For Many Living with Schizophrenia, Anxiety Poses a Bigger Threat than Psychosis - Printable Version +- Crazy Nice People Forums (https://forums.crazynicepeople.org) +-- Forum: Illness Specific Forums (https://forums.crazynicepeople.org/forum-9.html) +--- Forum: Schizophrenia (https://forums.crazynicepeople.org/forum-10.html) +--- Thread: For Many Living with Schizophrenia, Anxiety Poses a Bigger Threat than Psychosis (/thread-53.html)

For Many Living with Schizophrenia, Anxiety Poses a Bigger Threat than Psychosis - ArmandCNP - 08-05-2026 Get involved in a psychosis support community and you'll know. Psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations are undeniably awful. However, they tend to come in episodes. Anxiety often plagues the sufferer on the daily. I think doctors get it backwards. They believe it's the psychotic symptoms such as delusional thought which is causing the anxiety and try then to focus on prescribing antipsychotics in an effort to prevent the anxiety's "root cause". A great many patients, however, will tell you that the causality is very much the other way around. You can wake up with a severe anxiety attack with psychotic thoughts being the furthest thing from your mind. They won't keep their distance for long. Anxiety has the unfortunate ability to prevent you from utilizing the reality checking techniques that veteran schizophrenics have learned to implement over the years which keep psychosis at bay. The anxiety effectively causes the psychosis. I submit that psychiatrists should put a much heavier emphasis on treating anxiety as the main problem facing the psychotic patient. Prescribe your antipsychotics but make sure to give the patient whatever medication they claim helps to keep their anxiety minimized the best. It is, for many, the primary symptom preventing the living of a happy life. Everyone has a basic right to happiness.