Psychosis is a condition which affects the brain’s ability to process information. Psychosis can affect sensory perception, ability to organize information, and ability to express information. There are many causes. Everyone has the potential to develop psychosis, if they don’t sleep for multiple days in a row, if they take certain drugs or develop certain medical conditions, or if they experience extremely severe and prolonged stress. Psychosis has a strong genetic component. Individuals whose family members have experienced psychosis will be at greater risk for developing it themselves. Some people with a particularly great vulnerability to developing psychosis have to manage it as an ongoing condition.
The following illnesses or conditions, among others, can cause symptoms of psychosis.
- Sleep deprivation (psychosis should remit after the person sleeps)
- Drug use (psychosis usually goes away within 72 hours, although our experience with methamphetamine is that it may take longer).
- Cushing’s syndrome
- Adverse reactions to prescribed medications, such as steroids
- Thyroid and parathyroid disorders
- Cerebral sarcoidosis
- Systemic lupus erythematosus
- Very advanced cases of AIDS (some of the medicines can also cause psychosis)
- Sex chromosone abnormalities
- Demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Schilder’s disease, especially if they involve the temporal lobes http://www.nmss.org/
- Encephalitic diseases
- Wilson’s Disease
- Huntington’s Disease
- Friedreich’s Ataxia
- Vitamin B12 deficiency
- Subarachnoid hemorrhage
- Cerebral tumors
- Head injury
- Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
- Mood disorders: Clinical depression or bipolar disorder
- Schizophrenia