really? I suffer from depression and feel that my depression will get better with age.. the only thing i can see about your mental illness, schizophrenia is the meds that you are taking now, what effect they have on the body long term. mind wise, I would think you also get better.

I am not older than fifty but my pdoc says the opposited of yours. He says when I reach my older years the sz wont be as bad. So we'll see!

im now 48, although ive not been diagnosed, ive had heavy duty symptoms since my early teens, that have definately tapered off in the last ten years.
i only started seeing a doctor for the first time in 2010. i feel that even though i still have strong voices, my condition has improved with age.

Schizophrenia can occur at any age, but it tends to first develop (or at least become evident) between adolescence and young adulthood. Schizophrenia in children is likely to be severe. Although the risk of schizophrenia declines with age, its incidence has been known to peak in those who are about 45 years old, and again in people who are in their mid-60s (mostly women). Late-onset schizophrenia that develops in the 40s is most likely to be the paranoid subtype with fewer negative symptoms or learning impairment. Such patients usually have functioned at a near-normal level until structural deficits in the brain break down.

Not in the age group but can't seeing it getting worse unless you have just totally ignored trying to educate yourself on the illness coping techniques that work better and hold etc. Which would of been a major problem in the past due to more a lot more stigma then there is today. Which would be the problem the current 50+ would be facing.

I am 42 and my symptoms have stabilized. I knew of a Gentleman who lived pass his 60's and I remember his wife stating he had not relapsed in years.

I had a similar comment from a doctor (he was not my regular doctor) which my regular psychiatrist dismissed. She has found persons in her practice stabilizing.

I would be wary of doctors that seem to see only the negative. They maybe counter productive to a patient living a productive life. A prognosis like that may become self fulling by just having a negative mind set.