- Hi everyone, and welcome back
to the Living Well with Schizophrenia YouTube channel.
In today's video, I'm going to address
a common misconception that people have,
and that is around the word psychotic and psychopathy.
Now they sound similar, and I think a lot
of people get them confused.
And so in today's video, I'm going to address this,
and I'm going to differentiate
the two and talk about why it's also harmful
to conflate the two with the same thing.
So the term psychotic and psychopath
are used quite frequently
in popular culture,
and sometimes they're used interchangeably,
which is not correct.
And they both represent serious mental illnesses,
but different mental illnesses.
And so, if someone is psychotic,
it means that they are losing touch with reality.
And that there is a break between their experience
of what's going on around them and what is actually going
on around them.
Whereas someone who's deemed a psychopath
is often kind of unable to feel for others,
and often acts in kind of reckless or antisocial ways.
So it's kind of important to differentiate
in the sense that psychosis is often
a symptom of another illness, such as schizophrenia,
or bipolar, or depression or even epilepsy
or anything like that.
Or psychopathy or psychopath is more
of a personality trait linked
to antisocial personality disorder.
Okay so we're gonna dive a little further
into what each of these terms really mean.
So we're gonna start off with psychosis.
So essentially psychosis is when something
is affecting the way your brain understands
the world around you, and there's that break
in terms of your perception of reality.
And it's often also referred to as a psychotic episode.
So a psychotic episode or psychosis can make
it really hard for you to communicate
with other people and to think clearly
and to engage normally with other people,
and it also often leads to hallucinations
where you see, hear, feel, smell,
taste different things that aren't necessarily there
that you are hallucinating.
It also includes delusions, which is when you have
a false belief about something,
and these may include the false belief
or the delusion that people are trying
to harm you, or that people are controlling your thoughts,
and things like that.
Being in psychosis can be a really frightening experience
and can lead you to withdraw or to stop engaging
with people around you, and to stop taking care of yourself.
It's estimated that about three in 100 people
will experience an episode of psychosis in their lifetime,
but it's also known that
if you receive medical help early on
in the process of a psychotic episode,
it can lead to significantly reducing
the harms or negative effects of it going forward.
Okay so that is a brief summary of what psychosis is.
Now we're going to move on into psychopathy.
And so psychopathy is often when people
who have psychopathy don't follow typical social rules
or expectations,
and they often do things like lie often,
have an inflated view of themselves.
They're often unable to control their impulses.
They may not feel guilt
or regret for actions that hurt others,
and they often try to manipulate other people.
And so even just within this list of characteristics,
it's clear to see that psychosis
is a lot more a symptom
of something bigger that's happening.
And it's an experience that the person is experiencing.
Whereas psychopathy is more personality traits,
and more to do with how a person engages
with the world around them.
And as it stands right now,
researchers aren't really sure what causes psychopathy.
Okay so I've been using the term psychopathy,
and you often hear people use the term psychopath
or sociopath, but what do these words really mean?
It's interesting because you won't actually find psychopathy
in the DSM or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, which is what is used
in North America to diagnose mental disorders.
It's actually not in there,
and what is used instead in there
is the term antisocial personality disorder.
And so the typical definition
of sociopath and psychopath falls under
the antisocial personality disorder within the DSM.
Most experts believe that psychopaths
and sociopaths share a similar set of traits.
People who fall into these categories typically have
a poor sense of inner, a poor inner sense of right or wrong,
and they also often have difficulty sharing feelings
with other people, or empathizing
with feelings with other people.
But there are some differences as well.
Typically, a psychopath does not have a conscience,
whereas a sociopath may have a small bit of conscience,
although it's still weak.
Both lack empathy and have a hard time putting themselves
in someone else's shoes
and understanding what someone else may be feeling
in any given moment.
However, a psychopath has even less regard for others
and often sees other people as objects
that they can use for their own personal gain.
Now it's really important to note
that for both psychosis and psychopathy
in movies and TV shows,
they're often depicted as the villains.
With psychosis they're depicted
as the unstable killers
committing some horrible act of violence
because of their psychosis.
And similar with psychopaths, they're often deemed
as being these cold-blooded killers who are just,
will do everything and anything
including taking someone's life
to get what they want.
However, while it is true that both parties can be violent,
most of the time they are not, in both cases.
And so for people who have antisocial personality disorder,
they can be violent, again.
But most of the time they are not,
and typically they use manipulation
and reckless behavior to get what they want,
rather than violence.
And so similarly with psychosis,
the incidence of violence is actually
a lot lower than people commonly believe.
There was a study out of the University of California
that actually found that out of repeat offenders within
the jail system, only one in 20
of repeat offenders were experiencing psychosis
before their violent crimes,
and that is a lot lower than people typically believe,
because there's often this conception
of mentally ill people running around
and committing acts of violence against people,
and that's just not really a fair representation
of this population.
And so, it's really important to be really cognizant
of how we're using both of these in terms of our language,
in terms of how we're talking
about people who experience psychosis,
and how we're talking
about people who have antisocial personality disorder,
and when we're using terms like psycho
or psychopath or psychotic, or things like that.
We need to be really mindful of what behaviors we
are attaching those labels to and really thinking
about whether or not they are accurately describing
the mental illness that they relate to.
Okay so I hope that dissecting
those two terms briefly helped
to kind of understand the differences between the two
and why they can't be used interchangeably.
So the big takeaways that I want to impart
are that psychosis is a symptom of something
that's happening, and that is when somebody loses touch
with reality, and there's that lack of awareness
about what's going on, and they're engaging
with an altered form of reality.
And so we talked a bit about violence,
and so if violence does come up, it's often not with motive,
and it's often because of the ultimate reality
that they're experiencing.
And so they may think
that they are actually helping someone,
or they may just be trying to appease voices.
Or there's just reasons reasons like this
for their peculiar behavior, or their violent behavior
if that happens, but again violence
is not a common symptom of either of these.
But, that is kind of what's going on with psychosis.
Whereas psychopathy, or antisocial personality disorder,
is much more linked to a person's personality,
and so how they engage with others
and with the world around them.
And it is much more kind of manipulative,
and I don't wanna stigmatize this one too much,
because it is a legitimate mental illness as well,
and we need to be careful about how we're talking
about it and not villainizing it too much.
But it is characterized by more impulsive reckless behavior,
and kind of manipulative tendencies,
as opposed to losing touch with reality, like in psychosis.
And so those are the major differentiations
between psychosis and psychopathy.
Okay so thank you so much for watching this video.
I hope it helped to kind of give
a better picture of why it's important
to differentiate the two terms of psychosis and psychopathy,
and why it's important to also be aware
of how we're using this language.
And trying to de-stigmatize
the way we're using this language
as much as possible, and trying to stay away
from things like psycho and stuff like that,
and using these mental illness terms
as descriptions of behavior
that we don't necessarily understand
or agree with or anything like that,
and really being mindful
of using these terms in the proper way.
So if you liked this video, please make sure
to give it a thumbs up, and also feel free
to leave a comment if you have any further insights
on differentiating between these disorders.
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Thank you, thank you so much again for watching this video,
and as always, wishing you and your loved ones good health.
See you in the next video, bye.
(casual uplifting music)