In this video, Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, explains what psychosis is and how it manifests in different forms such as hallucinations and delusions. She also discusses the various causes of psychosis, including psychiatric disorders, medication effects, and medical problems, and emphasizes the importance of treating the underlying cause.

"What is psychosis? What does it mean to be psychotic?" That's what I'm going to talk about in this video. Stay tuned. I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, and I talk about mental health education and self-improvement. If you want more of this kind of information, click subscribe. Psychosis is simply a state where you're unable to tell what's real and what's not real. The way that can look can take many forms, and I'm going to start out talking about hallucinations and delusions. Let me start with hallucinations first. Hallucinations can involve any of your five senses. There are auditory hallucinations where you can hear things that aren't there. For example, a person can hear their name called. Now, don't get too alarmed if this has happened to you. If it's only happened once, it could easily just be a misperception of a real noise. Then there are visual hallucinations. These are seeing things that are not there. You may see spiders crawling up the wall, for example, and this is not to be confused with a visual misperception, and here's the difference. With a misperception, there is something there. You just may think it's something else. Have you ever woken in the middle of the night and looked across the room and swore you saw someone sitting in the room? And after you pull yourself together, turn on the light, you see that it's just a chair sitting up against the wall, but it's sitting in a way that made it look like a person. That would be an illusion. The chair is actually there, but you misperceived what it was. Moving on, olfactory hallucinations. This is where people can smell things that aren't really there. Sometimes people with temporal lobe seizures can smell things just before they have a seizure, and for them, it can serve as a warning signal that a seizure is coming. Tactile hallucinations occur when you feel things that aren't there. You may feel someone touching your skin, or you can feel the sensation that bugs are crawling on you, for example. Lastly, there are gustatory hallucinations. This is where you taste something in the absence of tasting something, or it can happen when you eat something and the taste doesn't make sense or match. An example of this would be believing that everything you taste tastes like feces. Now, you may say, "Well, I'm a really bad cook," but even the worst spoiled food should not taste like fresh feces. Auditory and visual hallucinations tend to be the most common in psychiatric illnesses. The ones that involve feeling, smelling, and taste, these tend to be more common in medical illnesses like seizures or migraines, or you can see it with medication toxicities. So that's hallucinations. What are delusions? Delusions are fixed false beliefs, and that's the textbook definition. Another way of saying it is believing something false despite facts that say that it's not true or it being extremely unlikely to be true. There are common themes or types of delusions. There's persecutory delusions. These are when you believe that some entity is against you in some way. For example, you believe you're being followed or someone is watching your home. With referential delusions, gestures have certain meanings, or you may make it specific messages from the television. There's grandiose delusions. An example of this is feeling that you're famous and people just don't realize it. Then there are religious delusions, and an example of this is believing that you are a deity or a famous prophet in someone's religion, and the people in that religion will believe that the deity isn't in physical existence at the moment, but you believe you're the existence. With somatic delusions, you're fixated that something is wrong with your body, and examples of this would be that someone has planted a chip in your head without you knowing about it. And lastly, there's delusions of control. An example of this would be believing that someone is controlling your mind or that others can control your mind. So who gets psychotic? Of course, we see this in psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and even depression, but you don't have to have a psychiatric disorder to become psychotic. You can become psychotic from medication effects such as steroids. Ever hear the term "steroid psychosis"? Other common culprits are illicit substances such as marijuana or hallucinogens like LSD. And psychosis can also result from medical problems like seizures, thyroid disease, or even after a woman has a baby. So what do we do about this? Well, you treat the reason. If it's from a medical illness, you treat that illness. If it's from a psychiatric disorder, the treatment is medication. And sorry to say that for the pill haters out there, but someone just can't be talked down from their delusions and their psychotic symptoms. So that's it for today. Thanks for making it all the way through this video. You must be subscribed, but if you're not, please do. And until next time.