A picture for your mind 🧠🔎
Imagine the brain as a reality filter. All day it sorts "what's coming from the outside world?" from "what's coming from inside me?" In psychosis, that filter malfunctions — inside and outside get mixed up.
The two families of symptoms
- Positive symptoms — something added that shouldn't be there:
- hallucinations, delusions, disorganised speech/behaviour.
- Negative symptoms — something normal taken away or dialled down:
- flat emotions, little motivation, few words, social withdrawal, loss of enjoyment.
| Positive (something added) | Negative (something lost) |
|---|---|
| hallucinations | flat emotions |
| delusions | little motivation |
| disorganised speech / behaviour | few words, withdrawal, no enjoyment |
Computer analogy: positive = the machine spits out strange extra outputs; negative = the machine fails to do things it normally does.
The rule that prevents big mistakes ⚠️
Psychosis can come from a mood disorder, a substance, or a medical/neurological illness — not just schizophrenia. So the smart question is never "is this patient psychotic?" but *"why is this patient psychotic?" That single word — why* — opens the whole list of possibilities.
Words doctors use
- Reality testing — the ability to check inner experience against the outside world.
- Positive / negative symptoms — added vs lost mental functions (nothing to do with "good" or "bad").
Quick check ✅
- Is psychosis the same as schizophrenia?
- Give one positive and one negative symptom.
- A patient has hallucinations + persecutory delusions + withdrawal. Is schizophrenia proven yet? What else would you want to know?
Remember this 🌟
Where we're going next → Now we meet the most talked‑about cause of psychosis, and learn to understand it with respect and clarity: Schizophrenia (Part 2).