If you love someone struggling with schizophrenia, it’s in your best interest to offer guidance. However, being that schizophrenia is such a complex disease that affects everyone differently, it can be difficult to tell how to help your loved one.

Often, people with schizophrenia struggle with relationships (friends, family, etc.), finding and maintaining work, getting through their education, and achieving their life goals.

Although schizophrenia may present a lot of difficulties for your loved one, they can lead an independent and fulfilling life. This prospect becomes even more obtainable when those around them provide the right support.

Throughout this article, we will look at several ways you can help someone with schizophrenia.

Encourage Professional Treatment

It might seem obvious, but without professional treatment, your loved one is more likely to struggle with day-to-day activities. Why? Because professional treatment puts them on the course to better understand themselves, how schizophrenia affects them, and what they can do to curb symptoms.

There are two important factors to schizophrenia treatment: ¹

1. Psychotherapy – also known as “talk therapy,” is a type of treatment that looks into the thought process of someone struggling with schizophrenia. By identifying their thought process, a mental health professional can help the person struggling to discover new ways of changing their thought pattern for the better and, in turn, lower symptoms.
2. Medication – a doctor will prescribe antipsychotic medication as a means of curbing hallucinations, delusions, and jumbled thoughts. These medications can cause side effects (such as fatigue or nausea) and may cause your loved one to stop taking them. If so, you must influence the importance of medication.

You might have a loved one who’s already in (or has been in) treatment, yet, they still struggle with a variety of daily tasks. This is normal as treatment isn’t a one-and-done situation. Rather, it’s something that takes months and years to become effective.

With that, you must influence your loved one to make timely treatment appointments. It’s only natural they may not want to visit treatment. In these situations, you may find yourself arguing and/or growing angry at them. However, this is not an effective way of helping.

Instead, we suggest you remind your loved one of their life goals as a reason to go to treatment. Though it may not seem like it, treatment is allowing them to reach their goals without the struggle of schizophrenia symptoms. ²

Be Informative About the Dangers of Drugs and Alcohol

People with schizophrenia may feel the need to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol when symptoms are at their worst. This feeling is an extreme danger as addiction produces even worse symptoms than schizophrenia alone. ³

You need to advocate this danger. On top of that, there are a few other things you can do to make sure your loved one stays away from drugs and alcohol. These include:

• Abstaining to using drugs or alcohol yourself
• If already abusing, influence addiction treatment
• Removing any drugs or alcohol from the house

Reduce Stress

People struggling with schizophrenia want to carry on with their lives as though they had never been diagnosed. No matter what age your loved one is, they will not benefit if you’re trying to force your influence.

People who struggle with the disease aren’t entirely in control of their emotions. In fact, they are easily influenced by what’s happening around them. If you want to be someone who influences them for the better, you must understand the importance of patience.

Treating schizophrenia isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight. And with this treatment, you’re going to have moments of frustration – moments where you’re trying to get through to your loved one, but nothing seems to work.

If you continue fighting, you’ll inevitably leave your loved one with more stress than they already have to handle. And stress is one of the biggest issues when it comes to the condition. ⁴

People struggling with schizophrenia have a hard time overcoming it because they’re simultaneously trying to overcome stress. In fact, some medical professionals believe stress could even lead to psychosis symptoms. ⁵ More so, it can intensify other symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations.

If you’re living with your loved one, the best thing you can do is offer them a calm and safe living environment. Or, if you’re not living with them, you can offer them a calm and safe environment when you’re around.

Try to Influence Social Activities

Everyone needs to maintain a social life to one degree or another – humans are social creatures and life becomes ten times more difficult without friends. Unfortunately, people with schizophrenia tend to lead a more isolated lifestyle. ⁶

Take sleeping as an example. People with schizophrenia tend to stay up later in the night and wake up late in the morning or early in the afternoon. This kind of routine actually harms one’s social conduct and places them in a cycle where they’re more likely to be alone.

As a loved one, you can influence this by planning more social activities. Be sure to find out what your loved one likes to do most and embrace that activity.

References

¹ Patel KR, Cherian J, Gohil K, Atkinson D. Schizophrenia: overview and treatment options. P T. 2014 Sep;39(9):638-45. PMID: 25210417; PMCID: PMC4159061.

² Ramsay CE, Broussard B, Goulding SM, Cristofaro S, Hall D, Kaslow NJ, Killackey E, Penn D, Compton MT. Life and treatment goals of individuals hospitalized for first-episode nonaffective psychosis. Psychiatry Res. 2011 Oct 30;189(3):344-8. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2011.05.039. Epub 2011 Jun 25. PMID: 21708410; PMCID: PMC3185187.

³ Goswami S, Mattoo SK, Basu D, Singh G. Substance-abusing schizophrenics: do they self-medicate? Am J Addict. 2004 Mar-Apr;13(2):139-50. doi: 10.1080/10550490490435795. PMID: 15204665.

⁴ Betensky JD, Robinson DG, Gunduz-Bruce H, Sevy S, Lencz T, Kane JM, Malhotra AK, Miller R, McCormack J, Bilder RM, Szeszko PR. Patterns of stress in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res. 2008 Jul 15;160(1):38-46. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2007.06.001. Epub 2008 Jun 2. PMID: 18514323; PMCID: PMC2487675.

⁵ Corcoran C, Mujica-Parodi L, Yale S, Leitman D, Malaspina D. Could stress cause psychosis in individuals vulnerable to schizophrenia? CNS Spectr. 2002 Jan;7(1):33-8, 41-2. doi: 10.1017/s1092852900022240. PMID: 15254447; PMCID: PMC2774708.

⁶ Hopper L. Why schizophrenia leads to social isolation. UCLA; 2017 [cited 2024 Apr 27]. Available from: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/why-schizophrenia-leads-to-social-isolation