acute psychotic disorders
this is a very brief introduction to the very complex subject of psychosis
an acute psychotic episode may involve strange and frightening behaviour such as withdrawal, suspiciousness, self-neglect and threats. families or professionals (such as schools and social workers) might need to seek the help of qualified health workers for help with understanding and mangaing these behaviours.
for young people experiencing their first episode of psyhcosis there is generally noticable and persistent changes in behavior, functioning and personality, withdrawal form other people, deteroration in social academic and occpational performance) however there may not be major symptoms that present in more devloped forms of psychosis.
People suffering from acute psychotic disorders might experience any combination of the following symptoms:
Hallucinations a hallucination is perception or expereince of something that does not exist in reality. hallucinations can be excperinced through all of the senses.
* auditory hallucinations hearing voices sometimes talking to them or talking about them, sometimes the voices may be commenting on what the person is doing or thinking other auditory hallucinations include music playing or other sounds that nobody else can hear.
* visual hallucinations seeing visions including religious or spiritual visions. strange lights or flashes of colour. visions of people that no one else can see, deceased relatives etc.
* hallucinated physical sensations - like insects are crawling on the skin, being burnt by laser or pricked with pins.
* other sensory halucintations - smells - usually strange, or unpleasant, smell. Taste - some people complain of having unpleasant taste in their mouth.
Delusion
A delusion is an unshakable belief in something that is bizarre, illogical, implausible, even impossible. There are two main types of delusion that occur in psychosis.
* Delusions of grandeur - a grandiose delusion would be when a person believes that they have some imagined power, or authority. two examples would be, they may think they are a reincarntaion of great religious figure, or that they have the power to control the weather by there thoughts.
* Paranoid delusion - paranoid delusions are often of persecutory nature. so an individual may believe that an other people or organisations, are making plans to hurt, or kill them, which will then lead to unusual behaviours. an examply might be an individual covering up the smoke detectors because they believed they have spycams and bugs to monitor them and control their thoughts.
Thought process distrubances
People with psychosis may have disturbed, confused, or disrupted thought patterns. this can be identified by the patterns of speach:
* their speech may be very quick and incessant,
* the content of speech is random incoherent and inconsitent; they may jump from topic to topic not completing a sentence and not making any sense.
* their train of thought may suddenly stop, resulting in an abrupt pause in conversation, or activity.
Lack of insight
When people are experiencing psychosis they do not consider their experience to be an illness, they are not able to accept that delusions or hallucinations do not exist in objective reality. a peron with psychosis is quite able to spot delusional thoughts and hallucinations of other people but not there own. it is not uncommon for a person experiencing psychosis to complain about being in hospital with other patients who are mentally ill while they are perfectly normal. this can even feed in to presecutory or grandiose delusions that they are being kept with mentally ill because of their special powers etc.
i will continue this topic soon with how a diagnosis of psychosis is reached.
Topic: brief introduction to psychotic disorders (Read 4671 times)
December 07, 2008, 10:26:38 PM