Normalizing psychotic symptoms

Individuals in random community samples not diagnosed as mentally ill report a variety of mental states along a continuum from ‘normalcy’ to psychosis. The existence of this continuum suggests that in addition to hallucinations and delusions, other more subtle reflections of psychotic thought processes might occur in ordinary mental life. Five transient disruptions of ordinary mental life which may mirror the cognitive processes underlying psychosis are identified. Thought experiments designed to heighten awareness of each of these states are described. The thought experiments aim at helping clinicians ‘normalize’ psychotic symptoms by locating analogies to psychosis in their own mental life. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to subjects in a random community sample to assess the frequency of the transient disruptions explored in the exercises in the general population. These disruptions appear to be quite common. This would suggest that at least some psychotic symptoms are a pathological expression of psychological processes latent in and widely distributed throughout the general population