Similarities and Differences between Delirium and Psychotic Disorder Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example

Similarities and Differences between Delirium and Psychotic Disorder Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example

Medically speaking, delirium is a severe disturbance of an individual’s mental abilities that may cause confused thinking and decreased surroundings. One or more contributory factors could include medication, alcohol or drug intoxication/ withdrawal, a serious/chronic disorder, and metabolic imbalances (Wilson et al., 2020). Similarly, psychosis describes a serious mental disorder in which an individual’s thoughts and emotions are impaired to the extent that the victim loses contact with external reality. Like delirium, medication or drug use can cause psychoses. Other contributing factors to psychoses are health conditions or psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia. Several other features between delirium and psychosis that usually overlap include but are not limited to presenting disorganized thoughts. Patients presenting with the two diseases may also have hallucinations and delusions. The symptoms may have an acute onset, although a psychosis usually has a gradual onset. (Similarities and Differences between Delirium and Psychotic Disorder Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)

A psychiatric-mental healthcare provider should be aware of the characteristic manifestations of the two disorders that would help the professional confirm an accurate diagnosis. Notable differences are like the onset of delirium is sudden/ acute or subacute. While delusions may be present in deliriums, they are fleeting instead of those in psychoses, where they are present and linger for a long time. In psychoses, consciousness appears normal, unlike in deliriums, where it is altered and shifts rapidly. An EEG test result in delirium indicates moderate to severe background slowing, whereas, in psychoses, this result appears normal. Lastly, deliriums are mostly reversible in terms of reversibility, while psychoses are rarely reversible (Lierberman & First, 2018). (Similarities and Differences between Delirium and Psychotic Disorder Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)

Conducting a comprehensive assessment, especially in adult or geriatric patients, helps the provider make the appropriate diagnosis regarding the symptoms’ onset, progression, presence, and type of hallucinations or delusions (Grover & Avasthi, 2018). An incoherent speech may confirm delirium, while normal or pressured speech could confirm a psychotic disorder if the patient presents with five or more attributes pointing to either delirium or a psychotic disorder. (Similarities and Differences between Delirium and Psychotic Disorder Comprehensive Nursing Paper Example)