15 - Psychosis

Summary

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz’s appraisal of the fundamental nature of psychosis underscores the magnitude of belief-conviction and cognitive rigidity with which false fixed beliefs and perceptions are espoused. Goals of pharmacological treatment for psychosis can target a number of domains: medications may loosen cognitive rigidity and dampen the intensity of false beliefs and perceptions (without necessarily rendering perceptions as conforming more accurately to objective reality); they may reduce the level of distress or agitation associated with psychosis (again without necessarily altering the inaccuracy that somehow sustains fixed false ideas and perceptions); they may improve social judgment (such that someone may acquire sufficient awareness, if not true insight, to recognize where and with whom psychotic phenomena should and should not be discussed); they may impose order on the form of thinking to allow a more linear (if not logical) process by which they reach conclusions; or, sometimes, medications may actually alter misperceptions and allow for greater concordance between external reality and one’s internal perception of it.