1) The active signs
When you suffer from psychosis, you have what is called active signs. Those signs are hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, hearing voices, imagining things and thoughts and so on. All of these are the active signs and reflects a psychotic disorder or psychosis. These active signs usually appear for about a maximum of 5% of your life.

2) The negative symptoms
When your psychosis is under control by anti psychotic medicines or other means, then you tend to suffer from post psychotic effects that are called the negative symptoms such as depression, lack of motivation, lack of vitality, fatigue, being closed in yourself and so on.

3) Self control
During your psychosis, your self control tends to be minimize or even not to be at all. The ability to distinguish between right and wrong and to control your movements and reactions is very low, while during the schizophrenia negative symptoms your self control is as normal people.

4) Self awareness
When going through psychosis, your self awareness tends to be minimal or even not to be down to the point that you can not distinguish if you are in some kind of psychosis or not, while during the schizophrenia negative symptoms, your self awareness is as a normal person.

5) The reality distinction
When you suffer from psychosis, you usually can not differentiate between what happens for real to what is only in your mind as a delusion or hallucinations. The ability to distinct between what is real and what is not, remains as a normal person when you suffer from the negative symptoms of the schizophrenia disorder.

6) The duration
Psychosis usually tend to stay for a short time between few days to few weeks, while the schizophrenia negative symptoms tend to stay in some level for your entire life.

7) The treatment
The best and usually the only treatment for psychosis are anti psychotic medicines, while treatment for the schizophrenia negative symptoms are more various and ranges from exercise, having a mate, having social life, having an occupation, sleeping well, keeping your hygiene, eating well and right, having a diet and so on.

1) Do you feel the pinch?
When you wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night, you can do the old trick of pinching yourself. If you would feel it, then it is probably just a dream.

2) Examine your surroundings
If you wake up and with a doubt, try to look around and see if you recognize your surroundings. If you do, then it was probably just another dream.

3) Listen to yourself
If you wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning, and you are not sure if it was a dream or not, just say a word, any word. If you hear yourself then it was only a dream and you can calm down.

4) Look around
Are you ling on your bed? Look around and see if you are familiar with your bed. Do you remember going to bed last night? If you do, then don’t worry, it was just a dream.

5) Are you conscious?
If you are aware of with what is going on around you, then you probably have wakened up from a dream. Try to think a rational thought in order to eliminate the fact that it isn’t real and whether it is a dream or not.

This post is a result of inspiration of my friend, Asher’s Blog. Take a look:

http://jamescallosjordan.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/dl-my-sister-is-a-ghost-and-rain/

Well, I divide the reason into two different main causes – I call the first reason the biology background. This background is divided between the person’s heredity. This background is the liking of his family to develop schizophrenia due to its heritage and the person’s sensitivity to develop any kind of disease in general, especially mental disease.

I call the second reason the main cause, or the trigger. Such a trigger has to be a very significant one in the person’s life. It has to be a very traumatic one in his life, in a way that would cause his soul quite a shock. This shock would cause his soul to step behind its boundaries. This way of stepping behind the boundaries is called a psychotic disorder.

Stepping behind the soul’s boundaries is not so common. It happens to about 3 percent of the entire population is the psychotic manner and continues to be schizophrenia in about 1 percent of the total population.

Those two reasons can also trigger other unwanted situations such as a heart disorder, a stroke, cancer, diabetes, PTSD, fainting or other diseases. So we can understand that a large part of the population would develop some kind of illness due to a significant trigger, but not always a psychotic disorder.

Avoiding such triggers is essential in order to keep on the human’s soul and his health. Living without significant stress and pressure is crucial when you have a biological inclination to develop mental illness.

For example, when a sufferer sits behind a table in a coffee shop, he usually feels like not being a part of its surroundings. If he sits alone, then his feeling is being intensified. He sees people who read the paper, talking to they’re friend, reading a book and he has nothing to occupy his mind beside of his recent disorder.

In order to remove that feeling, the sufferer should first cause himself to be busier with other occupations that would distract his mind from his disease. Things like hobbies, doing gymnastic, writing a journal, painting, crafting and other occupations, would get him to think of other things aside of his condition.

If you feel like not belonging when you are alone at the cafe, maybe it is a good idea to go there with a friend or a loved one, and to avoid attending they’re all by your self. Try to keep yourself a company in such places. Don’t be alone if you know that it would cause you to think of your disorder.

In time, you will see that this basic feeling of not being belonging to places and crowd would change due to your other interests in other life activity such as being previously mentioned.

Well, that ambition or consequence is not always detached from the real world. Many times, most of the things that a sufferer goes through during his psychotic disorder are close to real things that are happening and they have a grip in the real world.

If you as a sufferer understand that the materials that those delusions are taken out from are real experiences, and that those hallucinations are driven from real life experiences of your past, than there is no other choice than to believe that they has foundations in the real world.

Having psychosis is like having a nightmare, but this dream seems very real, and it usually lasts for more than a night, during the days that follows and even for several weeks, until getting the right treatment and that treatment begins to influence the human mind. The same materials that are being used for a psychotic mind, are used for the common dreams and nightmares, therefore the similarity between them is great.

After “waking up” from that bad dream, by the effect of the anti psychotic drugs, sufferers begins to understand that they went through a very significant experience. No wonder that sometimes they feel obligate to believe that what they went through and what went through they’re minds, happened for real. This is another reason why many sufferers that went through this kind of experience, are finding an escapement in becoming religious or even only spiritualist. In this way they can become close to they’re belief and giving they’re close to reality experiences, a significant realization.

Feel free to share with us your close to reality delusions by replying to this topic…

It is not a secret that a psychotic disorder, draw its materials from the real world. Psychotic delusions meet the outside world through the sufferer’s thoughts. His delusions are made of his life experiences, from his past, his memories and his family relations.

For example, if the relations between the sufferer parents were not stable before his psychotic disorder, then he would see a picture of his parents during his psychosis, he might think that his parents are angry at him, and maybe they went through a divorce even if they didn’t in the real world.

Sometimes during psychosis disorder, people looks to the sufferer very similar and resemble to people they knew in the past. For example, if someone sees a person that looks like someone he knew in the past, he can approach that person with the name of his past acquaintance while being certain that it is the same man.

If a psychotic sufferer browses through a magazine during his psychosis, there is a big chance that pictures in that magazine will remind him of past experiences that are related to them. For example, if a man tried to smoke cannabis in his past, there is a high probability that that person would connect a naïve picture of a flower to that experience during his psychotic disorder.

Today, people understand more and more, that psychosis derive its images from the sufferer’s past experiences and not from things with no connection like people thoughts in the past. Therefore, it is very difficult sometimes to say about some delusions that they are not real and not connected to the real world.

It feels like your thoughts are going from one to another, without being able to control them. You jumps from one subject to another, jump to conclusions without hesitating. Your mind works so fast that I won’t be surprised if Einstein wrote the theory of relativity during a psychosis disorder.

I’m sure that one of the obvious sign for “Getting Mad” in a psychotic disorder is when your mind gets out of control in the above way. The wisdom is how not to lose this extraordinary phenomenon, and do something useful with it.

I think that one useful thing to do with your mind’s goes into sprint, is when everything is over and your psychotic disorder had went away (until the next time), you should take a peace of paper and a pen, or seat near your computer and put everything that went in your mind during that seizure into writing. I’m sure that in time you would put it into good use as lyrics or an interesting fiction story.

I’m sure that during history, famous genius people, wrote down they’re psychotic thoughts, and did with them remarkable ideas such as the Mona Lisa by Devinchi, or the Theory of relative by Einstein.
Do you have more ideas how to put into good use your psychotic thoughts?

It is not so easy to identify a person that under a psychotic disorder, so I made a list of five ways to identify a person in trouble of psychosis:

1)  One of the more significant ways to identify a person under psychosis is – when that person talks in a disoriented matter. He talks in a confusing matter, jumps from one subject to another without any connection between them. It is often sounds like a bunch of rubbish and a kind of gibberish.

2)  The second sign for psychosis is – Paranoia. Paranoia is when a person doesn’t cooperate with his surroundings, including his closest relative even tough they want only his good matter. He thinks that everyone are against him, they want to harm him and want even to kill him by giving him a lethal drug.

3)  The third sign for an advance situation of a psychotic disorder is when a person is certain that he can read people thoughts and thinking. He thinks that people are broadcasting thoughts directly to his brain.

4)  the fourth way to identify psychosis is when a person thinks that TV or the Radio are broadcasting things that are connected to him or to his life. He thinks that those broadcast are directed to him and sometimes that person would imagine different things that are taken from his own personal life.

5) Another sign to know if a person is under a psychotic disorder is when that person thinks he is the center of the world. Everything goes around him; he feels like he is the king of the world, he is sure that everything happens because of him or only for him.
Do you have more signs to know if a person has psychosis?

1. Lack of Motivation. A person who has experienced a psychotic disorder may lack the energy to perform daily activities. Simple self-care such as shaving, let alone more complicated tasks like shopping and/or paying bills, may become almost impossible. The person does not have the energy to do all those actions.

2. Joy of Life. A person who has experienced a psychotic disorder often feels like a zombie, with no desire to carry out tasks. If he is not told to do something, it will not be done. The person rarely smiles and does not enjoy simple experiences. If he watches a movie, he will not enjoy it. He will lose his patience watching television while channel surfing or staring blankly at the screen. He will feel like an outsider.

3. Sexual Disability. As a result of a psychotic disorder and usually as a result of the side effects of the medication, inter alia, he will lose interest in sex. Even if the person engages in sexual activity, he has a hard time reaching satisfaction or the level of satisfaction he reaches is much lower than it would have been but for the psychosis and/or medication. It is very important to be aware of these physical events and to update the treating doctor and sometimes to consider food additives or even changing medication. In any event, this must only be done after consultation with the treating doctor.

4. Side Effects. Psychiatric medicines are chemical substances put into the body. Every medicine has side effects, even if they are not felt. The most common side effects are increased appetite and weight gain, apathy, lack of sexual desire, shivering, and drooling. Some medicines, after extended use, may cause diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, heart diseases, or obesity. It is important to be sensitive to any change, to have regular checkups, with blood tests, blood pressure and liver test, sugar level tests, and EKG. If side effects are felt, consult the treating doctor. In any case, despite the side effects, it the effectiveness of the medication against psychosis effects outweighs the possible damage.

If you are familiar with more disabilities, please post them here as a comment…