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psychosis or schizophrenia

What is the difference between psychosis and schizophrenia?
Generally, psychosis is a symptom whereas schizophrenia is a disorder. Schizophrenia has symptoms other than just psychosis. Psychosis can be a part of various different disorders, for example: bipolar, schizoaffective disorder, post-natal psychosis, and psychotic depression. Sometimes psychiatrists might give a patient a diagnosis of psychosis but generally, at least from what I've seen, that's a working diagnosis not a concrete one -> psychosis doesn't appear as an individual disorder in the DSM but rather as a component of other ones.
Psychosis is a general term to describe a group of symptoms including hallucinations and delusions.
Schizophrenia is a specific diagnosis- it is a psychotic illness, however there are many other diagnoses with psychosis as a symptom. For example, psychotic depression, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar affective disorder and some personality disorders.
Hope this helps.

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