“Psychosis and delusional states and their relationship with normal ano

According the fourth edition diagnostic manual of mental disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), the category psychotic disorders (Psychosis) include Schizophrenia, paranoid (Delusional), disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, residual type. Other clinical types include Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Affective Disorder/Manic depression, mania, Psychotic depression, delusional (paranoid) disorders. These are mental disorders in which the thoughts, affective response or ability to recognize reality, and ability to communicate and relate to others are sufficiently impaired to interfere grossly with the capacity to deal with reality; the classical and general characteristics of psychosis are impaired reality testing, hallucinations, delusions, and illusions. Mostly, these are used as defining features of psychosis even if there are other psychotic symptoms that characterise these disorders (L. Bortolotti, 2009). Delusion and hallucination in their different forms are the major symptom of psychotic disorders. There is a growing evidence however that these symptoms are not exclusively pathological in nature. The evidences show that both delusion and hallucination occur in a variety of forms in the general population. This paper presents and analyzes the relationship between the above major psychotic symptoms with normal anomalous experiences that resembles these symptoms in the normal population. Delusions are a symptom of psychiatric disorders such as dementia and schizophrenia, and they also characterize delusional disorders. Delusion is defined as a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitut... ...inds of individuals join such organizations, and can they be differentiated from people diagnosed with a psychotic disorder (Bhugra, 1996)?† These results support previous findings on two levels. First, they support the notion that there is a continuity of function between normality and psychosis, with `normal’ individuals (both non-religious and religious) being at one end of the continuum, the deluded individuals at the other extreme, and members of NRMs at the intersection. Indeed, even this classification is over-simplified, as is illustrated by the overlapping range of scores between the four groups. Second, it confirms the multidimensionality of delusional beliefs, since the NRMs and the deluded groups could be differentiated by their scores on the Distress and Preoccupation dimensions, but not on the Conviction dimension (McKenna and Orbach, 1999).