Psychosis

Psychosis (from the Greek ψυχή "psyche", for mind or soul, and -οσις "-osis", for abnormal condition), with adjective psychotic, literally means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality". People suffering from psychosis are said to be psychotic.

People experiencing psychosis may report hallucinations or delusional beliefs, and may exhibit personality changes and disorganized thinking. This may be accompanied by unusual or bizarre behavior, as well as difficulty with social interaction and impairment in carrying out the activities of daily living.

A wide variety of central nervous system diseases, from both external toxins, and from internal physiologic illness, can produce symptoms of psychosis. This disease link has led to the metaphor of psychosis as the 'fever' of CNS illness—a serious but nonspecific indicator.

However, many people have unusual and distinct (unshared) experiences of different realities at some point in their lives, without being impaired or even distressed by these experiences. For example, many people have experienced visions of some kind, and some have even found inspiration or religious revelation in them. As a result, it has been argued that psychosis is not fundamentally separate from normal consciousness, but rather, is on a continuum with normal consciousness. In this view, people who are clinically found to be psychotic may simply be having particularly intense or distressing experiences (see schizotypy).

In contemporary culture, the term "psychotic" is often incorrectly used interchangeably with "psychopathic" (which describes a more long-term condition prone to violence, rarely having hallucinations).