Psychosis: A Common Symptom in The Everyday Person.

Everyone goes through a certain period when they have to challenge themselves and deal with struggles that not everyone suffers from in their immediate surroundings. Usually, circumstances as such create insecurities and could isolate them from others. People might be afraid to be misunderstood or feel ashamed to talk about it. When we have these emotions and thoughts that create insecurity and isolation, it disconnects us from others, and people are habitual to belonging and acceptance. Therefore, this could create an even greater disconnection, but it will be far worse since it may lose perception of oneself.

Once we lose connection with and perception of ourself our brain will go to great lengths to survive, which might not always be ideal when a person is already in distress or dealing with trauma.

The severity of our brain going into survival mode will differ depending on the situation and especially on a person’s coping style. It could vary from becoming more agitated, endless scrolling on social media to severe cases such as psychotic symptoms. And going back to feeling isolated because a person’s surroundings cannot relate or do not have the same symptoms does not indicate that that person is weak or a “special case” because many people deal with these symptoms without severe stress or trauma.

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) states the following, “Psychosis is a symptom, not an illness, and it is more common than you may think. In the U.S., approximately 100,000 young people experience psychosis each year. As many as 3 in 100 people will have an episode at some point in their lives.”

Geestelijke Gezondheidszorg (GGZ, Netherlands) shares the following statistics, “About 8 percent of the general adult population has had psychotic experiences, 4 percent have psychotic symptoms combined with subjective suffering and need for help, 2 to 3 percent meet the criteria for a psychotic disorder at some point in their life, and 0.6-0.7% will ever be diagnosed with schizophrenia. The total number of patients undergoing treatment for a psychotic disorder in the Netherlands is not precisely known but is estimated to be between 120,000 and 150,000 people. Dutch incidence studies report between 11 and 35 new cases of a psychotic disorder per 100,000 per year.”

There are certain risk factors or developmental issues when a person has sufficient exposure to social and environmental challenges that increase their chances to suffer from psychotic symptoms. As mentioned in another blog post, a child’s psychologist explains how stress or trauma at the early age of a child will increase their chance to struggle with behavioral problems or create a more sensitive stress system. In other words, yes, it most likely is the case that people who have had dealt with trauma or distress or had behavioral problems in their childhood are more prone to deal with mental disorders or psychotic symptoms. Still, it is not a fact that it will happen, and we can never be sure.

An article by David B. Arciniegas, MD, has shared the following conclusion, “Psychosis is a common symptom of many psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, neurologic, and medical conditions and is an important target of evaluation and treatment in neurologic and psychiatric practice. The DSM-5 classification of and criteria for primary psychotic disorders emphasize that these conditions occur along a spectrum, with schizoid (personality) disorder and schizophrenia defining its mild and severe ends, respectively. Psychosis is also identified as only one of several dimensions of neuropsychiatric disturbance in these disorders, with others encompassing abnormal psychomotor behaviors, negative symptoms, cognitive impairments, and emotional disturbances. This dimensional approach regards hallucinations and delusions as arising from neural systems subserving perception and information processing, thereby aligning the neurobiological framework used to describe and study such symptoms in primary psychotic disorders with those used to study psychosis associated with other neurologic conditions.”

David Arciniegas' article has valuable insights regarding psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions and the mental illness "schizophrenia". Psychotic features can vary with a wide range of symptoms. The DSM-5 classification is something that people are encouraged to read about and familiarize themselves with because it can clarify many symptoms and perhaps the origin of certain behaviors. The article includes a detailed explanation about the spectrum of schizophrenia disorders which indicates how many varieties there are. Even so, the article, as most articles or researches do, starts with psychosis being a common symptom.

Hallucinations or delusions are a part of psychotic symptoms, but there is a difference between both. The two tables below from Arciniegas' article will help define different diagnoses.

Table 1 - Disturbances of Perception and Experience in the Differential Diagnosis of Hallucinations

Table 2 - Delusions Observed Among Patients With Neuropsychiatric Disorders

Anyone, if not everyone, has or will deal with psychotic symptoms at least once in their life, as I have read in multiple sources while researching for this post. Therefore, I'd like to end this post with a few quotes.

“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.” ― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” ― Joseph Campbell, Psychology of the Future

"Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.” ― R.D. Laing

“Every single person is a fool, insane, a failure, or a bad person to at least ten people.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana