Fusion of Clinical and Lived Experiences of Psychosis: Lessons Learned and Implications for Future Clinical Teaching

Abstract

Psychosis is a clinical syndrome that can cause significant distress leading to hospitalisation/long term stays in psychiatric services. However, limited academic evidence is available examining the lived experience of psychosis. Additionally, no evidence is available looking to combine both learned and experiential knowledge as it pertains to psychosis. As such this article was created to combine both knowledge subsets in order to provide a more complete interpretation of the syndrome itself. This was achieved through academic input from a psychiatrist’s perspective as well as a reflective, autoethnographic input from a service user who has experienced psychosis. Following this collaboration, several recommendations were made to support health professionals to engage appropriately with service users with psychosis. However, the lived experiences of psychosis itself requires further investigation to identify commonalities in experiences that can support clinicians in the diagnosis and co-production of treatment regimens for these service users.