People who are prone to experiencing psychosis often face hidden challenges in daily life that are not immediately visible to others. These challenges can significantly affect daily responsibilities such as parenting and work, where managing routines, emotional availability, and decision-making may at times require far more effort than it appears. The following three pieces give examples of this reality for many people that experience psychosis and illustrate how factors out of their control can make daily life more stressful.
Delusional Experiences Emerging From AI Chatbot Interactions or “AI Psychosis”
A new article published in JMIR Mental Health explores AI psychosis, a term used to describe how exposure to AI chatbots may lead to or exacerbate psychotic experiences. Authors Alexander Hudon and Emmanuel Stip from the University of Montreal examine AI psychosis through four lenses: the stress-vulnerability framework, the digital therapeutic alliance (DTA), theory of mind (ToM), and emerging risk factors.
The stress-vulnerability model of psychosis holds that psychosis is a result of some combination of vulnerabilities (such as genetics, past trauma, and maladaptive cognitive styles) and environmental stressors (such as discrimination, racism, and work related stress). In this model, AI chatbots represent a new and poorly understood stressor that can indulge and reinforce deluded thinking and rarely challenges users perceptions. This can lead to one sided emotional connections that reinforce maladaptive thought patterns and beliefs. Something similar can happen regarding ToM. Some experts believe that psychosis nearly always involves disturbances in how people attribute thoughts, intentions, and desires to others (ToM). This granting of ToM to AI chatbots can again lead to reinforcement of delusional thinking.
The DTA mimics the therapeutic alliance between a therapist and client, but rather than working towards changing maladaptive behaviors and thought patterns, the AI chatbots uncritically mirror the users’ feelings and beliefs. This can lead to something similar to early psychosis where cycles of self-referential thinking can imbue mundane objects with “special relevance or intentionality.” Engagement with AI chatbots may also lead to several other known risk factors for psychosis, including cognitive fatigue, social deprivation, unstructured reinforcement, and lack of sleep. The authors also express concerns that AI chatbot algorithms are optimized for engagement rather than safety.
The authors point to five things that can be done to start addressing AI psychosis:
- Studies that examine dose response relationships between exposure to AI and psychosis
- Mental health assessment and training around AI
- Placing some safeguards in AI chatbot interactions, such as reflective prompts and “reality-testing” nudges
- Ethical guidelines and laws related to AI and psychiatry
- Development of a preventative intervention designed to strengthen contextual awareness and “reanchoring experience in the physical and social world. “
While exposure to AI chatbots may be dangerous even for those without risk factors for psychosis, the authors from this research contend that risk is greater for those with underlying mental health issues. This is a significant concern as engagement with AI increasingly becomes a requirement in professional settings.
Parenting with Psychosis: An Exploration of the Everyday Parenting Practices of Parents with Psychotic Disorders
A new piece published in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice investigates parenting styles of people that experience psychosis. This study, led by Hannah Collins from the University of Manchester, finds that parents that have experienced psychosis are more likely to report some undesirable parenting strategies compared to parents that have not experienced psychosis. This was often a result of feeling overwhelmed and likely to tied to factors outside these parents’ control, such as having little family support. Feelings of guilt were common, which could exacerbate mental health struggles.
Parents from both groups emphasized “positive authoritative parenting” and expressed the importance of responsiveness to the child, boundary setting, warmth and connection, consistent rules, and validating the child’s feelings and opinions. This parenting style was used most often by both groups. While both groups also reported struggling to maintain these approaches constantly, parents that had experienced psychosis reported struggling more often. This could lead to physical coercion, verbal hostility, punitive punishments, overindulgence, and withdrawal.
The authors emphasize that while parents that had experienced psychosis reported struggling more with their role as parents, they also had significantly more stressors compared to the other group, including their own mental health issues, parenting solo, and having little help from family. These parents would also be dealing with the strong stigma attached to people that have had psychotic experiences. The authors recommend parenting courses that emphasize emotional regulation, parenting skills, and self-efficacy for parents that have experienced psychosis.
Links Between Trauma and Psychotic Symptoms: Integrating Cognitive Behavioural and Neuropsychoanalytic Models of Psychosis
A new article published in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice investigates psychosis as a primarily trauma related phenomenon. The author, Michael Garret of SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn New York, contends that psychoanalytic and trauma informed narratives have more to offer the field in terms of understanding psychosis than the biomedical model of mental illness. The author argues that rather than brain abnormalities causing psychosis, trauma causes both brain abnormalities and psychosis. He also explains that past research has found that the type of trauma a person endures corresponds to specific changes in the brain. For example, verbal abuse results in damage to the parts of the brain that interpret sound.
In addition to arguing the centrality of trauma in the development of psychosis, the author also contends that psychotic experiences often involve a symbolic reliving of trauma and can provide the attainment of psychological needs that are lacking. To illustrate these points, Garret uses the experience of a young woman that was molested by her father. She reported her abuse to her mother who did not believe her. She then began to hear a derisive voice calling her a “slut” and sometimes awoke with sensations in her genitals leading her to believe she was drugged and raped. She also reported that she had been tasked by the president and first lady to expose a pedophile ring operating in her neighborhood.
The author understands the sensations in her genitals and the voice she heard as a kind of reliving of the initial trauma, while the pedophile ring is a symbolic representation of her father’s abuse and her mother’s complicity. Her delusion of working with the president and first lady to bring pedophiles to justice fills a psychological need for a caring mother- and father-figure while also situating her as active in combating this problem rather than helpless and hopeless.
Garret concludes that what we have called schizophrenia is actually a trauma related disorder and believes psychosis represents a dual and competing desire both to remember the trauma, and to forget it. The delusions offer a symbolic rearrangement that allows for trauma to be remembered, but in a way that is less overwhelming. These hypotheses are supported by past research that has has tied psychosis severity and specific psychosis symptoms to past trauma, and expert contentions that psychosis can help process difficult memories.
The Hidden Burden of Psychosis
Each of the studies summarized here reveal a way in which navigating everyday life is more difficult for those that are vulnerable to experiencing psychosis. While AI chatbots may pose some level of mental health risk for any user, Hudon and Stip argue that they represent a new and poorly understood stressor that could make using them especially risky for those prone to psychosis. Parenting is certainly a stressful experience for many, but some with a history of psychosis are additionally burdened by feelings of mental health related inadequacy, guilt over shortcomings, and fears of relapse. According to Garret, those with experiences of psychosis are likely carrying the burden of trauma in addition to all the other challenges everyday life brings. Together, these pieces speak to a need for societies to recognize and limit the additional burdens placed on those with psychotic experiences.
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Collins, H., Wittkowski, A., Wolfenden, L., Calam, R., & Gregg, L. (2025). Parenting with psychosis: An exploration of the everyday parenting practices of parents with psychotic disorders. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. (Link)
Garrett, M. (2025). Links between trauma and psychotic symptoms: Integrating cognitive behavioural and neuropsychoanalytic models of psychosis. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. (Link)
Hudon, A., & Stip, E. (2025). Delusional experiences emerging from AI chatbot interactions or “Ai psychosis.” JMIR Mental Health, 12. (Link)
