According to news reports earlier today, the Kony 2012 director Jason Russell, 33, was “hospitalized last week in San Diego after witnesses saw him running through streets in his underwear, screaming incoherently and banging his fists on the pavement.” His wife now says he’s been diagnosed with brief reactive psychosis, which is technically called “brief psychotic disorder.”
Brief psychotic disorder could be most simply thought of as a form of short-term schizophrenia, since many of the symptoms of the disorders are exactly the same. The primary difference is that in a brief psychotic disorder, the psychosis is less than 30 days.
Let’s delve more into brief reactive psychosis and talk about how one “gets it” (don’t worry, it’s not catching).