Need Help!

[janardan]

Hello, I am 38 years old, Male. Height is 5 feet 7 inch. Weight 90 Kg. Suffering from negative symtoms of schizophrenia as detected by my psychiatrist. As prescribed, I am taking 100 mg of amisulpride sustained release tablets everyday. Now my big problem is, I cannot concentrate on my engineering research and feeling that I cannot grow my career. I feel that I will never get promotion. I am very much idle in my studies. I don’t get interest in studies and research. I cannot concentrate on my research work. It has become a boring stuff for me. Side by side I know, if this situation does not change, it will harm my promotion. I want to survive. Am I suffering from any kind of depression? Please suggest me something so that I can regain my life back and concentrate on my career advancement.

[asjaro]

I suggest that you speak to your education establishment about your mental health problems. Also, are you saying your meds are causing the inability to concentrate?

[Threemoons]

Hi Janardan, sorry concentrating is so difficult for you these days. I think like Asjaro said that you should talk to your superiors about your health problems. You can stay vague if you'd like, saying just that you have difficulties concentrating. Have you talked about this issue to your psych yet? I don't know how it is in your country but in mine people with mental health problems can be classed as handicapped workers and have some adaptations done so they can better work, like hours preferences and such. Hope that you can get yourself understood and get your work more manageable soon. Take care.

[hold_on]

Since starting on higher dose antidepressants and antipsychotics I've had a similar experience in a loss of some ability to concentrate. I find difficulties in remembering what has been said by who in meetings and what I mean to say when I get a chance to speak. I also find it difficult to keep a large set of tasks in my head. I just lose what I was going to say when others are talking and just can't keep a list of tasks in my head while doing other things.

I have absolutely no intention of telling my company about my difficulties, and I concede that my life is better on antipsychotics so I try to work around the concentration deficit. In my case I always keep a pen and pad to hand to make notes on, lists of jobs to get done, who said what relevant points and what I intend to cover when I can talk. As it turned out at my review my boss said I appear to be very professional and organised always having what I want to say in our meetings together jotted down and it actually made me appear more organised than my fellow managers!

I don't exactly know what challenges you face as an engineering student but could you make more notes of what you're doing as you're doing it to help you stay focused? Try to only keep one thing in your head at a time and trust the rest to a notepad? Maybe get yourself a nice pen to enhance the experience of taking notes?