PsychosisLorna Keaton, Halyma Khan, Iram Dogar and Behraam Khan.

What is psychosis?

Psychosis is a mental health condition. Psychosis causes people to interpret or perceive people or things around them differently. This might involve hallucinations or delusions.The two main symptoms are: • Delusions – where a person believes things that, when examined are

obviously untrue. An example of this would be your colleagues trying to kill you.

• Hallucinations – where a person sees, hears things that aren’t there. The most common hallucination is hearing voices

Having both delusions and hallucinations can be extremely dangerous. It can often severely disrupt perception, emotion, behaviour and thinking. This would be called a psychotic episode.

• Recent research found in England, one new case of psychosis is diagnosed for every 2,000 people.

• Another study estimated that 3 in 100 people will have at least one episode of psychosis at some point during their lifetime.

• Psychosis can develop at any age, but is rare to be found in children around the age of 15.

Research on psychosis

Characteristics of psychosis

• Hallucinations • Delusions • Difficulty concentrating • Anxiety • Suicidal thoughts or actions • Difficulty functioning

• Bipolar disorder – a condition that effects person’s moods, which can swing from one extreme to another (highs and lows)

• Schizophrenia – chronic (long-term) mental health condition that causes hallucinations and delusions

• severe stress or anxiety• severe depression – feelings of persistent sadness that

last for more than six weeks, including postnatal depression, which some women experience after having a baby. lack of sleep