Info: Common Psychotic Disorders

Psychotic disorders are disorders that describe altered reality such as perceptions, beliefs, and thoughts. These are common between most psychotic disorders and are symptoms of psychosis, which is a temporarily altered state (and can also be an early factor to severe mental illnesses like bipolar or schizophrenia):

Hallucinations

Auditory: hearing voices in their head, usually negative sounding
Visual: seeing things that are not there or perceiving the world as distorted, can have meaning to them such as a passed relative
Olfactory: having good and bad smells
Gustatory: having good and bad tastes
Tactile: sensations/feelings on the body

Delusions. These are beliefs that are unreal or unjustifiable. These are some common themes:

Feeling/environment: An uncanny feeling that the world around you is different, usually in a negative sense. The world around you may feel uncomfortable without an explanation, leading to confusion to the affected.
Perception: perceiving things around as personal or giving false meaning to it. This creates a sense of importance for the person affected.
Referential: hearing things from public forms of communication that feels like a personal message for them.
Somatic: Bodily related–usually relating to illness or health problems
Erotomanic: Love related–Believinmg that someone wants to pursue them without any justifiable meaning or a partner is chewating.
Religious: believing they are a “God” or having special connections with religious aspects.
Grandiose delusions. Thinking that they are a celebrity to the world or have a major significance.

Cognitive impairments: mental action. Such as learning, remembering and functioning.

Confused thoughts
Disorganized speech
Trouble concentrating
Memory problems
Difficulties understanding information

Substance induced psychosis

With substance abuse, the chemicals in the drug can affect your brain’s mental function. Substance induced psychosis is one of the common ways to trigger a psychotic episode whether it is using too much of the drug or having a severely negative experience with it. To learn more about substance abuse, click here.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder where the person affected has a distorted interpretation of reality. These abnormal perceptions can lead to impaired function in completing day-to-day tasks.

There are positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms are symptoms that are “added” on an affected person, while negative symptoms are symptoms that result in a lack of mental function.

Positive symptoms