ABSTRACT
Psychosis can be a terrifying experience. One young woman described hearing her mother’s screams in her head and believing that her mother, who was overseas at the time, was being tortured and her screams were being telepathically communicated to her. If this were actually happening, logic and knowledge of the world aside, this young woman’s situation would be a horrific one to be in. While the potentially terrifying nature of psychosis is clear to those who have experienced it and the people who care for them, both personally and professionally, it has received very little attention by either psychosis or trauma researchers. This chapter presents case studies, reviews the literature on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of psychotic experience and hospitalisation, integrates it with current understandings of PTSD, and raises some conceptual issues that make understanding the trauma of psychosis unique.
