What is psychosis? What causes psychotic symptoms?
Psychosis is a symptom of mental illness rather than the name of a medical condition itself. Broadly speaking, it means a loss of contact with reality, and generally there are two types of psychiatric disorder that produce psychotic symptoms: schizophrenia, and mood disorders such as bipolar disorder.
This page offers a full description of what psychosis is and how it is caused, including links to complete information on the individual disorders that give people psychotic symptoms.
It also explains how signs and symptoms of psychosis are classified and what they mean, with a description of how doctors make a diagnosis. There is an introduction to therapy, including drug treatment, and links throughout to relevant information from Medical News Today on the psychiatric management of specific disorders.
What is psychosis, and what causes it?
Psychosis is a symptom of psychiatric illness; it is not itself the name of a mental disorder.4
Psychosis means experiencing things and believing them to be real when they are not; in other words, losing contact with reality. This happens in two broad forms:1-4
Hallucination - hearing, seeing or feeling things that are not there
Delusion - holding unusual beliefs not shared by other people.
At a general level, two types of psychiatric disorder produce psychosis: schizophrenia, and mood or affective disorder. Specific diagnoses and subtypes can display psychotic symptoms, and there is also some overlap.1-3,5,6
Psychosis is classically associated with schizophrenia disorders, and while there are other symptoms, schizophrenia is defined by psychosis.4 Other disorders also have psychotic symptoms. The full list includes