What on Earth is Psychosis?

People with psychotic disorders are subject to extreme stigma. This stigma comes mostly from simple misunderstanding as to what exactly psychosis entails.

What kind of things does the word 'psychosis' immediately conjure in our minds? Screaming, blood, murderers with split personalities who dance to Huey Lewis and the News? Or could it be things like crazy homeless drug addicts?

Don't feel bad, it's what we're led to believe by the media. But psychosis is at its most basic level is an extremely debilitating and serious illness which greatly affects the quality of life of tens of thousands of people in Australia.



Here's my pretty broad definition: it's when your mind is removed from reality in various ways. . There are two main types of symptoms, positive and negative.

The 'positive' is more or less all we ever hear about, almost certainly due to the fact that it's actually noticeable to an outside observer. It means that you experience things which aren't there. So that's where the movies give us the idea of people hearing voices in their heads telling them to do bad things, or seeing scary stuff which may or may not be there (spooky!), or feeling like the government is reading your mind.

That's not to say that the above examples are fabrications. They are (to generalise) the most common positive symptoms. Many people experience all three.

Negative symptoms are harder to define, but are still as debilitating. Basically they mean 'not doing stuff'. Usually this means not talking, moving, or taking pleasure in things. Even simple things like washing and hygeine are affected. These symptom are easily confused with depression (although mood disorders and psychotic disorders are not mutually exclusive) which makes it difficult to diagnose.

The most common psychotic disorder is schizophrenia. This is where most of us get confused. Schizophrenia DOES NOT mean 'split personality'. True, those Greek students among us would recognise that 'schizein' means 'to split', but in this case it refers to the sufferer being 'split' from reality in some way.

Next I'll talk about my experience (albeit minor) with psychosis.

Peace etc.