’s what I thought for years.
I wasn’t doing so good but when they first put me on medication on the ward I took a turn for the worse and it seemed like that’s when I became psychotic. Anyways, I was there for a week and a half and then my parents got me into Soteria House. My stay there is a whole other, long story but basically they didn’t believe in medication. I was 19 with full blown psychosis and not medicated for the next year and a half.
My first few months there I was in denial that anything was wrong with me I thought that the problem was everybody around me and that I was perfectly fine even though this was a house for schizophrenics. Then my parents had a friend from our church whose brother was a psychiatrist and they arranged for me to go see him. First, he talked with my parents and me then he had my parents leave the room and talked to me alone. I told him my story: how I didn’t think anything was wrong with me and that my parents were the ones with problems. I talked to him for 20 minutes and then my parents took me back to Soteria.
The psychiatrist apparently told my parents I was schizophrenic but I didn’t believe it and I went about my business for three months until it dawned on me that something was drastically wrong with me and I accepted I had an illness. I didn’t freak out about the diagnosis, in fact nothing really changed. I was extremely psychotic though but I still went about my day and did stuff like hang out in the recycled book store or the doughnut shop or went to the park or took walks downtown and I would visit my parents. I was in bad shape though.
So If I had to pinpoint when I was diagnosed it was with by my parents friends brother, even though I only saw him twice. They say if you’re schizophrenic you are a person first and a schizophrenic second and that’s how I’ve lived my life.
Whats your country? Its unorthodox to be under care for a period of time and have no diagnosis.
I’m French
I have sent you some helpful info in PM
Half a year. The doctor then told me to wait and lay off my studies and restart the year after.
For me it was a stepwise progression. Social anxiety - increasingly severe depression - negative symptoms? Apathy, not using free study periods to study, waking early but not wanting to get out of bed, skipping meals,increasingly poor academic performance. First saw pdoc just before I was 17. He put me on anafranil(sp). I think it was about 6 months after the first hospitalisation that a firm schizophrenia dx was given.
In 1993 I was diagnosed with depression and ptsd. In 2006 they added psychotic depression. In 2008ish it was bipolar, in 2014 paranoid sz, 2016 sza- depressive type, and more recently, sza- bipolar type.
I was in psychosis from 2015 until 2018 when I got diagnosed. So 3 years. I was suicidal through my teens but parents never took me to psych ward probably out of fear I would get taken by the state.