Psychosis

There is still a real lack of understanding of mental health difficulties, and some people use words like “psycho” to tease or bully others.

It can be really scary to hear these words and although they may sound negative, they just describe certain types of difficulties or behaviour.

What is psychosis?

Psychosis is a complicated illness and there are lots of different symptoms. Some of these might include:

• Hallucinations – where you hear, see, feel, smell or taste things that are not really there. Hearing voices is one of the most common types of hallucination.
• Delusions – where you believe something that isn’t true to most people like that you are someone famous or that people are talking about you and out to get you.
• Confused thoughts – where your thoughts are messed up or confused. Sometimes they can feel speeded up or slowed down.
• Feel like you have lost your emotions and find it hard to react. For example things don’t seem funny or sad anymore and you can find it hard to even get out of bed.

Just because you have some or even all of these symptoms it does not necessarily mean you have a form of psychosis.

If you are worried you should talk to someone you trust who can support you in getting help.

You can go to your GP and they can help to work out if you do have a type of psychosis and the best way to treat your problems.

How long does it last?

Psychosis can last for different lengths of time. It can be:

• A one off episode in which it happens once and it does not come back
• Episodes that come and go during which you are well for a while and then have another episode
• A difficulty that doesn’t completely go away (i.e. there are always symptoms there). This doesn't mean there is nothing that can be done to help and, in fact, there is a lot of things which might be able to help you that your GP can tell you about.