[probably old-hat [ETA: or false], but I’m still curious what you think] My (background unexamined) model of psychosis-> schizophrenia is that something, call it the “triggers”, sets a person on a trajectory of less coherence / grounding; if the trajectory isn’t corrected, they just go further and further. The “triggers” might be multifarious; there might be “organic” psychosis and “psychic” psychosis, where the former is like what happens from lead poisoning, and the latter is, maybe, what happens when you begin to become aware of some horrible facts. If your brain can rearrange itself quickly enough to cope with the newly known reality, your trajectory points back to the ground. If it can’t, you might have a chain reaction where (1) horrible facts you were previously carefully ignoring, are revealed because you no longer have the superstructure that was ignore-coping with them; (2) your ungroundedness opens the way to unepistemic beliefs, some of which might be additionally horrifying if true; (3) you’re generally stressed out because things are going wronger and wronger, which reinforces everything.
If this is true, then your statement:
. I think if someone has mild psychosis and you can guide them back to reality-based thoughts for a second, that’s kind of useless because the psychosis still has the same chance of progressing into severe psychosis anyway—you’re treating a symptom
is only true for some values of “guide them back to reality-based thoughts”. If you’re trying to help them go back to ignore-coping, you might partly succeed, but not in a stable way, because you only pushed the ball partway back up the hill, to mix metaphors—the ball is still on a slope and will roll back down when you stop pushing, the horrible fact is still revealed and will keeping being horrifying. But there’s other things you could do, like helping them find a non-ignore-cope for the fact; or show them enough that they become convinced that the belief isn’t true.
[probably old-hat [ETA: or false], but I’m still curious what you think] My (background unexamined) model of psychosis-> schizophrenia is that something, call it the “triggers”, sets a person on a trajectory of less coherence / grounding; if the trajectory isn’t corrected, they just go further and further. The “triggers” might be multifarious; there might be “organic” psychosis and “psychic” psychosis, where the former is like what happens from lead poisoning, and the latter is, maybe, what happens when you begin to become aware of some horrible facts. If your brain can rearrange itself quickly enough to cope with the newly known reality, your trajectory points back to the ground. If it can’t, you might have a chain reaction where (1) horrible facts you were previously carefully ignoring, are revealed because you no longer have the superstructure that was ignore-coping with them; (2) your ungroundedness opens the way to unepistemic beliefs, some of which might be additionally horrifying if true; (3) you’re generally stressed out because things are going wronger and wronger, which reinforces everything.
If this is true, then your statement:
is only true for some values of “guide them back to reality-based thoughts”. If you’re trying to help them go back to ignore-coping, you might partly succeed, but not in a stable way, because you only pushed the ball partway back up the hill, to mix metaphors—the ball is still on a slope and will roll back down when you stop pushing, the horrible fact is still revealed and will keeping being horrifying. But there’s other things you could do, like helping them find a non-ignore-cope for the fact; or show them enough that they become convinced that the belief isn’t true.