If you’re online a lot, you may have heard the term “spiritual psychosis”, a mashup of a couple of different concepts into one large thing. The emphasis is far more on the ‘psychosis’ than the ‘spiritual’ – it describes a person whose psychotic delusions take the form of religious or otherworldly imagery. “Delusions” is a heavy word, and it’s not one to be tossed around lightly: like many pop-psychology terms, the actual meaning has been confused by people using it incorrectly, so here is a breakdown. (Please do not use this article for medical advice – this is a description of a phenomenon that is being made worse by algorithms and social media. Please seek help from an actual medical professional).
As the NIMH describes it, psychosis happens when someone loses touch with what is and is not real (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/understanding-psychosis). But that’s super vague; someone who believes they’ll win poker despite knowing the odds are very poor is psychotic by this definition. As with many mental illnesses, one of the factors of psychosis is that it causes distress and makes it difficult to function in society. Spiritual psychosis as described recently is also like this. It is not thoughts like “God is here with us”, or “my relatives look out for me from heaven”, which – while spiritual in nature – don’t cause distress and don’t hinder functioning. When people trying to describe spiritual psychosis say “delusions”, they mean the person with the delusion seems to actually believe that they are psychically linked with the Gray Aliens, or are communicating directly with God via the morse code of the washing machine’s rattle in the laundromat, for example, something much more specific and real to them than a feeling. This is as real for them as the color of the sky, or the existence of Mars. It is not easy to shake.
By this metric, you may be wondering: what if someone believes there’s a teakettle orbiting between Jupiter and Saturn? Well, while that thought is unprovable in one direction or another, if it isn’t causing distress (the person who believes it isn’t living in a constant state of anxiety, depression, or rage as a result of this belief, however it manifests) and it isn’t making it difficult for them to function (if they don’t sell off all of their worldly possessions, cause harm to others, steal or become antisocial because “the teakettle is going to take me”), then it’s not a clinically significant psychotic delusion. Monks, nuns, theoretical physicists, etc. are not delusional, even if they can’t mathematically prove the things they believe in. Neither are atheists, or Last-Thursday-ists. Someone who is deliberately not seeking treatment for strep throat because of a belief they are not sick but are being prepared by the Grays to ascend into a spaceship soon is suffering from a delusion.
What you should do for someone suffering from a delusion will vary (and I am far from an expert, none of this is medical advice – contact a real health professional if you or someone you love is struggling, this article is more an attempt to describe a phenomenon being made worse by social media than a true description of illness or treatment for it), but the general rule of thumb is: don’t tell them outright you believe they’re suffering from a delusion! If someone told you that the sky is and has always been yellow, you’d tell them to get their eyes checked, right? So will a delusional person. But, anecdotes from folks online who have experienced psychosis say you should not encourage the delusion, either. It’s a fine line to tread (and why it’s so important to turn to experts). This means if someone believes they were bitten by a vampire, and has turned up in the ER, it’s probably better to say “I don’t see wounds consistent with that,” and actually check them over for wounds, rather than “vampires aren’t real”. Additionally, you do not want to be saying something like “wear this cross and eat a lot of garlic to avoid turning into a vampire!” or “this special saline injection will protect you!” both of which affirm the delusion.
This is all important context for the next part, where social media jumps in and makes all of this much worse.
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