Patients’ experiences of psychosis in an inpatient setting

Abstract

The aim of this report was to describe patients' experiences of psychosis in an inpatient setting. Mental illness, as a result of psychosis, has traditionally been defined from the viewpoint of clinical experts. Psychiatric nursing, as an interactive human activity, is more concerned with the development of the person than with the origins or causes of their present distress. Therefore, psychiatric nursing is based on eliciting personal experiences and assisting the person to reclaim her/his inner wisdom and power. The design of the study, in the report discussed below, was phenomenological. In 1998, nine patients were interviewed regarding their experiences of psychosis in an acute inpatient setting. The verbatim transcripts were analysed using Giorgi's phenomenological method. The participants experienced psychosis as an uncontrollable sense of self, which included feelings of change and a loss of control over one's self with emotional distress and physical pain. The participants described the vulnerability they had felt whilst having difficult and strange psychological feelings. The informants experienced both themselves and others sensitively, considered their family and friends important and meaningful, and found it difficult to manage their daily lives. Furthermore, the informants experienced the onset of illness as situational, the progress of illness as holistic and exhaustive, and the admission into treatment as difficult, but inevitable.