So what is psychosis?

The most common example of psychosis is schizophrenia. This is not somebody who has a little anxiety or is not quite right, this is totally crazy. There are positive symptoms and negative symptoms. You know, the psychiatrists are the least concrete of the medical specialties because its very difficult to measure these sort of things. A positive symptom is when somebody thinks that they’re Napoleon or something, or has terrific manic symptoms. Negative symptoms are people who don’t do anything, they might sit in the corner or sleep all of the time. In the old days, if these pts were too difficult to manage they were put in a straight jacket, which was a big shirt with very long sleeves and you tie up the sleeves so that the person can’t move. It was a terrible situation.


These anti-psychotic drugs are able to control psychotic behavior, especially the positive symptoms, but are not able to cure the cause of the disease.

Category: Pharmacology Notes