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What are the chances that chronic depression leads to schizophrenia?

Someone close to me has been battling depression for 17 years now. She is doing a good job, has held on to a demanding job for 4 years now. Though her performance at work are highly erratic. Periods of poor apathetic performance interspersed with periods of high performance.
She shows symptoms of chronic depression, withdraws from social life, has low energy, can spend days in bed, is messy etc. She's on medication too.
I fear that the next phase will be schizophrenia
Asked 1 years agoStatus: Open
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Answers (7) to: "What are the chances that chronic depression leads to schizo..."

  • Depression doesn't lead to schizophrenia.It occurs if someone is genetically exposed to develope this disease (around 1% of the total population, or higher if someone in the family is schizophrenic). As opposed to the as many as 16% of the general population that experience a major depression episode.
    Answered 1 years ago   |  Report abuse
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  • no it cannot develop into schizophrenia that’s not possible. it doesn’t work like that.
    She probably needs assistance with affairs of daily living; if you are battling depression, you can't keep the house clean, and if you live in a pig sty, it's even harder to battle depression. If you could come in, straighten things up, do some laundry, cook a few meals, it would really do a long way towards making her life tolerable. Don't just jump in and take over, though; she's already suffering feelings of impotence.
    Answered 10 months ago   |  Report abuse
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  • she should start to reduce medications slowly but surely and check weekly her psychiatrist. too much drugs pumps out the last little life she has. give her my story to read please, so that she can perhaps find some ideas or open herself more towards you.

    I am the manager of the topic "depression" and "bipolar-disorder" because i was asked by iMedix to do so. so contact me whenever you want and i will do my best to coach you and your friend.

    this is my personal story - believe it or not:

    http://www.pulsarsystems.ch/lixurion999-EN.pdf

    PS: I am sorry for the English - online-translation from my German original document.
    Answered 11 months ago   |  Report abuse
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  • The symptoms of "Though her performance at work is highly erratic. Periods of poor apathetic performance interspersed with periods of high performance." suggest that she is bipolar- was she diagnosed?
    Depressives don't move on to schizophrenia. Unfortunately, They move on to suicide…

    Answered 12 months ago   |  Report abuse
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  • When depression is severe it can have many of the same symptoms as schizophrenia but it does not lead to schizophrenia.
    Answered 11 months ago   |  Report abuse
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  • Sometimes if you forget to take your medication, you can have bad days. It could be from not getting enough sleep, something stressful going on in personal life, job stress, some big change. There's a long list....
    I am not an expert on depression, but I don't think it leads to schizophrenia. Not exercising can certainly lead to other health problems. Everything can go into the death spiral if you just ignore everything and quit taking care of yourself.

    You mentioned this was about a friend. So maybe, you have to do what a real friend needs to do. Some people will not help themselves and will let others do everything for them. If that's the problem, saying NO may be just the thing to get them to do things for themselves, like they should be doing. So if you are babying your friend, then maybe that's not really in their best interest. I don't know what's really gong on in your situation. So my suggestions could be way off. Its impossible for me to understand it with just the few w
    Answered 10 months ago   |  Report abuse
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  • I find it very disturbing that a non-physician who gives advice about changing medication also leads the depression group. It is also distressing that his .pdf file won't open.

    It is extremely unlikely that depression would ever lead to schizophrenia. It is possible, as Tiffany20 stated, that the person in question is bipolar, with manic and depressive episodes. Given the length of time that the problem has existed, one would need to know what treatments have been tried, age of onset, what worked best and worst, what she is experiencing, and much other relevant information. It could be any of several disorders. The most likely, of course, being a chronic depression or bipolar disorder. Anxiety, stress, nutrition, socialization, physical disease, or life's losses and traumas could each affect how the person feels and behaves. One very remote possibility could be that the person has been schizophrenic from the onset, displaying primarily the negative symptoms of schizophrenia
    Answered 6 months ago   |  Report abuse
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