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When you can’t tell what’s real

For people in the United States who are hearing or seeing things other people don’t, feel watched or in danger, or feel their thinking coming apart, and for the people who love them. Doctors call it psychosis. Who answers, and when. What might be happening, and why. Getting through a frightening hour. Telling someone. Seeing a doctor. The treatment that works best early, and how to find a program. What families can do. What to do in a crisis. And the words to say when you call. One thing at a time.

A word with a dotted line under it, like this, opens its official definition, quoted from a U.S. government glossary.

Your mood, your thoughts, sleep, worry or an urge, and not sure this is the right page? The pages on this site for thoughts of suicide and self-harm, depression, bipolar, anxiety, OCD, trauma, psychosis, eating, drinking and gambling, sleep, grief, ADHD, autism and memory, on one list.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). The facts come from pages read on October 1, 2026: the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (Understanding Psychosis, Schizophrenia, its RAISE research page, and its tips for talking with a health care provider); MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (its Psychotic Disorders page); SAMHSA’s Early Serious Mental Illness Treatment Locator and FindTreatment.gov; NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (its HelpLine, Family Caregiver HelpLine, psychosis, support group, Family-to-Family and crisis pages); Hearing Voices Network USA; and the 988 Lifeline. NAMI and the Hearing Voices Network are private organisations describing their own services, and the page says whose words it is passing on. We did not call any line, attend any group, or contact any program. We did not read any state’s law on treatment against someone’s will or on advance directives, what insurance, Medicaid or Medicare covers, the Institute’s or the FDA’s pages on antipsychotic medicines, the EPINET and PEPPNET program lists, or NAMI’s early psychosis tip sheets and crisis guide. Changed on October 9, 2026: until that day about twenty lines here came from two MedlinePlus medical encyclopedia articles (Psychosis and Hallucinations). Their publisher does not allow that text to be reused, so we took those lines out. Most now give what the National Institute of Mental Health’s fact sheet and schizophrenia brochure say, or the short summary the National Library of Medicine wrote for its own Psychotic Disorders page, all read again that day. Gone, because no page we can use says them: the list of kinds of hallucinations and the line that some can be a part of grieving; that hearing voices is the most common kind; the lines saying to get checked right away and that the person should not be left alone (the page now gives the Institute’s words on seeking help, and our own, marked as ours); psychosis during withdrawal from alcohol or drugs; the longer list of medical causes; what a doctor asks and which tests may be done; and the lines on outlook and on how long medicine may be needed. Many lines are our own suggestions, above all the whole of “Getting through a frightening hour”, and the page marks them as ours. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). Scarlet Beast is not a treatment provider or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].