schizophrenia

I knew someone who had it (deceased), but could not accept the fact they had it. For example, they would point at a white wall and ask why everyone was ignoring the face on it. When others said they don't see it, they got angry, assuming they are conspiring with the face to act like it's not there. If people brought up it might be hallucination they would have nothing of it. On their mind, they would basically be the only sane person. Everyone else was wrong/lying.

If you don't think you have schizophrenia, then that's something you may want to think about and/or discuss with a healthcare professional (same one or different). But I'd like to bring up some other things that might be relevant: psychological adjustment to a diagnosis, there should be patient benefits to a diagnosis, and that daily functioning may be more important than a diagnostic label.

Something I hear in your post is that you're not very happy about being diagnosed with schizophrenia. As a separate issue from the validity of the diagnosis, maybe you're having difficulty accepting and/or adjusting to the diagnosis. There is some stigma unfortunately around mental illness and schizophrenia.

How else is the diagnosis impacting you? Maybe you're receiving meds, maybe you have community or disability support or resources (eg, work program, support group). For a doctor, a diagnosis helps them with billing and clinical decision-making (eg, prescribing meds). There should be some benefit to you. Like, I have an asthma diagnosis, and that allows me to get puffers so I can breathe better.

Diagnosis doesn't define any one of course, and daily functioning may be more important. E.g., Are you working? Do you want to be?

Your symptoms don't sound very severe but on aggregate they do sound quite specific to schizophrenia. As someone else said, you do have a lot of insight into your symptoms. Unfortunately, I don't think that matters much in terms of whether you meet diagnostic criteria. The evidence of you having other symptoms is based on your own self-report and therefore kind of weak. But if you're losing focus having a serious conversation about your health due to thoughts in your head that grab your attention in front of a psychiatrist, that is something that I think might lead many Western healthcare providers to diagnose as schizophrenia or something pretty quickly. So, if you can exert more control in those situations, you might want to, at least in some settings. At the same time, Western psychiatry is not the only source of perspectives on the meaning of our inner monologues. You may want to explore other schools of thought that regard those thoughts as less pathological. You might get personal significance from less pathologizing perspectives.

Finally, check out Daniel Mackler, a former psychotherapist with a large swath of videos on youtube, who has a very different understanding of schizophrenia than mainstream psychiatry.

Im not a psychiatrist.

But the things you’ve described here don’t sound normal. There’s a range of strength of most illnesses, so it’s possible you have it but not the strongest form of it.

I also think that I don't have schizophrenia. When I was diagnosed, I was scared. I was afraid because I have always been an activist; with everything I've seen about police brutality, I thought it would happen to me. I thought I was being pursued by the police forces. I believe that paranoia is somewhat logical. On the other hand, I think my negative symptoms are more a consequence of my anxiety and depression. Since I was a child, around 13 or 14 years old, I have had social anxiety and a tendency towards sadness. I don't believe that at 13 I was already sick with schizophrenia. I have never had hallucinations (neither auditory nor visual). Just "logical" paranoia and self-referential thoughts (which could be caused by social phobia). The issue is that since I started taking antipsychotics, I began to notice symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. What makes me doubt is that there are people who have "denial of illness" and have a worse prognosis; I hope I am not one of those people. Nevertheless, I follow my treatment to the letter. Now I am fine; the only thing that makes it difficult for me to lead a normal daily life is the irritable bowel syndrome. From here, I want to send encouragement to all of you who are in the same situation. We will get through this with struggle, I am sure. A hug.

PS: I apologize if my message contains any errors. My native language is Spanish. This message is written with the help of an AI for accurate translation.

It's possible you do have schizophrenia, but from what you've written here, there are other conditions that sometimes present with similar symptoms, like obsessive-compulsive disorder, PTSD, or schizotypal personality disorder. From what you've written here, if you do have schizophrenia you have remarkable insight into your symptoms. I'd get a second opinion if you can