Psychosis is a type of mental illness where a person loses touch with the reality. They
may also experience quite distressing symptoms which are broadly classified into delusions
which is false beliefs. They may experience hallucinatory things like voices when no
one is around them. They may also have disturbances with their thought processes.
If you are looking at the causes of psychotic disorders, these can be a number of ideological
factors or causative factors. One of them being acute stress, severe overwhelming stress
for an individual. The other being illicit drugs or alcohol. Third being prescription
medications like steroids, for example, may cause psychosis. The fourth being severe enduring
mental illnesses like schizophrenia or mood disorders. Lastly, sometimes because of what
is called organicity, meaning that some physical problems in the brain, for example, tumours.
The symptoms of psychosis can be broadly classified into symptoms of beliefs, hallucinatory experiences,
and thirdly, thought disorder symptoms. If I elaborate on each, the false beliefs are also called
delusions. Basically meaning the person develops a belief which they hold very strongly. It can be of various
types. For example, some may believe that people are out to kill them or get them. It's
called paranoid or persecutory delusions. Some may develop grandiose delusions. Basically meaning they
believe they have supernatural powers to do things. It can also be what is called delusions over friends
where they believe people are talking about them or laughing at them and that might make
them retaliate. Talking about the hallucinating experiences,
the most common ones are, people may sometimes hear voices talking to them coming from outside
of themselves telling them sometimes nasty things or giving some demands to do things which
are called command hallucinations. These hallucinations are perception disorders in a way. They can
be in any other modality as well, basically meaning they can be of touch, smell, taste, and sometimes,
they may see things which aren’t there. The third classical symptoms would be the
disorder symptoms where they are confused with their thought processes. They are again
classified into different varieties. For example, you may not understand what they are trying
to say at all, or it may be they have difficulty conveying their thoughts. These are the three
broad classical symptoms people may experience when they are psychotic.
Psychosis can range from very transitory or illnesses which may last for a few days to
what are called enduring mental illnesses like schizophrenia for example. In schizophrenia, the
person may develop these symptoms in quite a young age that may require treatment normally
with medications or with talking therapies as well. The symptoms sometimes can be very risky for
the patient and for others. This really needs to be carefully diagnosed first and then monitored
and treated.
Psychosis is treated generally with medications
called anti-psychotics. There are a number of anti-psychotics that can be used depending
on what would benefit the person and what would be the side effects which the particular
person is able to tolerate. There’s a choice of medications which can be used. These anti-psychotics
are to be used for quite some time perhaps two years, three years, for a person to actually
benefit. Other than that, there are other various talking therapies called cognitive
behaviour therapy and other therapies which could help.
The other one is to look at how to help or support the person to integrate back into
the community so that they can lead normal and productive lives. For a disorder like
schizophrenia, sometimes, if we can broadly classify it, around one-third of people may
have one episode and may never experience it again, and another one-third may actually
never recover from their symptoms or their illness and the remaining percentage of people may have a number of
episodes throughout their lives. But the good news is there are medications,
if combined with talking therapy and other supports around their person can actually
help a person lead a normal life.