narkij
09-11-2009, 02:09 AM
A little bit about myself. I have lived in India my entire life in the fine city of New Delhi, have never moved out until a year ago. I am 18 and I have a sister who is currently 16 years old. She has always been a very nice, sweet person, never doing harm to anyone. However, over the past few years, she has been getting progressively worse mentally.
She has had trouble communicating her thoughts before and attempts to write down her thoughts on pieces of paper, often and lately on her stomach and other parts of her body. The messages are getting increasingly simple in structure (ranging from "run away", to "hear them" after I asked why she randomly flicked a group of people off in a field near our residence).
She has been having a few delusions ("destroy all of my jewelry or the world will end"), but no hallucinations that we know of (so we don't think it's schizophrenia) except when she just started maprotiline and a few other medications in the past (but which she no longer takes).
She has had much mania in the past (broke furniture, broke many pairs of fine china, screamed out on the streets, screamed out in the forest in the middle of the night waving a broom around with stones in her pockets, screaming for the devil to go away).
She has told us that she is tired of living and wants to reincarnate as an eel. She has attempted suicide a few times, including through suffocation with a bag.
She needs alprazolam to go to sleep (if she doesn't have it, she can never sleep, due to severe anxiety), and she is currently simultaneously taking periciazine as an [attempted] antipsychotic. However, after a few weeks of taking both medicines, she has suddenly gotten worse in all of the ways described previously, along with no appetite, extreme difficulty in verbal communication, extreme lethargy (very hard for her to walk fast), heightened desire for achieving goals with failure to accomplish them (e.g. constantly wants to "take a hike" but then just sits down outside, lacking energy to go further).
One of her goals is to stop taking the medicine for awhile. There is sometimes slight improvement in behavior or so in the next week (decreased lethargy, seemingly reduced depression, etc.), but in all of the attempts she has tried, was always followed by a much worse bout of mania or extreme anxiety that necessitated more hospitalization and the need to go back onto the medicine. Her period has stopped; she seems to be anorexic and is losing weight rapidly, probably to counteract the weight gain from the prior medicines she took (I understand that one's period usually stops when they are anorexic).
As a child, she was slightly weird (showed her spine to random people in the playground in elementary school, banged her head against the wall sometimes during junior high school [and did it a few times recently, really hard]).
She has also recently carried random stuff around in her pockets that she seems to have no use for (nails, half-eaten moldy orange, stones, knife, etc.), and often goes out for hours at a time -- she has gotten lost many times (there have been several police searches), but the police have gotten tired of looking for her and even recently considered her a suspect in a middle night incident in which a few girls were reportedly molested (even though we're certain she didn't do it and wouldn't do such a thing). When they find her, she is usually not that far from the house, just standing around. Once, neighbors called the police when they found her standing in their front garden at midnight holding a knife.
She sometimes picks up termites or half-eaten food off of the ground and eats it herself. Recently her movement behavior is such that she often sits or stands for long periods of time just doing nothing, hunched over.
We never suspected she had autistic spectrum disorder (which she has been diagnosed with recently). However, the doctor hasn't gone beyond that. She obviously has major depression and something else.
I am trying to be thorough in describing her behavior here because I want to ensure that we can increase the chances of getting as accurate of a diagnosis as possible. Similarly, this is why I am asking here, although I have also asked at more sensible places as well, including via discussions and meetings with the doctors that we have had in the past.
I don't think we have much to afford more in terms of this -- it is draining us mentally and spiritually.
Once again, thanks for the help.
She has had trouble communicating her thoughts before and attempts to write down her thoughts on pieces of paper, often and lately on her stomach and other parts of her body. The messages are getting increasingly simple in structure (ranging from "run away", to "hear them" after I asked why she randomly flicked a group of people off in a field near our residence).
She has been having a few delusions ("destroy all of my jewelry or the world will end"), but no hallucinations that we know of (so we don't think it's schizophrenia) except when she just started maprotiline and a few other medications in the past (but which she no longer takes).
She has had much mania in the past (broke furniture, broke many pairs of fine china, screamed out on the streets, screamed out in the forest in the middle of the night waving a broom around with stones in her pockets, screaming for the devil to go away).
She has told us that she is tired of living and wants to reincarnate as an eel. She has attempted suicide a few times, including through suffocation with a bag.
She needs alprazolam to go to sleep (if she doesn't have it, she can never sleep, due to severe anxiety), and she is currently simultaneously taking periciazine as an [attempted] antipsychotic. However, after a few weeks of taking both medicines, she has suddenly gotten worse in all of the ways described previously, along with no appetite, extreme difficulty in verbal communication, extreme lethargy (very hard for her to walk fast), heightened desire for achieving goals with failure to accomplish them (e.g. constantly wants to "take a hike" but then just sits down outside, lacking energy to go further).
One of her goals is to stop taking the medicine for awhile. There is sometimes slight improvement in behavior or so in the next week (decreased lethargy, seemingly reduced depression, etc.), but in all of the attempts she has tried, was always followed by a much worse bout of mania or extreme anxiety that necessitated more hospitalization and the need to go back onto the medicine. Her period has stopped; she seems to be anorexic and is losing weight rapidly, probably to counteract the weight gain from the prior medicines she took (I understand that one's period usually stops when they are anorexic).
As a child, she was slightly weird (showed her spine to random people in the playground in elementary school, banged her head against the wall sometimes during junior high school [and did it a few times recently, really hard]).
She has also recently carried random stuff around in her pockets that she seems to have no use for (nails, half-eaten moldy orange, stones, knife, etc.), and often goes out for hours at a time -- she has gotten lost many times (there have been several police searches), but the police have gotten tired of looking for her and even recently considered her a suspect in a middle night incident in which a few girls were reportedly molested (even though we're certain she didn't do it and wouldn't do such a thing). When they find her, she is usually not that far from the house, just standing around. Once, neighbors called the police when they found her standing in their front garden at midnight holding a knife.
She sometimes picks up termites or half-eaten food off of the ground and eats it herself. Recently her movement behavior is such that she often sits or stands for long periods of time just doing nothing, hunched over.
We never suspected she had autistic spectrum disorder (which she has been diagnosed with recently). However, the doctor hasn't gone beyond that. She obviously has major depression and something else.
I am trying to be thorough in describing her behavior here because I want to ensure that we can increase the chances of getting as accurate of a diagnosis as possible. Similarly, this is why I am asking here, although I have also asked at more sensible places as well, including via discussions and meetings with the doctors that we have had in the past.
I don't think we have much to afford more in terms of this -- it is draining us mentally and spiritually.
Once again, thanks for the help.