Brief Answer:
Explained below.
Detailed Answer:
Hi,
Welcome to Healthcare Magic!
The
hallucinations that you have described do not appear to be true hallucinations that are seen in psychotic illnesses. What you perceived is very common even in people without any mental illness and you need not be concerned about it.
Regarding your diagnosis, it does not make much of a difference to your treatment whether the label is of
Psychosis NOS or of
Paranoid schizophrenia. The same medicines are used to treat both. The symptoms that you have described do not appear to me to be severe enough to fulfill the criteria of paranoid schizophrenia, though one cannot say for sure without taking a detailed history.
Regarding your prognosis, there is always the risk of recurrence in all mental disorders. This risk cannot be negated but can definitely be reduced. Continuing antipsychotics for a long time even after one becomes asymptomatic is done for this purpose only. The other thing you can do is to identify if something precipitated your previous episodes and avoid that. For example,
stress at work place or in personal life in the form of exams, job interviews, deadlines etc is a common precipitating factor. Cutting down stress from your life and improving your coping with stress will certainly reduce your risk of suffering from a recurrence. It is also important to stay away from all drugs of abuse as most of them can cause psychosis.
Rather than living under the shadow of this illness, you should feel free to live a full life. You are on medication but you are not ill. You can take green tea as it has lots of anti-oxidants. It will not interact with your medicines. Regarding the loss of communication skills, please do not give too much of an importance to your supervisor's comments. He might just have been having a bad day when he commented on you. I do not expect these medicines at this dose to hamper your ability to express yourself and communicate with others. At the most I would have expected a slight slowing of mental processes. Perhaps there is some sedation due to these medicines which is making you feel dull. You will notice a difference when the dose is reduced.
There are no specific supplements that I would recommend. Just check that you are not anemic. If you are, then you must take
iron supplements. If you are a vegetarian, then it will make sense to take
vitamin B12 supplements as well.
Hope this clears up things for you. Please feel free to ask if you need any clarifications.
Best wishes.
Dr Preeti Parakh
MD Psychiatry
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