@Hip, can you explain what a "touch of mild psychosis" feels like? (It sounds a little scary . . .)
In terms of suffering and misery, I find it a horrible symptom.
I've suffered on and off with periods of very mild psychosis ever since a viral brain infection I had in 2005, which caused some brain damage (loss of some faculties), and also led to ME/CFS.
Psychosis (which you find in schizophrenia) is a disorder of thoughts and how you perceive and interpret reality. In full-blown psychosis, people may experience hallucinations, hear voices in the head, and have major delusions (unshakable beliefs in things that are untrue); fortunately I have not had those extreme symptoms. So that's why I think the psychosis I sometimes experience is very mild.
But during my periods of mild psychosis, reality seems harder to interpret and the world seems strange. For example, I may watch a TV documentary, understand it in principle, but have this very odd feeling that I don't grasp the real meaning of the subject. That creates a feeling of unease.
During these periods of mild psychosis I find that incoming words, ideas, concepts and images, as you try to mentally process them in the mind, can perturb or jolt the mind, creating horrible internal mental tension, such that I need to try to avoid exposure to conversation, and avoid even watching TV.
It's not like anxiety, where specific things can make you tense or worried; this mild psychosis feels like the rational information-processing part of the mind is frayed and not working right, and so that any word or concept that passes through the mind creates tension, consternation and is hard to process.
Perhaps the nearest ME/CFS symptom would be information overload, where when you have too much incoming info in the form of words, concepts or images, you just sort of peter out, and sink into brain fog. But information overload does not really capture the essence of psychosis.
It's hard to explain the mild psychosis, in part because one of the known symptoms of psychosis is a loss of the ability to introspect and examine your own mind and mental states. If I get depression or generalized anxiety disorder (which are two other mental health conditions I suffer from on and off), although these are also unpleasant, I don't have much difficulty describing the internal mental states to myself or others.
Whereas during the period of mild psychosis, my ability to perceive and understand my internal mental state is greatly reduced (and as mentioned, in psychosis, the ability to understand the external world is also reduced). So it is hard to get a clear picture of what mild psychosis is, and that only makes the psychosis harder to cope with. But in any case, it is definitely is very unpleasant.
I take very low doses of the antipsychotic drug amisulpride, and this helps keep the mild psychosis at bay.
)
