Psychosis

Psychosis is one of the most serious mental disorders treated in psychiatric and emotional causes intense suffering to the patient, along with behaviors that the environment is sometimes unable to understand, to be based on anomalous phenomena of thought and perception.

Psychosis: definition and types

Psychosis is a serious mental disorder whose core aspect is the lack of adequate contact with reality in some of its areas or demonstrations. This lack of contact with reality is mostly due to the existence of false perceptions (hallucinations) and strange ideas that have no real basis and the patient keeps the absolute conviction that they are true.

The most common is the schizophrenic psychosis, which may affect up to 1% of the population. Other types of psychosis are persistent delusions disorder (formerly paranoia), schizoaffective disorder (halfway between schizophrenia and affective psychosis), acute polymorphic psychotic disorder, etc.

Causes of psychosis

In the case of psychosis, we talk about the theory of vulnerability-stress. Not anyone can suffer a psychosis; there must be a biological vulnerability that even today is not well defined: we speak of genetic, embryonic development (eg. infections), etc.. This vulnerability, along with a stressor (life stress, some toxic consumption, etc.), could trigger an episode of psychosis. However, psychosis can also occur spontaneously.

Psychosis: the role of the family and the role of psychiatrist

The main role is to avoid the stigma that these diseases pose to people and offer patients all the resources available at present for their improvement and reintegration into their usual socio-family environment. Families are in most cases the major sufferers of chronic lack of social and health resources for these diseases, falling upon them the usual care of the sick in conditions sometimes unsustainable.

The psychiatric approach to these disorders is fundamentally biological, ie with appropriate drug therapy for each case, maximizing the effectiveness of treatment and trying to minimize side effects, (trying to get the patient involved and) involving the patient to assist in his own treatment. Also psychotherapy both the patient and rehabilitation with a psychoeducational approach, as the family is fundamental.