Current Understanding of Psychosis

Our current understanding of psychosis is based on the medical model, which in the United States is centered around the DSM.

DSM-5-TR = The Gold Standard

Schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders = An umbrella that refers to:

Delusional disorder, brief psychotic disorder, catatonia, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, schizophreniform, delusional disorder, schizotypal (personality) disorder, substance-induced psychotic disorder, psychotic disorder due to another medical condition, unspecified catatonia and unspecified schizophrenia and related disorders and other unspecified schizophrenia and related disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).

DSM-5-TR Criteria:

Delusions (persecutory, grandiose, erotomanic, nihilistic, referential, somatic)
Hallucinations (auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, gustatory)
Disorganized thinking/speech (loose associations, tangentiality, and word salad)
Grossly disorganized or abnormal motor behavior (catatonia)
Negative symptoms (decreased emotional expression, avolition, alogia, anhedonia, and asociality

Utility of the current model:

Designed to streamline records amongst third parties such as insurers, government agencies, and statistics for the World Health Organization (Tyrer, 2014).

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Sources:

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787

Tyrer, P. (2014). A comparison of DSM and ICD classifications of mental disorder. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 20(4), 280–285. https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.bp.113.011296