I was about 8 when my mum started showing signs that were later diagnosed as schizophrenia. It was tough, and thankfully she was diagnosed and treated within a year. I'm 37 now, and it still seems to affect my life in some ways. Thankfully, she has been almost 100% back to normal since being on medication all these years. My brother seems to blame our mother for what we went through, but I know it wasn't her fault. No one wakes up one day and chooses mental illness. Thanks for sharing, it's good to know that others have been through some of the same hardships that I experienced. ^_^

My mother has Bipolar I with psychosis, and although she only spent a few months untreated, she had rough patches throughout my childhood and young adulthood. Her mother had the same problems, and ended up committing suicide when my mom was 12. When I was very young I bought into her delusions. When I was a teenager, I started challenging them, which lead to a LOT of conflict during my young adult years. Luckily for everyone involved, she’s been stable for about ten years now. For most of my life I’ve had a fatalistic fear that, since two prior generations of women in my family have had psychosis, that as a daughter of the family I inevitably will lose my grip on reality as well. I’m 38 now, and I seem to have avoided that particular brain weasel. Instead I have a lovely cocktail of OCD, social anxiety and recurrent depression. My mother’s psychosis has shaped how my OCD presents. Lots of hypochondria around mental health, lots of obsessively researching those topics, and treatments, etc etc, taking every single screening test under the sun. That and fear of losing control or not being careful enough.

Relatable

How are you doing now?

I think you're right. The key to distinguishing whether it is delusional or not comes down to whether it is fixed and unshakable. Most people with normal religious beliefs will acknowledge a possibility that they might be wrong or that there may be alternative explanations. Those with delusions wont do this.

@@DoctorElliottCarthy I have just discovered your videos and really enjoy them. But from my experience growing up, this just isn't true. What would you say about radical groups like Westboro Baptist Church, ISIS or even Jehovah's Witnesses coming to your door; what makes you think that their beliefs are anything other than fixed and unshakable?

Can't answer with authority; my background is a) had a brief, barely remembered point of hallucination during a childhood illness, like you, b) lifelong fascination with perceptions/reality c) a brief bout of anxiety induced hallucinating, recently. From my understanding a) most visual hallucinations tend towards distortions vs. totally new incongruous illusions b) your mood/ability to judge sets the tone. My feverish hallucination felt unreal more than anything else (I slipped into it while half-asleep and was promptly rushed to hospital, so I don't think I was relating well to normality - plus, I was ten and didn't fully understand anything). My recent anxiety-induced incident was terrifying. I became afraid of the dark, every time I turned out a light I felt like the shadows were reaching further than they should towards me. I had the unsettling feeling that everything was stretched out and I couldn't shake the sudden belief that the ceiling was going to fall in or become a dark endless void over my head. Since it was all just an anxiety build up, I knew the whole time that none of this was real or likely; this made my dread and fear worse and I retired to bed where I saw the shadows coalesce and loom over me for the first time since my early childhood. From what I gather, the workings of a more 'psychological' hallucination are a somewhat mysterious but for fevers, the basic explanation is that your body has induced a temperature at which it has starting killing parts of itself, along with the infection - essentially, you hallucinate because parts of your brain are cooking themselves which causes widespread misfires and problems for the rest of your overheated brain.

I think it's a teaching video, so the questions are designed to help students and other healthcare professionals see features of psychosis and understand how to interpret them

You noticed that too. I wish they would have followed her thinking longer. Did she mean she was immortal in the Christian sense (eg, JWs believe they will be immortal after Armageddon, yet that is not considered mental illness. They believe they are immortal due to their beliefs). Also, I have heard the same Hitler conspiracy theory from modern white supremacists. This shows how mistakes can be made.

probably because typical (old school) antipsychotics used to treat psychosis are extremely sedating.