Can Meltdowns & Burnouts Lead To Psychosis

Post Reply New Topic

I don't fully understand meltdowns / burnouts and may not even have them ( haven't been diagnosed ).

Does anyone have meltdowns / burnouts or know anyone who has meltdowns / burnouts that led to a psychosis.

If so what type of symptoms did the psychosis present with. ( i.e paranoia , ideas of reference , hallucinations etc )

edited to include burnout

Last edited by SaveFerris on 31 Jan 2017, 9:48 am, edited 2 times in total.

That's an interesting question. To put it another way, are meltdowns an early sign of psychosis? I don't know the answer, but I can say that my meltdowns have put me in an distanced and unattached state of mind.

I'm suppose it could be an early sign of psychosis but in the same way as too much stress and anxiety is an early sign of a breakdown ( it's not always the case ). I am trying to find out if a meltdown can lead to psychosis , is it common , does it only happen to certain types of people or is the psychosis nothing to do with ASD at all and probably a result of a comorbid

I wish I could delete this thread and start again

I don't think I mean meltdowns but autistic burnout

Not sure, but in my experience it can. Maybe its the other way around though because I don't know which came first. Maybe stress caused psychosis, and the combination caused meltdowns, or maybe I had meltdowns that led to psychosis. When I was younger I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (bipolar subtype). Being in school and having a stressful home life made it worse. It doesn't help that I was very isolated and obsessed with the paranormal and conspiracy theories at the time, which can drive you crazy. I guess since I had autism that wasn't discovered at the time, it being untreated led to other mental problems. Eventually I was hospitalized because of meltdowns and a psychologist diagnosed me with schizoaffective disorder due to the psychosis and negative symptoms.

Now that you mention it , I couldn't tell you which came first.



Thats an interesting comment and something I feel may happen.

Okay... just my perspective here... and I'm bats*** crazy so take this with a grain of sale, eh?

I have been dx'd with psychosis nos before. I also have had several 'little' breakdowns over the years and one major burnout episode several years ago that I never have fully recovered from. All of this kinda stuff is all directly related to stress for me. It never is, does the breakdown or burnout cause me to have psychotic episodes... it's more like how bad will it get before I can properly deal with the stress in my life. If I cannot, for whatever reason, deal with the stress, the breakdown or burnout will eventually lead to some kind of psychosis type event for me... but it's not the fault of the breakdown or burnout, it's the stress. Make sense? For me to say the burnout caused the psychosis, is like blaming the cough for causing the runny nose when what I really have is a head cold. But they can, for me, follow a pattern that I know I need to stop before shtf for me.

For me, the times I have had psychotic like episodes, I do hallucinate (visual and auditory). The last time I had a lil psychotic episode, I had the nicest conversation with these imaginary purple bubbles I was seeing everywhere. They kept telling me I was crazy and I kept telling them how that was a funny thing for a hallucination to say and how their lack of being real kinda took away their street cred. Heh. Eventually the bubbles and I came to an understanding. It seemed only fair that they called me crazy since I was blatantly disregarding their existence. *shrugs* I have yet to have a full blown psychotic episode where I could not, for example, understand that the bubbles were not just a me thing. I have yet to lose touch with reality on that kinda scale.

I also have weird racing thoughts or disjointed thoughts... I dunno how to explain it. My brain just does not want to work right and it fails to work in a really fast kinda way. Some of my thoughts could be funny, violent, irrational, just all over the place in a way that will make sense to no one except me. They are just not based in reality.

I'm sure I have other things happen, but those seem to be the most predominant type of symptoms for me. It has been a few years since I had anything like that go down so I'm a lil too far removed from it to have good recall.

Anyway, I hope that helped or at least made sense.

Every little helps It makes sense to me but unfortunately I'm mad as a box of frogs so I may not be the best judge

I was told I had a kind of severing of all ability to function which extended into several years due to accumulated debris so to speak from the undiagnosed autism complicating things, I developed mental health problems through a life of consecutive breakdowns and confusion with splashes of psychosis, most of the psychosis came from drug use in a particularly abysmal period but what came before certainly didn't help.

It only happened once in my life, but I'd blame insomnia and sleeping maybe 1-2 hours a night for just over a week. I thought I died and somehow didn't notice that and that I was living now in a parallel universe. Then I thought people in black cars were following me, then there were messages in songs/books meant just for me... Still, I just needed one night of good sleep for it all to disappear. Scary experience, like being in the middle of a strange film.
Nothing like that happens after the usual meltdowns. Maybe some ideas of reference, but not very strong. A bit of derealization sometimes, but these things disappear quickly and don't cause me any trouble or distress. It's more like "I'm feeling weird today".

@DancingCorpse & @RandomFox , thanks for your answers , I relate to a lot of what you both said

My previous psychiatrist told me this is caused by my severe obsessive compulsive disorder. Since i'm on an antidepressant that actually works for ocd i have less of this and the other symptoms related to ocd.
---
However my meltdowns are mostly caused by sensory overload whereas psychotic like things happen more due to depression, stress and anxiety.

I don't think stress alone can "cause" psychosis. You have to have an existing vulnerability in your brain for that to happen. You wouldn't even know you had such a vulnerability, until the symptoms emerge.

What about burnout ? do you think this can cause psychotic symptoms?

Sounds plausable and could explain why some people thrive on stress ( no vulnerability )

For me burnouts are very associated with depression so i think it's a yes.