Where are there similarities? | What is the difference between schizophrenia and psychosis?

Where are there similarities?

As much as the full picture of schizophrenia differs from psychosis in cause, course and accompanying symptoms, there is some overlap especially in the plus symptoms described above. Delusions, ego disturbances, loss of reality, hallucinations, mental and motor restlessness and the like occur in many forms of schizophrenia, but also in psychoses. This productive symptomatology can therefore be the same in both disorders.

The terms are therefore often used synonymously when describing the symptoms.For example, one speaks of a psychotic episode of schizophrenia or schizophrenic psychosis when a patient shows these symptoms. Many believe that psychosis is the umbrella term for all illnesses with such symptoms – schizophrenia is therefore a sub-form of psychosis. This may be true for forms of schizophrenia in which the negative symptoms are weakly developed.

However, there are also types of schizophrenia in which there are hardly any psychotic symptoms and almost only impairments of the affect are observed. Thus, equating schizophrenia with psychosis is true in some cases and not in others. For an exact differentiation, the manifestations of these disorders are simply too variable.

What is schizophrenic psychosis?

If someone is suffering from a psychosis that shows typical symptoms of schizophrenia, but for various reasons cannot be schizophrenic, it is called schizophrenic psychosis. This is the case when the psychosis has a clear cause, for example, intoxication with drugs, a disease of the brain, electrolyte derailment or similar. This is because the actual schizophrenia, by definition, does not have a clearly identifiable cause, but is the result of various genetic and environmental factors.

Furthermore, schizophrenia is a chronic, relapsing illness with varying degrees of negative symptoms. If a patient experiences only a single episode without any negative symptoms, the diagnosis of schizophrenia is exaggerated and one speaks only of a single schizophrenic psychosis. Even with diagnosed schizophrenia, this term sometimes falls off when the schizophrenia is atypical and cannot be classified more precisely. Thus, not only in the vernacular, but also among medical professionals, there is an inconsistent use of the terms, as it is difficult to define mental illness precisely. In addition, many things concerning these disorders are still unclear.