This blog is about psychosis and particularly psychosis as it is experienced by young people. From a psychiatric point of view the term psychosis refers to “a loss of contact with reality”. In psychiatric practice psychosis manifests in one, or all, of three ways; as hallucinations (‘false’ perceptions), as delusions (‘false’ beliefs) and as disorganization.
My interest in psychosis in young people stems most directly from the ten years (1996-2005) when I was Clinical Nurse Specialist and Coordinator of the Nova Scotia Early Psychosis Program. During that time I had the privilege of getting to know hundreds of young people who were experiencing psychosis, and their parents.
As I tried to help these young people and their families understand what they were experiencing and how to deal with it, I found myself drawing upon two sources of information from my own background, the neurosciences and the study and practice of Buddhism.
In this blog I will try to bring together information from those two sources (and any others I can find) with the practicalities of clinical care and recovery to accomplish two objectives. The first is to open a door into the complex world of psychosis in young people. The second is to use the concept of psychosis as a focal point for exploring the nature of human mental experience.
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David,
ReplyDeleteYour blog is incredibly exciting to me! I am interested in both your topics: understanding psychosis in terms of its component phenomena and psychosis as an illuminating, unusual example of thinking. I don't have the time I would like to give to contemplating and responding right now, but I will at some point. I haven't worked with schizophrenics in many years, but work daily with psychotic dementia, sometimes psychotic depression. I will test (ie contemplate) Wood's and Kapur's concepts' application to "my psychotics".
Regarding the construction of reality: if you start from the view that we all construct time, space, coherence, etc out of sense perceptions and social interactions, my question is: what is it that "sane constructs" have in common that makes them sane? I don't think it is arbitrary, but what is it? What about the cultural layer of the label "sane"?
This is great work!
-Aaron
Hi AJs and Dave
ReplyDeleteI don't know that answer to this but i wonder if it's partly just that it's a "reality' that is shared by the majority of people at the same time-in the same way that so called psychotic phenomna aren't usually shared by many people... it gets much more interesting thou when you start to talk about context- that depending on the context of any given situation, unusual perceptual expereinces can be completly understood in a wider context if you take the time to try to understand thier origin. love this stuff!
I was thinking that on a very practical level sanity has something to do with being able to negotiate your day to day interactions with the world without getting in 'trouble' by acting psychotic.
ReplyDeleteI had a patient once who told me he could switch back and forth between acting like a "normal" person and acting like he was psychotic, although the psychotic experiences were always happening. Interestingly, he said he usually preferred the psychosis, up until the time that an attractive young (non-psychotic) woman took an interest in him.
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