Psychosis disorder mental illness

Four cases in which psychosis developed after relatively small amounts of marijuana were smoked for the first time have been reported (112). All required hospitalization and neuroleptic drug treatment. Each had a mother with manic disorder and two had psychotic features. The authors noted that marijuana is a dopamine receptor agonist, and mania may be associated with excessive dopaminergic neurotransmission. The use of marijuana may precipitate psychosis or mania in subjects who are genetically vulnerable to major mental illness. 

Older classifications of psychiatric disorder divided diseases into psychoses and neuroses. The term psychosis is still widely used to describe a severe mental illness with the presence of hallucinations, delusions or extreme abnormalities of behaviour including marked overactivity, retardation and catatonia, usually accompanied by a lack of insight. Psychotic disorders therefore include schizophrenia, severe forms of depression and mania. Psychosis may also be due to illicit substances or organic conditions. Clinical features of schizophrenia may be subdivided into positive symptoms, which include hallucinations, delusions and thought disorder and negative symptoms such as apathy, flattening of affect and poverty of speech. 

A word about prevalence mental illness is more common than many people imagine. The current prevalence estimates are that about half the U.S. population meets the criteria for at least one mental disorder during a lifetime, with about 25 percent of the population meeting the criteria for at least one mental disorder during any given year.1 Of these disorders, the most prevalent are apparently anxiety disorders, followed by mood disorders (for example, major depressive disorder), impulse-control disorders (for example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]), and substance disorders (for example, alcohol abuse). In contrast, the prevalence of psychosis as I define it here is only 2—3 percent of the U.S. population, and the world prevalence is about the same. 

Psychiatrists prescribe antipsychotics to treat mental illnesses that cause patients to experience marked breaks with reality (psychosis). The most common of such disorders is schizophrenia, which is a chronic, disabling, persistent, and severe brain disease that sigpiificantly impairs brain functioning and affects 1 percent of the world s population, including 3 million people in the United States alone. Antipsychotic medications are referred to as typical or atypical. Psychiatrists prescribe anxiolytics (antianxiety medications) to treat anxiety disorders, which include panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychiatrists prescribe antidepressants and mood stabilizers to treat the symptoms of mood disorders, the most common and severe of which are major depression and bipolar disorder. 

I had a transient episode of bipolar disorder (which involved quite serious psychosis). I got better, but as I was on my road to recovery, my psychiatrist encouraged me not to apply for medical school as she didn t think I d get in or cope. Well, she could not have been more wrong I ve nearly graduated from med school and my mental health is fine. Just a message out there to give patients hope sometimes mental illness is not permanent, and you can aspire to things and lead a normal life. 

Assess treat mental illness, e.g. depression, anxiety disorder, psychosis... 

Mental illness screen for possible problems, e.g. delirium, depression, psychosis, adjusnnent disorder, emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD)/traits. 

Because of concerns from the Food and Drug Administration, lithium was removed from Seven-Up in the early 1950s. At nearly the same time, it was formd that the lithium ion has a remarkable therapeutic effect on the mental disorder called bipolar (Relive disorder, or manic-depressive illness. Over 1 million Americans suffer from this psychosis, undergoing severe mood swings from deep depression to euphoria. The lithium ion smoothes out these mood swings, allowing the patient to function more effectively in daily life. 

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