ABSTRACT
Schizophrenia is the cruellest disease of the Western world. It afflicts young adults, often beginning insidiously and progressing until the ambitions, potentials, and hopes of early years are disregarded in disarray. The word “psychosis” is also used to describe conditions that affect the mind, in which there has been some loss of contact with reality. Hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and disorganized thoughts and speech are symptoms of psychosis, just as they are symptoms of “schizophrenia”. However, there is a subtle difference in the cultural associations of the words. “Psychosis” is recognized as a transient condition. The experience of psychosis varies greatly from person to person, and individuals experiencing psychosis might have very different symptoms. Thus, the words “psychosis” and “psychotic disorders” carry culturally a more temporary, individual description of the problem than the heavy cultural sentence of the word “schizophrenia”. Psychosis, like any other illness, is a blameless illness.
