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Cbt for Psychosis

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CBT for Psychosis Introduction Psychosis (Psyche – Greek for the mind or soul; -osis referring to abnormal condition) is a general umbrella term for mental states traditionally characterised by a loss of contact with reality, during which sufferers may experience episodes of hallucinations and delusional thinking, distorted thoughts or behaviours, even personality changes. Current criteria for diagnosis includes experiencing one or more symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized or catatonic behaviour, negative symptoms; disturbed social cognition and functioning, bizarre behaviour, emotional labiality (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Traditionally treatment and conceptualisation of…show more content…
Work by several researchers (Bentall, 1993; Kendler, Gallagher, Abelson & Kessler, 1996; Freeman; 2006) showed that the difference between non-clinical and clinical populations was not in the experience of hearing voices, seeing visions or even experiencing delusional thinking, but in the frequency of the experience. Van O’s & Verdoux (1999) demonstrated that experiences of psychotic symptoms and/ or beliefs were common in non clinical populations, through clinical interviews of non-clinical subjects. Tien (1991) found that life time prevalence of hallucinations in their cohort (not related to organic illness), was between 10 and 15% in males and females respectively. Eaton and his colleagues (1991) found that 10% and 5% of participants experienced paranoid symptoms and hallucinations respectively, in a mental health survey. In a survey of over 8000 people in Britain, Johns and colleagues in 2004 (2005) found that participants reported experiencing someone following them or someone acting deliberately to harm them, 20 and 10% respectively. Freeman and colleagues (2005) found a variation of paranoid ideation expressed in a survey of over 1200 students. Using the Paranoia Checklist, they found thoughts ranging from believing negative comments were being circulated about them, to others wanting to harm them. While there may have been some methodological issues in the studies mentioned, such as sample size,
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