Tips For Supporting Someone Off Medication

hi and welcome back to the living world schizophrenia channel my name is rob uh you're probably used to seeing lauren in these videos more i am lauren's husband usually it's lauren sharing her experiences living with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder in her case but in this video i'm going to be sharing a pretty popular topic i think at least one that quite a few members of our audience have reached out to us about and that's about tips for supporting someone who either wants to go off their medication or isn't on their medication at all but before i get into that i just wanted to quickly remind you if you haven't already make sure to subscribe to this channel and a couple of important notes first we actually have a gofundme going on right now so if you want to help support the creation of future videos like this one make sure to check out the link in the description to our gofundme we also have a patreon page set up so that's another way that you can support um the creation of videos like this so a quick disclaimer that um you know i know that there's a lot of people out there who they're trying to support a loved one who has not been on medication for an extended period of time and you know their experience is going to be different than than my experience but hopefully maybe some parts of my story you might find helpful so this is really just this is all this is really coming from like my experience you know i'm not a health care professional or a doctor or anything like that so it's really just you know what my experience has been like and what it kind of i found helpful in terms of supporting someone um who wants to go off medication and is not on medication i also want to make it clear kind of where i'm coming from and what my position is on medication and that is that with respect to treating schizophrenia schizoaffective disorder medication i think is like a cornerstone of of treatment and you know there are other psychosocial um supports and therapies that that can help but i i really think that medication is kind of the important foundation to kind of build um all that that other stuff around in terms of improving quality of life so the first kind of big tip that i want to give you when you're supporting someone who wants to go off medication or is not on medication is not to take it personally that they don't want to be on medication they're not trying to not be on medication just to piss you off um they don't they don't want to take the medication for a reason or they or they might not even have access to medication it's a so they're they're trying to get it but they can't get it there's a reason why they're not taking the medication and it isn't to upset you and that might seem clear but when you're when you're in a close relationship with someone um it can be really difficult to not take it personally and i think that it's something that you should look out for i know that personally when um lauren and i were first getting started on our relationship and um she was starting to encounter difficulties with respect to medication i took it personally i thought that it was going to be kind of easier to navigate those challenges and um it's not and i think one of the reasons why it's not maybe well why it's not as easy as you may think is that it's the sort of thing that doesn't really go away it's a sustained thing where you know you the person's not wanting to take the medication for one reason or another you know there's periods of good good periods where it's not so much of an issue and then there are more longer periods where it kind of is an issue and you know that kind of like up and down can be kind of tiring and it kind of just wears on you and so it is a situation where it's easy to to take it personally and you kind of have to take a step back and understand that that this person isn't trying to do this to hurt you or upset you or anything like that it's it's something that they're struggling with okay now a tip to follow up not taking it personally is to try to sympathize with what they're going through and it can be difficult to kind of imagine like what what they might be going through like you know if there's medication that helps somebody why would they stop taking it but there's a lot of different reasons why it could be that the person is facing side effects from taking medication and they're just so tired of the side effects they don't want they don't want to feel what the side effects are or what the side effects are doing to their body they don't want that anymore or it could be that they have delusions about the medication being you know poison and so it helps to understand that there are reasons why people don't want to take their medication okay this next tip that i want to talk about is kind of more of a topic and that is around the concept of building trust so kind of taking a step back to the like taking it personally side of things if you're taking it personally it kind of creates a situation where it's easy for conflict to happen and if you are in conflict with somebody who isn't wanting to take their medication and you're you know you're speaking more aggressively with them or you're trying to coerce them into taking medication or something like that then you know what what you're really doing is you're kind of damaging the the trust that you have with that person and you're making it more difficult to um approach dealing with this in like a collaborative way in a way that they they care about what you're saying they they value what you're saying so it's really important to keep this in mind in terms of building trust with someone here a few other tips for building trust first make sure to go slow and take your time you know if somebody is experiencing intense psychosis um you know they're they're they're very distracted by hallucinations or delusions um you you're probably going to need to go really slow um repeat yourself a lot you know increase the softness of your voice or lower the tone of your voice you don't want to like kind of add to the noise there and just understand that it's it's going to take time one time when i was at the hospital with lauren and she had stopped her medication for a couple weeks and we're in the like psych emergency room and the like resident um psych doctor came in to assess her and this doctor was trying to get her to take like a you know a dose of antipsychotic to kind of just you know bring her her back a little bit and lauren was kind of peak psychosis at that point that super paranoid super distracted by hallucinations and it was really impressive to see how this doctor really took her time talking with with lauren um you know lauren didn't want to take the the medication so it was a challenge but this this doctor would never lost patience with her you know really took the time to explain like you know why it was that this medication um would help her you know what the side effects were the dosage amount and um just just took their time building trust and and it was really effective so what i found interesting about that experience was that this person was able to come in didn't have any prior relationship you know with lauren and was able to i would say relatively quickly establish trust with her uh and and it was able to help her that way and um you know it probably took more time than people would estimate like maybe it took her about an hour of of communication which is a lot of time in terms of a doctor coming in and giving you that amount of time but it was it was really valuable and it was really effective and i think that um that kind of like attention and time is needed in order to like de-escalate situations another tip is to not go around um the person that you're trying to support in terms of talking to their doctor um that just creates a situation that there's more like paranoia and like a lack of trust make sure that you know if you if you are wanting to talk to um the person's doctor see if you see if you can ask if it would be okay that you come to them with their doc to their doctor's appointment ask if it's okay to be present um ask permission and then maybe just one final tip that might seem a little bit obvious but just making sure that you're letting the person know that you are there for them that you want to support them and that you love them okay so the next sort of tip topic that i want to move on to is just dialogue around medication so i think something that's really important to respect and keep in mind is that um you know whether or not somebody takes medication is their choice you're not there to force somebody to take medication and this is a tough one because i think that there are situations where where forced medication might be required um it's tough though because i feel like probably a lot of those situations are situations where somebody just hasn't tried to like actually de-escalate the situation and i would say that you know a forced medication situation would only be in a situation where somebody was gonna hurt themselves or they were gonna hurt somebody else and i think people use that as an excuse for forced medication um or justification for why somebody was forcibly medicated but i think that de-escalation would work and probably would be a would work a lot better and be a lot more positive for the the patient in the long run so bringing it back i think that medication is a person's choice and you need to try to support them in that okay so hopefully you're in a situation where you do have like trust built up with someone that you're trying to support and they are able to come and and talk to you about not wanting to be on medication or um or being completely off medication and then you know that person needs support you know when you're in that situation uh what i find helpful is talking about how okay i understand you want to you know make an adjustment to your medication or you want to reduce your medication or you want to go off your medication and not being opposed to that not saying well you can't do that but i think you know my position on this is always like okay if that's something that you want to do what i think you need to do is talk to your psychiatrist about that and they're going to be able to help you maybe make adjustments to your medication so that you don't you know have a side effect that you're struggling with or um they could help you reduce the medication in an effective way that won't kind of bring on a strong like episode of psychosis so making sure that you're encouraging somebody to work with a psychiatrist in order to taper and adjust your medications in a safe way okay some other helpful dialogue i think surrounding medication has to do with you know reminding a person what they feel like when um they're on medication versus when they're off medication i think for a lot of a lot of people it's this situation of feeling like they don't want to be on medication which is kind of understandable with like side effects and whatnot but there's there's not too much of a like focus on like well what is it like when they're not on medication you know like in terms of paranoia and um you know just being scared and dealing with hallucinations and you know it being a an experience where a person's functionality is greatly reduced trying to remind them about what that experience is like not not in like a threatening way but kind of more as like a well this could happen if you end up stopping taking your medication or reducing your medication abruptly i think another important part of dialogue with medication is making sure that you're really trying to listen to them about why it is that they are not wanting to take their medication so the big ones i find are side effects and so talking about you know what side effects they're experiencing and i'm trying to maybe make suggestions for dealing with those side effects you know sometimes it might not be possible to adjust the medication because they need that medication and so it might be looking at like other psychosocial supports like therapy like exercise nutrition that kind of thing that may help improve their quality quality of life even though they still have those side effects another reason in terms of not taking medication that i found has to do with like delusion and paranoia and now one thing about this is that it doesn't really help to try to reason and rationalize with um a person who's experiencing delusions and paranoia and i still try because i just feel like why not have at least that going um but i think what works what works better and actually what lauren has told me kind of works better is trying to address more about how the person is feeling rather than um trying to you know debate with them about you know whether or not what they're thinking could be accurate or anything like that it's more about kind of approaching it from like well okay i i'm understanding what you're saying about that it seems like that's making that you feel scared about that or or whatever and and trying to address it more from like um how that's making a person feel in the emotions and how for example medication could maybe help deal with that another possible reason for people not taking their medication is just that they don't feel like they need to take their medication um you know a problem with schizophrenia is something called anasignosia we've done a separate video on that and it's basically a lack of insight into a person's illness i know that lauren has gone through periods of wellness that then kind of precipitate you know her feeling like she doesn't have the illness and that she doesn't need to take medication to deal with the illness okay moving on to another big tip help them with their meds where possible they may need help developing a plan around medication so just like you know how to get medication what medication to get when to take it how to mitigate side effects if somebody doesn't have access to medication you might be able to help them navigate like insurance issues or try to problem solve like cost issues if somebody does have access to medication it still might be a problem in terms of just like going to pick it up for example like lauren has run out of medication before and it's just like she's forgotten to like get it refilled and then it's it's this barrier right so you kind of want to remove um i think barriers in terms of people getting access to medication so picking up medication from the pharmacy if you can helping them organize it into like pill boxes it may help to remind them when to take medication or help them set alarms that kind of thing i think another uh thing that might be helpful is uh seeking out like like local peer support groups you know i i think the value in that is that people are able to be in communication with with people who are going through the same experience and understand the like difficulty of taking medication and um i i think that there's a special there's a special bond in that and that it can be valuable in terms of knowing that like other people are struggling and has struggled and have been successful and you know you can be successful too now one tip that i kind of want to bring up that i don't i don't personally have any experience with but i know is something that um a lot of people deal with is a problem that a lot of people deal with and that is dealing with concurrent disorders so schizophrenia plus a substance use disorder so from my brief research on this it seems like the best way to handle this situation is by treating both disorders simultaneously uh and so this is probably a situation where ideally um if you could be going you know to the person's doctor with them to kind of discuss what's going on and um try to make sure that they're getting adequate supports for both problems and not just the one because i think if you know if you're just treating one it can it's it's going to be difficult to just treat one both of them require support and attention this next tip kind of puts the focus back on yourself i think that it's important to talk a little bit about how difficult it can be to be supporting someone this maybe sounds a little bit ridiculous but i only heard the term caregiver fatigue this year like it wasn't something that was like in my vocabulary before that and when i when i and i only heard this like after you know the experience that i went through with lauren and her hospitalization and when i heard it it was just like that makes sense it makes sense that people you know experience this situation where they're just completely drained and exhausted because it it can take a lot out of you and so making sure that you are getting you know adequate supports yourself it's going to be difficult for you to support someone um if you if you're not feeling great yourself or if you're completely completely drained so a couple tips there um you can be talking to your friends and family you know your support network who can hopefully help you in terms of his support but might also be able to step in and be you know an additional support for the person that you're trying to support you kind of need a network of support i know that i personally find therapy very helpful lauren and i both go independently but we also go to a therapist together uh pretty regularly being able to talk things out with a professional is very valuable i think it's important to realize that this is really not something that you can do on your own you really do need to kind of have a network of support okay so one final tip i think it's important to have a plan in place before somebody goes off their meds because it's going to be easier to kind of make that plan and have that dialogue and have those tough discussions when a person you know is on medication and is well versus when they're not well and if you are in a situation where you are dealing with someone who is currently unwell and you don't have a plan in place then i think you kind of have to start at the beginning in terms of you know taking things slow building trust um and approaching it from that perspective in terms of trying to build wellness back up as a supportive person in your loved one's life i think that it's important to point out that your role is not to be a medical professional treating them your role is to build a healthy supportive relationship and to help them access supports along their journey to wellness thank you for taking the time to watch this video i'm proud of you for just trying to learn more in terms of how you can support your loved one who's struggling with this illness i know that it's not always going to be the easiest thing to do but you can play a valuable role in terms of helping them towards wellness if you have any tips for supporting someone who is not taking their medication or wanting to go off their medication please leave those in the comments below also uh if you'd like to support future videos like this make sure to check out our patreon link in the description below and we also have that gofundme going on right now so again that's another way to support this channel finally if you aren't already a subscriber make sure to like and subscribe we really appreciate it wishing you and your loved ones good health see you in the next video [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Living Well with Schizophrenia

Views: 25,608

Keywords: mental health, mental illness, mental illness medication, schizophrenia, schizophrenia medication, anosognosia schizophrenia, supporting someone off medication, anosognosia, mental illness caregivers, supporting someone with mental illness, supporting someone with schizophrenia, supporting someone with schizoaffective disorder, not wanting to take medication, medication, psychiatric medication

Id: vGg_qzSI_Fs

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020