Meaning & use
psychotic breakdown
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountablemedicalspecialist
A severe mental health crisis in which a person loses contact with reality, often with delusions or hallucinations.
Grammar: Countable: you can say a psychotic breakdown or two psychotic breakdowns.
Patterns
- have a psychotic breakdown
- suffer a psychotic breakdown
- a psychotic breakdown in someone
After months without sleep, he had a psychotic breakdown and was admitted to hospital.
The film shows a young woman experiencing a psychotic breakdown.
Doctors said the psychotic breakdown was brought on by extreme stress.
nouncountablefigurative
A sudden, complete failure of a system or process, especially one involving extreme mental strain.
Grammar: Used figuratively for systems or organizations, not for people's minds.
Patterns
- a psychotic breakdown of something
The company's sudden collapse was described as a psychotic breakdown of its management.
The novel portrays a psychotic breakdown of the whole political system.
Word forms
| plural | psychotic breakdowns |
|---|
Common combinations
- have a psychotic breakdown
- He had a psychotic breakdown after losing his job.
- suffer a psychotic breakdown
- She suffered a psychotic breakdown in her early twenties.
- acute psychotic breakdown
- The patient was treated for an acute psychotic breakdown.
- psychotic breakdown episode
- During a psychotic breakdown episode, he could not recognize his family.
Synonyms and how they differ
- psychosis
- Psychosis is the medical condition; a psychotic breakdown is a specific episode or crisis of that condition.
- mental breakdown
- A mental breakdown is a less specific term for an emotional collapse and does not necessarily involve losing touch with reality.
- nervous breakdown
- Nervous breakdown is an older, non-medical term for an inability to cope; it does not imply psychosis.
Word family
Commonly confused: psychotic breakdown or psychopathic? psychotic breakdown or nervous breakdown?
psychotic breakdown vs psychopathic
Psychotic means out of touch with reality; psychopathic means having a personality disorder with antisocial behavior. They are not the same.
psychotic breakdown vs nervous breakdown
A nervous breakdown is an informal, older term for a stress-related collapse, not a medical diagnosis of psychosis.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'psychotic breakdown' correctly.
Choose one answer.
A psychotic breakdown involves losing contact with reality, such as delusions or hallucinations, as in option 1. Option 0 describes ordinary anger, option 2 describes tiredness, and option 3 uses the phrase for a machine, which is not standard.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “psychotic breakdown”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.