Differences between psychosis and schizophrenia

The image that society has of psychosis, in general, and schizophrenia, in particular, as a mental disorder comes from the most visible characteristic of these conditions. This characteristic corresponds to disconnection with the reality that occurs in psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia. To be able to understand the Differences between psychosis and schizophrenia, We must previously keep in mind the definition, symptoms, causes, origin and course of both. In this Psychology-online article, we tell you what psychosis, its causes and symptoms, also what is schizophrenia, its causes and symptoms. Finally, we explain the main points in which the psychosis of schizophrenia differs.

1. What is psychosis?
2. Symptoms of psychosis
3. What is schizophrenia?
4. Symptoms of schizophrenia
5. Differences between psychosis and schizophrenia

What is psychosis?

Psychosis was the disorder that most interest aroused in the 19th century, born as the opposite term of neurosis. The set of symptoms that produce that The person is not able to distinguish reality of fantasy, thus losing contact with reality. The person does not present a disease awareness, a factor that is a challenge for the set of mental health professionals for the treatment of this, since the person must be aware to work with the disease.

Psychosis involves an altered perception of reality, that is, reality is not perceived and does not live the same as others. The unreality in which the people who suffer from it generate anguish and nervousness, which causes them to be shown in a state of surveillance towards their environment, that have difficulties in the different areas of their life.

Causes of psychosis

The causes of psychotic symptoms can be very different. Psychosis can occur:

• By substance or drug consumption
• By previous diseases such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Parkinson, Alzheimer's, among others
• As a consequence of psychosocial stress
• As a symptom of certain disorders such as schizophrenia

Symptoms of psychosis

To understand psychotic experience, it is necessary to classify the main symptoms that it produces. The symptoms of psychosis are:

• Confused thoughts: The most common thoughts become confusing or the person stops establishing logical associations between the different thoughts. There is a difficulty of understanding your dialogue, sometimes a meaningless dialogue. On the other hand, understanding does not occur solely by people who listen to the dialog.
• Delusional ideas: unreal beliefs, although sometimes they could make sense, they are not real. They are strongly rooted, because for the patient they are perceived as totally true. Delusional ideas are caused by the inability to separate the real experiences of the unreal.
• Hallucinations: perceive with the senses something that is not really there. Hallucinations can occur in any way: it can be to see, hear, smell, taste or notice something. Hearing voices is the most common hallucination.
• Affective and perception changes: Sometimes, the person suffers a change in their way of feeling. The sudden changes of mood are also frequent. Or, it seems that their emotions lose intensity, also manifesting less emotions to those around them.
• Behavior changes: People who have suffered psychosis have different behaviors to those who were used to having. On many occasions, these behaviors are associated with the delirium that the person is having.

In the DSM-V, psychotic disorders are delusional disorder, brief psychotic disorder or psychotic outbreak, schizophreniform disorder, schizophrenia, schizoective disorder, catatonia and psychotic disorder induced by substance, medications or diseases.

Here you can find more information about psychosis.

What is schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness of the group of psychotic disorders, being the most representative of these. The schizophrenic disorder, usually manifested in adolescence or at the beginning of adulthood. Schizophrenia can start suddenly or gradually and symptoms can improve or be chronic in different degrees, driving with antipsychotics. Many patients experience periods of improvement in which they only have minor symptoms and periods of worsening when the symptoms are aggravated. However, although periods of improvement occur, so that a diagnosis of schizophrenia can be established, the continuous signs of the disorder must persist for a minimum of six months and this period must include at least one month of symptoms. There are different subtypes of schizophrenia, including paranoid schizophrenia.

Causes of schizophrenia

Finally, it is worth highlighting the trigger cause, which would be Genetic predisposition and environmental factors and detail that it cannot be due directly to a disease or drug or drug use.

Symptoms of schizophrenia

Next, the specific symptoms are presented to diagnose schizophrenia. In schizophrenia, positive and negative symptoms can be differentiated.

Positive symptoms of schizophrenia

Positive symptoms are the psychotic behavior of the disorder, which include delusions, hallucinations, discourse or disorganized thinking and disorganized or catatonic behavior.

• Delusions: Unreal thoughts. For the patient they are perceived as totally true.
• Hallucinations: perceive with the senses something that is not really there. Hallucinations can occur in any way: it can be to see, hear, smell, taste or notice something. Hearing voices is the most common hallucination.
• Disorganized thoughts: They consist in making disorganized associations of thoughts due to the affectation of logical reasoning.
• Disorganized or catatonic behavior: Disorganized behavior is associated with high agitation, inability to organize, making it difficult for the behavior to goals (making daily activities difficult). Against, catatonic behavior entails a decrease in psychic and motor activity, being able to reach a total lack of attention and stiffness.

The negative symptoms of schizophrenia

Negative symptoms are related to an emotional, motivational or social deficit. These can be lived painfully by the environment, since they imply a loss of interest or initiative, emotional sensitivity, social interaction..., being able to cause emotional and social isolation of the person and may cause anxiety and depression. The negative symptoms that occur in schizophrenia are affective flattening, alogy and abulia or apathy and, in some cases, emotional and social isolation may occur.

• Affective flattening: It is the null reaction to emotional stimuli, giving a reduction in the intensity of emotional expression.
• Alogy: speech poverty, including a decrease in discourse fluidity.
• Abulia or apathy: lack of will, inability to persist or to start an activity. Vacuum feelings may occur.

For more information about this disorder, here you can find what schizophrenia consists of.

Differences between psychosis and schizophrenia

Once psychosis and schizophrenic disorder have been understood, we are going to kill all the differences between psychosis and schizophrenia, even being two intimately associated concepts.

1. One is inside the other

If we understand psychosis as the set of psychotic disorders that reproduce this set of symptoms of loss of contact with reality, schizophrenia is a disorder that is within the group of psychotic disorders. Therefore, the first of the differences between psychosis and schizophrenia is that Schizophrenia is within psychosis.

2. The negative symptoms

Although the most representative symptoms of schizophrenia Be the positive symptoms, this presents the negative symptoms that are not given in psychosis. It is true that the psychotic state can produce changes in mood and behavior, but these changes occur when the person is disconnected from reality and connected to delirium and/or hallucination. On the other hand, in schizophrenia the affective and behavior state is maintained, even in periods of improvement with the absence of symptomatology.

3. Duration of episodes

Another difference between psychosis and schizophrenia is the duration of the manifestation of symptoms. In Psychosis episodes are short duration, being able to be second or maximum for a few minutes. Against, schizophrenia requires that the set of symptoms be present in periods long lasting, up to a consecutive month.

4. The cause

Another difference between psychosis and schizophrenia is the trigger. Although the manifestation of the symptoms of both can be due by a brain injury, a genetic origin or a social origin, in Psychosis The trigger for symptoms could be also due to substance consumption, Diseases such as dementia, medication consumption ..., while schizophrenic disorder would be ruled out if the symptoms were due to these triggers.

5. Psychopathological disorder

Schizophrenia is in itself a psychopathological disorder, which stands out for the psychotic symptoms it presents. However, the appearance of psychotic symptoms is not an indicative of mental disorder, since psychotic symptoms may appear, as has previously detailed, after an abuse of substance consumption, a disease ..., which does not indicate a mental disorder, but a symptom produced because of these circumstances.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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