I have a character with paranoid schizophrenia who starts the story not being medicated and doesn't really want to be so far.
She has frequent auditory hallucinations since childhood, but she likes them and has friendly bond with them.
I've done a lot of research on how different people lead with their auditory hallucinations, and chose to take this approach because they're usually always portrayed negatively in media when that is not the case for everyone who experiences psychosis.
What I'm wondering is if it would be alright for her to want to seek treatment later on. In the world she's currently in (fantasy setting), there's no way she can consult with a health care professional nor get actual medication, but she can seek healing magic which would have a similar effect to antipsychotics.
I wanted to know if it is alright for me, as someone who is not on the schizospectrum, to portray her symptoms getting worse and more overwhelming over time and have her make the decision to seek help.
Being neurodivergent, I know how wrong people can get the relationships we have with our conditions, and I also know not everyone would like to see certain struggles be shown in media. However, I would like to show both the good parts of her condition (how important the voices are to her) as well as the less good parts, always as carefully and respectfully as possible, of course.
Thank you already for your time and for this amazing blog! It has been very useful to me.
Hello there, friend!
There are obviously a lot of ways to experience relationships with auditory hallucinations or any symptom of psychosis and schizophrenia specifically. I have friends with psychosis and with schizophrenia or schizoaffective specifically who have decided against taking medication - there are also people with these disorders who have decided against medication but been given medication anyways.
It is also possible for someone to have symptoms for a while that get worse - for schizophrenia and schizoaffective specifically there is usually a period called prodrome or the prodromal phase where certain negative symptoms (symptoms that take away such as lack of affect or lack of energy, difficulty with hygeine, and so forth) become more pronounced and light psychotic symptoms develop until they become more severe in the "active" phase of the disorder.
as for having symptoms as a child that get severe in late teenage years or young adulthood...it is possible. There are multiple people I know, including myself, who had psychotic experiences as a younger child that later turned from magical thinking and odd experiences to active psychosis later. But I do want to stress that childhood schizophrenia is much more rare than it is often represented in media, and often more severe than how it shows up as an adult. Your character would likely have psychotic experiences but not full-blown active psychosis or schizophrenia until later. I also want to add that sometimes children have experiences that may seem odd and that is not always disordered, even in a character with a thought disorder!
However, with that in mind - having symptoms get from comforting to disturbing enough to seek help is absolutely a narrative that happens, and I think it's a great one to include in the character.
One last small thing - paranoid schizophrenia may or may not be used depending on where in the world the story takes place or when the story takes place. The DSM-5 no longer puts schizophrenia into subtypes but the ICD still does! Something to think about.
-Mod Bert