In this mental disorder condition , patient’s thought and emotions are so impaired that his actual contact is lost with the reality and the person will never accept his abnormal behaviour / activities,that he is doing something wrong or weird.
These persons have hallucinations,delusions also.
Hallucinations means experiencing some sensory activities even when their is no stimulus like the patients feels that someone is yelling on them or someone is whispering near there ears but actually their is no one around.
In psychosis, activity of dopamine and 5HT is increased to abnormal levels.
The cause of this disturbances in neurotransmitters may be functional or organic.
i.e we can broadly divide the psychosis into-
Functional psychosis:- Means the cause is not any disease in the brain it is just imbalance in the neurons which is causing problems.
Organic psychosis:- When their is some problem with neurons and it may be due to any disease like TB I brain, Encephalitis,Infraction in any area of brain these conditions may lead to damage in neurons which further may cause psychosis.
Positive symptoms of psychosis:-
1)Hallucinations
2)Delusion
3)Abnormal behaviour
4)Loose association of speech- Person talks irrelevant to topic.
Negative symptoms of psychosis:-
1)Alogia– Patient speaks very less
2)Avolition– No Goal directed behaviour, for example the person was very much interested in reading books before this medical condition, but now he don’t have any interest in the books at all.
3)Affective flattening- No gestures are shown by patient i.e patient is said to emotionless, expressionless.Even if the other person greets him he will not respond to their greeting.
Treatment:-
For treating psychosis first we have to identify the cause , is it functional psychosis or is it organic psychosis and then accordingly it is treated
But broadly we have following groups for Anti Psychotic Drugs:
Typical antipsychotic drugs-
They basically have major effect on the abnormaly increased dopamine levels and also have some effect on the increased levels of 5HT.
They include groups like,
Phenothiazines group
Butyrophenones group
Thioxanthines group
Heterocyclics group
Atypical antipsychotic drugs-
They majorly acts and normalise the increased 5HT levels and also have some effect on increased dopamine levels.
They include drugs like,
Clozapine
Qeutiapine
Resperidone
Ziprasidone
Aripiprazole and other drugs
So according to the medical condition drug is chosen and used.
Will be talking more specifically about anti psychotic drugs in my upcoming posts.
Contributor- Medico Anant Singh Nanda
