Temporary Bizarre Behavior

TEMPORARY BIZARRE BEHAVIOR

BRIEF PSYCHOTIC DISORDER

Topics in Mental Health

By Shlomo Y. Radcliffe

What is Brief Psychotic Disorder?

People with brief Psychotic Disorder are psychotic for a day or more and return to normal within a month. Psychotic behavior is characterized by thoughts, perceptions, feelings and ideas that are disconnected from reality. For instance, a person suffering from psychosis may be convinced that there are bugs crawling all over his body when there are no bugs whatsover. A person can have psychotic symptoms when they are suffering from certain mental illnesses like schizophrenia or when they are suffering side effects of drugs and substances. However, if they have psychotic symptoms without having those mental illness and without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, then they may be experiencing \"brief psychotic disorder\" - a temporary psychotic condition that sometimes occurs when a person is extremely stressed. In some women, it can also occur after giving birth. Usually, there are no warning signs before the psychotic episode occurs.

Symptoms of Brief Psychotic Disorder (DSM-IV Criteria)

In order to be diagnosed with brief Psychotic Disorder a person must display the following symptoms:

• The person has one or more of the following:

Delusions (firmly, obsessively believing something that is false and which other normal people don’t believe)

Speech that is noticeably disorganized (doesn’t make any sense, can’t be understood, is based on sound, rhymes, puns etc. instead of being based on communicating a message)

Behavior that is noticeably disorganized or catatonic (actions that make no sense and that have no purpose; catatonic refers to strange postures that a person holds)

Hallucinations (seeing, hearing or feeling something that no one else can sense)

•    The person has the symptoms for 1 to 30 days and eventually has a complete recovery.
•    The symptoms are not due to having the following conditions: Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, or a mood disorder.
•    This disorder is not directly caused by a general medical condition or by the use of substances (drugs or alcohol) or medications.

Treatment for Brief Psychotic Disorder

Even though people with brief Psychotic Disorder return to normal within a month, medication may be used to help relieve disabling symptoms.