Psychosis is probably a word you've heard at some point in your life, most likely referring to a fictional character in a book, movie or video game. However, these mental episodes are very real and affect approximately 3% of people, with an annual first-time occurrence affecting between 15-100 people per 100,000. However, as of 202X, there has been a rise in these psychotics breaks and it's been a large concern for the general public seeing as the rate of occurrence has jumped to a shocking 15%. Many neurologists and psychiatrists have been left both deeply concerned as well as intrigued to find a cause to this sharp incline in mental health episodes. We here at AMA reached out to a handful of professionals to ask some of our burning questions in addition to trying to find out what we might be missing when thinking of the causes of such troubling experiences.  

 

Dr. Aptness Petr met with us in between his busy work schedule to talk about the brain and how brain scans may give us some idea as to what is happening.

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"We've been getting in more patients as of late who have complained of headaches and migraines that last more than 8 hours." Dr. Petr explains. "While that isn't especially unusual, the amount of imaging we've done has increased and we've started noticing some strange patterns."​

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According to Dr. Petr, many of the MRIs taken at his place of practice have shown strange patterns in the brain. We asked if this was present in patients experiencing psychosis, but his answer wasn't very definitive. "MRIs don't often detect changes in the brain after someone experiences psychosis, so it's hard to say whether or not our scans are detecting a pattern."

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AMA asked the doctor if it was possible to run MRIs on patients who are currently experiencing psychosis but apparently those are hard to come by. "Patients who are currently experiencing a psychotic break of some kind may or may not want to seek medical assistance because they are unaware they are experiencing a psychotic episode at all. Actually, it's hard to get many in, period, due to the stigmatism of psychosis, even if they do realize that might've been what it was."

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Indeed, mental health is still a bit of a taboo topic amongst our society and it's smart to assume that the recorded 15% psychotic breaks are unlikely the apex of the issue considering that many people don't seek medical help at all due to the rising costs of medical care.

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Next we met with Mrs. Eurfun Stow, a psychologist practicing at a local clinic in San Francisco, not far from our office. 

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"The fascinating part about this recent behavior is actually less about the people who've experienced these psychotic breaks, and more about the fact that many people say they've seen the behavior from a friend or family member shortly before they go missing." Mrs. Stow brought up an alarming fact that we at AMA hadn't realized was a factor until speaking with her. We asked about the missing peoples. "Yes, there has been a bigger uptick in people suddenly going missing more so than psychotic breaks. Many of my patients that I've seen recently, and even new patients, have suddenly gone silent or gone missing entirely. After requesting wellness checks for several of them, police would arrive on the scene with no one being home. It was as if they disappeared without a trace."

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While we weren't able to be given specifics about these instances, Mrs. Stow brought up an important fact. "One interesting thing to note is that most people who had gone missing seemed to have done so promptly after using their PC. Every single house our local police force entered had a computer present, and if the power was still connected, it was on."

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AMA found it fascinating that these findings seem to suggest that spending extended time in front of a computer and interacting with certain activity may result in an increase of psychosis. But, we had one question that no one seemed certain enough to answer, where did this all originate from?

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Despite the assumption that social media is morphing our brains into ones with less patience, heightened anxiety and stress, experts are claiming that this has nothing to do with these psychotic breaks we're seeing. We spoke with Mr. Aaron C. Pluto who has dedicated the last year to finding an answer/

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"There's an interesting correlation between the rise of psychosis cases and online gaming." Mr. Pluto suggests. "For example, online social games like VRChat have been linked to users experiencing heightened emotions, both negative and positive. Some users even report to having "phantom pain" mid-breakdown." 

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Phantom touch/phantom pain is a sensation in which the brain is perceiving a physical sensation, such as touch or pain, without any actual physical contact happening in reality. Amputees can also experience this after losing a limb.

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"I've spoke to several of these people, both in online social spaces like VRChat, and in person, about their experiences. I believe that few people think that they've experienced psychosis, though they do show symptoms of losing touch with reality by immersing themselves with an online game like VRChat." We asked the doctor if it was possible that games like the one he mentioned should be held responsible and should conduct research on if they're hurting the wellbeing of their userbase. "Not necessarily. You see, most people who log on to such games seem to be logging back in frequently, as reported by their online friends. There are very few instances where they stop playing out of nowhere, so...