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There are many stories of recovery from mental illness. No one should presume that a person is hopeless, either based on statistical data, or on observing someone for a day or for a couple of weeks. There is nothing written in stone that says a particular person has a bad prognosis, just because a doctor or clinician has made that evaluation. 

Science is limited in its ability to foretell the outcome of a person considered mentally ill. Just because statistics exist that might seem to support a doctor's or clinician's evaluation, it doesn't change the fact that some of the time, these mental health professionals are wrong. 

Human ignorance is boundless. Abraham Lincoln said "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." 

Clinicians sometimes fail this test. Just because the mental health treatment system isn't offering any hope, based on their supposed 'science', does not mean that you should give up. 

I know a man who had severe schizophrenia throughout his twenties, thirties and forties, who was also "dual diagnosis" and abused substances, who, when he reached his fifties, came out of it very well, and to this day, does very well with his life. I am not speaking of myself, and I am not at liberty to share with you whom this is. But his brain is far from being wrecked by his past illness. 

When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, professionals and some others presumed I wasn't going anywhere in life, and some weren't interested any more in investing time and energy in me. A therapist decided to stop seeing me, and someone at California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation decided I was unemployable. Many people who thought they knew me may have assumed I was a "has been" at that young of an age. 

Even while others gave up on me, I knew better. 

Twenty-two years ago, when I moved in with my [then] fiancé, I was still very delusional--because this was a time shortly after I was released from a psychiatric ward. 

I began to study myself. I had a little "meditation area" in the bedroom of a tiny, one bedroom apartment, and I would sit in a chair, listen to old rock music, smoke a lot of cigarettes, and write down my observations of what my mind was doing and how it worked, and how it did not work. I did this studying on a regular basis, for a very long time, and I learned many things. And I taught myself cognitive systems for making my mind work much better. 

I did these regular "sessions" in combination with taking high dosages of antipsychotic medication. My mind wasn't going to come back without being medicated. Some others may have a different path. Far be it from me to say medication is a universal need. 

You have to do what works, and not do what doesn't work. Yet, you should never give up; once you give up on life--that could be when it's over. Where there is hope, there is life. Do not too easily relinquish hope.