Schizophrenia and Psychosis – Whats the Difference?
It is valuable to understand the difference between psychosis and schizophreia. Psychosis is a general term used to describe psychotic symptoms. Schizophrenia is a kind of psychosis. Several different brain disorders can lead to psychotic symptoms, including lesions in the brain resulting from head traumas, strokes, tumors, infections or the use of illegal drugs. If a serious depression goes untreated for a long time psychotic symptoms may develop. These examples demonstrate that not all psychosis is schizophrenia. If is for this reason that doctors may take quite some time (6 months or more) to diagnose someone, because while the symptoms of schizophrenia are quite obvious – the fact that the symptoms are not being caused by some other brain disorder is frequently not obvious.
