By: Zahra Khan, SFU Student and Zainab Salam, Opinions Editor
Psychosis is a mental health condition that affects a person’s perception of reality. It can occur at any time and is increasingly common. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health estimates that 3% of people will face an episode of psychosis one or more times in their life. Despite this prevalence, psychotic people are pushed to the margins — and remain profoundly unsupported. Those who experience psychosis are sidelined in favour of maintaining the status quo of neurotypical thinking. Psychotic people need support in university settings and outside of them.
It is important to establish that psychosis is not just an internal experience. It affects how others perceive individuals with psychosis, whether or not they disclose it. The way psychotic people experience psychosis leads to being persistently labelled for their experiences, whether they want to be or not. This could mean that admitting that you experience psychosis can help to remove public and private stigma behind the disorder.
Public stigma remains a powerful barrier to support and inclusion. Public stigma could emerge from the perceived social support received by someone in psychosis, or with persistent psychosis. Psychotic people are depicted in the media as wholly antisocial beings or as killers, which in turn alienates psychotic people from their peers, institutions, and care systems even further.
Moreover, stigma is entrenched into history and institutions. The diagnosis of psychosis has a fraught history. Even now, many people hesitate to seek help. Students battle the perception that disclosing mental illness may lead to judgment, and lost opportunities. Both public perceptions and self-perceptions of psychiatric disorder have negative effects on the possibility of a sufferer seeking help.
True support means choice, compassion, and believing that psychotic people belong.
Recognizing and even celebrating psychotic experiences is essential to fight public stigma and psychosocial disability. Our inner realities are not distortions — they are valid, complex, and worthy of recognition.
Early intervention in the case of psychosis looks like psychiatric help on the advent of delusion — or at least, that’s what it looks like currently. Methods of early intervention can involve support groups, reconnection with family, and equal access to accommodations like exam re-takes or assignment extensions. Furthermore, time off from studies may put students back on track. And psychiatric help is available if such an avenue for healing is one that they wish to pursue. But really, there is no one-size-fits all solution. What is important is the implementation of compassion.
True support means choice, compassion, and believing that psychotic people belong. The truth is not all people facing psychosis will benefit from the straight and narrows of psychiatric help. I think that the best way to support a student in crisis is offering different avenues of support, and above all, an understanding that their experiences matter. Without pathologizing and medicalizing psychosis as something that can be treated by psychiatry alone. I hope that psychotic people can be made to feel like they belong. Belonging means more than surviving — it means having the right to exist, and to access community, care, and dignity on our own terms.
