The symptoms of brief psychotic disorder resemble the delusions, hallucinations, or other psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, but they last for a much shorter time (from 1 day to 1 month).
People with brief psychotic disorder have at least one of the following symptoms:
Doctors diagnose brief psychotic disorder if the person's symptoms last less than 1 month and another disorder does not better account for symptoms. Other disorders that can produce similar symptoms include adverse drug effects, medical problems such as a brain tumor or temporal lobe epilepsy, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder.
Treatment of brief psychotic disorder is similar to treatment of schizophrenia and requires a doctor's supervision and sometimes short-term treatment with antipsychotic drugs.
Relapse is common, but people with brief psychotic disorder typically function well between episodes and have few or no symptoms.
