INFORMATION FOR WOMEN WHO HAVE PSYCHOSIS DURING PREGNANCY OR BREASTFEEDING

What is psychosis?

Psychosis is a phenomenon in which thoughts and emotions are disrupted to such an extent that the person is out of touch with reality. The disconnection from reality presents with symptoms that include delusions and hallucinations. A delusion is a belief or idea that a person maintains, even when it is contradicted by reasoning that is accepted by virtually everybody else, or when it is different from what is accepted by people as a whole. There are different categories of delusions. Paranoid delusions, for instance, are delusions in which the underlying disconnection from reality is that everyone else is part of conspiracy organized against him, or her. Hallucinations are perceptions within a person’s mind of things that are not really there and they can involve any of the senses. Visual hallucinations, for instance, are false perceptions that the person is seeing something that is not there, whereas auditory hallucinations are false perceptions that the person is hearing something, for instance a voice. Other psychotic features include disorganized speech and disorganized behavior.