Psychosis: Hallucinations, Delusions and Thought Disorder

Psychosis: Hallucinations, Delusions and Thought Disorder

Psychosis is a condition, in which there is disturbance in brain functioning, and it is very serious problem but it can be treated. A person who is affected with psychosis loses some contact with reality and one may feel the change in the way they behave, think, and believe and way they perceive. The person who is suffering with psychosis the conditions become very disorienting and distressing. An effective treatment is very important otherwise it will have a great effect on the patient and his family.

A person who is suffering with psychosis have confused thoughts, will feel preoccupied with unusual thoughts, will have a belief that others can manipulate their thoughts or they can manipulate the thoughts of others, they will perceive those voice and visions which no one else can hear or see, they will feel changed in some way and the acts will be different than they usually would. It has been noticed that psychosis might develop over a period of time so in early stages the symptoms might be dismissed or even ignored. Other times, symptoms may appear suddenly and a very obvious to the people around him. The symptoms which are in psychosis may differ from person to person and over a period of time they can change. The initial experience of psychotic symptoms is known as the first episode of psychosis. It is very important that one pays attention to symptoms and take early medical help in this situation.

Hallucination is a condition in which there is perception of objects, sounds or sensations which are not real, which arise due to some disorder in nervous system or in response to certain drugs. One can say that hallucination is many ways similar to a dream. Hallucination can be in any form like visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, proprioceptive, equilibrioceptive, nociceptive, thermoceptive and chronoceptive. If hallucination is in mild form than it is known as disturbance and it can be in any forms which have been stated earlier. There may be things like seeing movement in peripheral vision or hearing faint noises or voices. In paranoid schizophernia one can find auditory hallucination very commonly. Hypnagogic hallucinations and hypnopompic hallucination are considered to be normal phenomena. Hypnagogic hallucination occurs when one is sleeping and hypnopompic hallucination occurs when one is awake. There are number of reason why one gets hallucination like use of drugs, one is not able to sleep properly, psychosis, neurological disorder and delirium tremens.

The most common form of hallucination is visual hallucination. In visual hallucination a person sees those things which are not present or have visual perception which does not reconcile with the consensus reality. Number of reason can be there why one faces this problem like it can psychological reason, psychobiochemical reason – in which there is a neurotransmitters disturbance and it can be a psychophysiologic reason –in  which there is disturbance in brain structure. Then the next very common hallucination is auditory which is also known as Paracusia, in auditory hallucination there are perception of sounds without outside stimulus. The auditory hallucination can be divided into two categories elementary and complex.

A delusion is a belief that is clearly false in nature and that indicates an abnormality in the affected person’s thought. The false belief which is there in affected person’s mind is not due to the cultural or religious or his or her level of intelligence. The main factor of delusion to what extend the person affected is convinced that belief is true. The person who is suffering with delusion will hold firm with the belief which he or she has, even if there is sufficient evidence to prove that the belief is false. It is quite difficult to distinguish delusions from overvalued ideas, overvalued ideas are those unreasonable ideas which ah person holds, but a person will have some level of doubt as to his truthfulness. In delusion the person who is affected is absolutely convinced that the delusion is real.

Delusion has been categorized as either bizarre or non-bizarre and as either mood- congruent or mood-incongruent. A bizarre delusion is something which is very and completely different from a person’s culture. In a non-bizzare delusion is in which the content is definitely mistaken and is least possible. A mood-congruent delusion is one in which the content is consistent with either a depressive or a manic state. Similarly in a mood-incongruent delusion the content is not consistent with either a depressed or a manic state or is a mood-neutral. Apart from these categorizations delusion is also categorized according to the theme like delusion of control, nihilistic delusion, delusional jealousy, delusion of guilt or sin, delusion of mind being read, delusion of reference etc.

In psychiatric thought disorder is a disturbance of speech, communication or  content of thought – e.g. delusions, ideas of reference, poverty of thought, flight of ideas, perseveration, loosening of associations etc. Thought disorder can be functional emotional disorder or can organic disorder. Formal thought disorder is considered by the psychiatrists as one of the two types of thinking or thought disorder. The others types which are there are delusions. It is a considered to be a symptom of psychotic mental illness, at times it can occasionally appear in some other conditions as well.

Thought is something which is revealed through speech, so it is required to have a close observation of the speech of an individual. Like one can see if there is blocking in which before completing the speech there is interruption in the speech and true blocking is common sign of schizophrenia. Then one can notice a distractible speech – in which one can see that during the middle of the speech due to some stimuli there is change in the subject of the speech. Illogicality is there where conclusions are reached without any logic behind them. There is evasive interaction in which there is an attempt to express ideas or feeling which are there about another individual, which come out in an evasive or a diluted form.