ORGANIC PSYCHOSIS: SYMPTOMS, DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT - GEOGRAFÍA - 2024

The organic psychosis is a mental illness with a physical origin. It can be caused by a brain disease, such as a stroke, tumor, infection, or a more general disease that indirectly damages the brain. The abuse of substances such as alcohol, drugs and drugs can also cause organic psychosis, which can disappear if the original disease is treated.

Organic psychoses are characterized by a confusional state in the most transitory cases and by a personality that undergoes destructuring in chronic cases. Whether organic psychosis occurs chronically or acutely depends on the original condition that causes it.

Some disorders that can cause organic psychosis are brain trauma, neurological disorders such as Huntington's chorea, alcohol intoxication, nutritional disorders or metabolism disorders.

Symptoms

In organic psychoses there is usually a deterioration of short-term memory and a disturbance of sleep patterns, causing the person to sleep less or more than normal or strange hours.

The individual also suffers from disorientation regarding where he is, when and who he is. The general activity of the person may increase or decrease, experiencing difficulty concentrating and a depressed and / or anxious mood.

Many people who suffer from psychosis experience sudden mood swings, which affect their relationship with other people, leading to progressive isolation.

The central symptoms of psychosis are delusions and hallucinations, which we will explain below.

Delusions

A delusion is a false belief or impression that is firmly held by the person despite being objectively contradicted by reality. A person experiencing a paranoid delusion, for example, may think that they are being persecuted or that there is a government plot to harm them.

Someone with a delusion of grandeur or megalomaniac may think that he is a famous, world-renowned painter and act like one. Delusions are idiosyncratic, specific to the person; they are incomprehensible to the rest of the people because it only has to do with the experiences of the one who suffers them.

Hallucinations

A hallucination is an alteration of perception. The person perceives an object or an event without even a stimulus, which means hearing, seeing, smelling or feeling something that is not present.

Third-person voices can be heard talking to each other, commenting on the person's activity, or coming out of parts of their body.

Hallucinations occur more frequently under stressful situations, in environments perceived as threatening, when watching television, when there are emotional states such as sadness or anxiety, or when remembering events loaded with feelings of guilt or anger.

These experiences can be terrifying. Sometimes, they frighten the person who suffers them so much that it causes them to hurt themselves or the people who are around them at that moment. The duration of this condition can range from hours to weeks, in which the person can be difficult to control.

The situation can threaten the life of the individual suffering from organic psychosis and the people around them. If the person shows signs of aggression or violence, they should be admitted to a hospital as soon as possible.

Diagnosis

If there are suspicions that a person may suffer from organic psychosis, to begin with, their medical history must be analyzed. It is possible that the individual has a history of disturbances of thought, emotions or behavior, as well as their level of consciousness.

The medical history can also provide information about the physical disturbance that has caused the organic psychosis (for example, a traffic accident involving a head injury).

Observation of spatial, temporal and relative orientation, behavior, speech content, and dress code provide essential clues for diagnosing this disease.

Also, it is advisable to carry out a physical examination. This test may reveal decreased levels of consciousness, stupor, agitation, restlessness, or neurological abnormalities such as tremors and other abnormal movement patterns. These symptoms can determine the severity of the condition and begin to guide treatment.

Finally, different types of tests can be carried out to investigate the origins and causes of the findings of the rest of the observations: blood tests, drug use tests, a computerized tomography of the brain, an MRI, toxicological tests, electroencephalograms and lumbar punctures, if necessary.

Treatment

Once the diagnosis of organic psychosis has been obtained and the causes of it have been established, treatment is aimed at maintaining the safety of the individual and the people around him.

Drugs

This treatment may involve antipsychotic, antidepressant, and anxiety drugs, as well as hospitalization for a time. Observation and follow-up testing should continue in case the direction of treatment needs to be changed or for improvement.

When dementia (involving disturbances in thinking and memory) is prominent, treatment with cholinergic agonist drugs should be considered. If there are outbursts of anger or violent outbursts, these can be controlled with beta-lipophilic blockers.

The type of drug prescribed will depend on the symptoms observed in the patient. In many cases, the patient needs to take antipsychotics only for a short period of time to keep their symptoms under control.

Professional services

Visiting professional and skilled nursing services can be helpful in keeping the individual at home. Counseling can help the family deal with problems related to keeping the person at home for as long as possible.

When the family can no longer take care of the individual, foster care helps. The setting should include familiar people and objects, lights at night, and a simple schedule.

In some cases, as we have seen, the person experiencing psychosis can be agitated, posing the risk of harming himself or those around him.

In these cases, it may be necessary to calm them immediately and effectively through rapid calming. A doctor or qualified person administers an injection or liquid medicine to the patient to quickly relax him. If the person is very upset, even the use of sedatives may be necessary.

Therapy

After treatment with drugs and having achieved some stabilization, continue only with therapy, which is just as important as drugs to avoid relapse. People with schizophrenia, however, must take drugs throughout their lives.

An example of therapy for organic psychosis (and for all other psychoses) is cognitive behavioral therapy. This type of therapy involves visiting a mental health specialist on a regular basis with the goal of changing your thinking and maladaptive behaviors.

This approach has been shown to be effective in helping people make permanent changes in thinking patterns and adequately manage their mental disorders. It is usually very useful to eliminate symptoms that are not fully controlled by drugs.

Prognosis and complications

The course and results of organic psychosis are extremely variable. There may be lucid intervals between the alterations of reality, in which the person orients herself, knows who she is and where she is and recognizes as real the objects that really are.

The course of the disease depends, among other factors, on the etiology of the factor that has caused the organic psychosis.

If the cause is temporary, such as alcohol intoxication, overdose, or drug withdrawal, the disorder is quite likely to go away as soon as the effects of the substances wear off. If organic psychosis is caused by a progressive deteriorating condition such as Alzheimer's disease, the individual may never recover.

Complications

Some complications of organic psychosis include possible injury or harm that the individual may do to himself during hallucinations and delusions; some hallucinations are so terrifying that they can make the individual prefer suicide rather than continue experiencing them.

Some auditory hallucinations include orders to hurt other people; In these cases, the individual may conflict with the law. Also, during confusional states in which there is a loss of spatial or temporal orientation, the person can lose himself.

Work and daily activities

It is quite difficult for a person with organic psychosis to keep their job, since the symptoms described make it difficult to carry out almost any job.

Also, comorbid symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, prevent these people from carrying out their daily activities in a normal way, such as maintaining hygienic and nutritional measures.

Continued efforts should be made to clarify the disease and its origins, as a specific diagnosis helps to predict the prognosis and outcomes of the disease and to plan appropriate treatment to improve or reverse the psychosis.

References

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