Retraction

An anonymous reader pointed out that I should not have equated "psychotic" and "murderous".

Absolutely correct; that was insensitive and gave you permission to make the same association, which of course you should not.

In my mind I never thought of them as equivalent, but wanted to use the word murderous journalistically. It sounded good in the sentence. Interestingly, there was a ping in my head that said, take that back, and I didn't listen, thought, well, they know I don't really mean it that way. Denial.

But I take it back!

FYO

We use the word psychotic to define a certain class of disorders in which an individual suffers from one or more of the following features:

1) delusions
2) hallucinations
3) disorganized speech (e.g. frequent derailment or incoherence)
4) grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior

I define them in the post below.

We do not include a symptom if it is a culturally sanctioned response pattern.

The type of psychotic disorder, an actual diagnosis, depends upon its duration, how it presents, if it is in the context of a close relationship with another person who has an already-established delusion (a Folie a Deux), if there is a medical condition that causes the symptoms, or if it is induced by substance abuse or marked stress.

Humbly yours,

therapydoc