What is Difference Between Neurosis And Psychosis?

Neurosis vs Psychosis

Psychosis and neurosis are two terms that, in psychology, are closely related, so it is not strange that we tend to confuse them. However, the reality is that they refer to very different disorders, especially as regards their severity. Thus, if you are interested in discovering the difference between psychosis and neurosis, keep reading this article of PiscoBlog in which we define each of these terms and comment on what is different.

What are psychoses?

The psychosis designates a group of diseases involving loss of sense of reality, making the person completely reinterpret, mainly due to the fact that it does not have sufficient mechanisms to support it and face it. Among these diseases, we have schizophrenia or chronic delusional disorder. In this type of ailments, the patient is not aware that he suffers from a disease, therefore, and lives his reinterpretation as if it were the reality.

Therefore, it is very common that people who suffer from any of the diseases grouped within psychoses are created with a special mission that others do not understand or that convince themselves that there are conspiracies against them (feeling that there is someone who controls their thought). In this other article, we discover the different types of schizophrenia and their characteristics.

What are neuroses?

In neuroses, on the contrary, the patient is aware that he suffers from a disease and suffers from it. Neurosis is really a search to adapt and endure a reality that, otherwise, could not be assimilated by the subject. Hence some behaviors that, although incomprehensible to those who do not suffer from such disorders, as occurs in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, for them, it is a behavior that has a very obvious purpose, consisting of eliminating the anguish they feel in situations that cannot dominate.

Finally, another essential difference between both disorders is the fact that neurosis, although it can prevent us from carrying out certain activities, does not greatly affect the activities of the person, while in the case of psychosis the subject is unable to carry a normal life.

Main differences between psychosis and neurosis

Now that we know what neurosis and psychosis mean within the world of psychology and mental health, it is important that we stop at the main differences between both aspects since it is easy for us to end up getting confused.

Here we leave you the main differences between psychosis and neurosis that highlight the characteristics of each of these mental conditions:

The psychosis makes the patient reinterprets reality and suits your personal or delusional conception of the world. Instead, the neurosis causes the patient to try to find new ways to adapt to a reality that he does not end up with.
In both ailments strange and conflicting behaviors may appear; nevertheless, neurotics are not so dangerous because they live in reality, instead, psychotics are in a “parallel” reality and can commit disastrous actions without even realizing it.
Another difference between psychosis and neurosis is that the former, do not know that they are sick, believe that others are trying to deceive and take advantage of it. Instead, the neurotic self that is aware that he is sick and that what they perceive is the product of his mental instability.
The symptoms among them are also different because, on the one hand, psychotics often experience delusions and hallucinations while neurotics only feel extreme anxiety and anguish.
And finally, another of the great differences between psychosis and neurosis is that the first one is a mental illness while the second one is a psychic disorder that can be treated with therapy and professional help.

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