My son has been in psychosis for a year, while on pot. He has been diagnosed with drug induced psychosis but on another occasion he was diagnosed with Sz. Is the psychosis the same as each other? How can they tell the difference between the two? I suppose I could Google it but I like to get different peoples opinions. It’s a bit confusing!
Psychosis is psychosis covers all of it.
Typically chronic psychosis is schizophrenia. There is also bipolar with psychosis. Psychotic depression.
Schizophrenaform is given out for psychoses that last less than 6 months. If they last longer than 6 months it is considered Schizophrenia.
Some docs are conservative with the diagnosis others are more liberal. People tend to refrain from diagnosing minors with full blown SZ as well.
I had polysubstance abuse/drug induced psychosis which turned into schizophrenia (label wise).
Most drug induced psychoses are supposed to pass when the drugs leave the system. That’s another factor.
Go with the latest diagnosis.
Thanks for the information, SoitGoes. I guess I do go with the latest diagnosis because I’m on this sight. Labels, hey! My son hates them!!! I don’t blame him. There is a lot of stigma attached to mental illness’s.I don’t mind people knowing I have bi-polar but I’ve also be on this journey for a lot longer than my son.
MI people gotta stick together.
I don’t care who knows I’m SZ. I don’t really show it any more. I’m a little slow and hesitant at times. It’s tough to not trigger hallucinations.
Be cautious about what you read here. These are schizophrenics speaking. Not MDs, Psy.D.s, Ph.D.s, MFTs or MSWs.
With respect to differentiating psychosis diagnoses, some are temporary; some are (more or less) permanent, but highly treatable; and some are permanent and largely untreatable. True sz falls in the middle group. Drug-induced psychosis falls in the first. (Most of the third group has some sort of gross physiological disorder or traumatic brain injuries.)
I’ve never heard of pot-induced psychosis lasting a year. That seems implausible to me.
Way to go to discredit a lot of posters who may have schizophrenia but are currently doing not too badly.
Should we tell people to be cautious about what you say as you are prone to showing signs of mania?
I would hope the OP is able to distinguish between any way out there posts and the more sensible stuff.
Thanks again for all your comments. After I’ve read them, I do what sits right with me. I’ve got two books from people recommending them on this site. I listen to everyone, take on what I want and leave the rest. Some replies have been ‘out there’ but that’s OK. I could imagine my son on this site believing he is well and giving out all kinds of advice. Should I tell my son about this site while is in psychosis or wait till he is well? I haven’t been anywhere other than ‘Family’ on this site. Do people with psychosis talk to other people in psychosis on this site? As soon as one of my questions gets answered, more questions pop up. I thank God I have this site!!!
True schizophrenia is like autism. It’s genetic and people start showing signs at early ages. It’s called “neurodevelopmental.” (Insel, 2010) Also, true schizophrenia has a firm foundational as a thought disorder; I and other persons with schizophrenia think in concrete terms and have trouble with metaphors, for example (Sapolsky, 2009). We also perceive little variables as threats to our lives. For example, say a person is riding my tail while I am driving. People just do this. However common this may be, my brain tells me that they are not going to stop, and that they are following me, and that they know who I am and are trying to hunt me down. This makes me pissed and want to shoot them. I then recognize this as faulty perception and knock it off, but it lingers and wont really stop completely until the person is off my tail (Mouse, 2015).
Also, we have a degree of negative symptoms (absence of normal behaviors) left untreated. This was, maybe still is a little secret in the clinical diagnosis of scz (Green, 2003). We have to have some sort of shortcomings in addition to having abnormal things like hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech and/or behavior. An example is not having any friends and not looking people in the eye. Those are negative symptoms (Green, 2003).
Another thing is that drug-induced psychosis usually goes away within six months. Actually, it often goes away once the drug is excreted from the body, which can be much faster than six months (some old book, three years ago). For example, a guy who smoked an ounce of weed in 24 hours might become mildly psychotic, like have one recurring hallucination. Within a month, he goes back to normal and stays normal, and to begin with, didnt meet the full diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia.
thanks asshole, we scz are to be ignored, we just cant know anything. I wonder what people say to Fred Frese, he has schizophrenia and a PhD in clinical psychology…and is a retired Captain in the Marines.
Sometimes drugs can cause this if a person is predisposed to a mental illness. Drugs are often a way to self medicate.
In the end, if this continues, it would have to be treated as SZ.
This IS a great site and has helped me so much!
Does the SZ get worse if the drugs are used for a long period of time, I know it damages the neurological system( memory, sensory) Can it cause the delusions to prolong? This is for Bridgcomet
I have substance abuse hallucinogens marijuana and alcohol issues but never been diagnosed drug induced psychosis. Always sz or sza.
Does this sound like a paranoid reaction? Does it sound like stipulating a meaning? Does it sound like totalizing? Does it sound like taking something personally? (Don’t you “know” me better than to think that =I= – a very fucked up psychotic bipolar – do not see things that way?)
Uhhh no.
I’ve read too much supporting that we actually are discriminated against and never taken seriously. It’s personal to me because I actually function up there with the outstanding normies and people do think of me as an amusing freak show. The general public does think that we should be ignored and that we can’t know anything real, we just can’t be right, that we’re always delusional. Go read up on the construct of public stigma of mental illness, the research actually shows that the general public stigmatizes us and sees us as less than human. That is a quantitatively supported fact. Go check it out. David Penn created a series of stigma scales in a study published in Schizophrenia Bulletin in 1994, and the scales have been cited tons of times, with stigma being confirmed to be a real phenomenon…scales such as the Dangerousness Scale and Social Distancing Scale.
People think I am dangerous and avoid me, even my “friends.”
You’re not even schizophrenic, dude.
But I’m every bit as manic as you are… when I’m not aware of it. Have you noticed a long slow slide into paranoid delusionality?
I dont understand what you are saying
Voices still could quit. Will need to quit using a while to see…Needs to cut all contacts with people from that & dealers…Wait & see.
I don’t know if pot alone would do induced psychosis, most of the time the victim tried harder stuff. Lots of people hear voices some of the time and function, you get used to ignoring it. Lots of people won’t treat a psychotic right so expect some kookie or rude comments from strangers who are psychotic themselves. Mental care won’t admit this, just need to know this happens in order to be okay. Ignore them…
Mouse isn’t being delusional. You just said a rude thing. I know you’re a good dude, but everyone needs to be called out from time to time.
Take it however you will, but it’s pretty evident to me that you’ve been running pretty hard on the tops of your autonomic pickets for quite some time (five months anyway), and that in the past week or week and a half, you have written some posts that sound increasingly delusional and paranoid. (Hey! It’s what the disease does when we try to play dodge ball with it.) 
Check into Bruce McEwen, Sonia Lupien, Robert Sapolsky, Peter Levine, Hans Selye, Herbert Benson and/or Joseph Wolpe and see what you think.
I have chronic scz yeah no shit I say some strange things. Jesus.
If you met me in real life you would be a little surprised.