Associated symptoms

A psychosis is accompanied by numerous symptoms that are usually very frightening for the patient. Acoustic hallucinations often occur. For example, the affected persons hear voices talking about them or communicating with them.

There are also imperative voices that give orders to the affected person. More rarely, hallucinations of smell and taste or tactile (touch) hallucinations occur. Very often delusions also occur in the context of a psychosis.

For example, the sufferer feels persecuted, threatened, eavesdropped or observed. A so-called relationship delusion, in which the person affected falsely refers to things happening in his or her environment, also occurs relatively frequently. An example of this is news on the radio, which the psychotic patient suddenly refers to himself – he believes that people are talking about him.

So-called ego-disturbances often occur in the context of a psychosis. Those affected feel alienated from themselves, have the impression that others can take their thoughts away from them or hear them read. Thinking disorders are also a typical symptom of psychosis.

These are perceived by outsiders as confusion or severe concentration disorders. The thinking of those affected appears to outsiders to be completely incoherent, disjointed and without inner logic. This is also evident in the language.

It can happen that sentences are broken off in the middle. They seem to jump from one topic to the next without any connection and the content of the spoken word is no longer comprehensible to outsiders. Additional possible symptoms are – depending on the underlying disease – pronounced concentration disorders, reduced performance and severe memory disorders.Especially with psychoses that occur in the context of schizophrenia, there are additional so-called negative symptoms with concentration disorders, thinking disorders, social withdrawal, lack of emotion and joylessness as well as a reduction in drive.

The symptoms of a psychosis are extremely stressful and frightening for both the person affected and their relatives. Obsessive thoughts are not a typical symptom of a psychosis. Rather, they occur in the context of so-called obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Patients with an obsessive-compulsive disorder often suffer from obsessive thoughts. These are thoughts that the affected persons do not actually want to think, but which they force themselves upon them again and again without being able to do anything about it. Obsessive-compulsive thoughts often have a violent character and are very distressing for those affected. Patients with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, however, in contrast to psychotic patients, have a preserved reference to reality.