Transient Psychosis: Diagnosis, Management and Evaluation. Edited by Joe. P. Tupin

The term "transient psychosis" does not appear in official psychiatric literature. It is a term, however, widely used by mental health profes- sionals for a number of decades-important and interesting because it emphasizes that all psychoses are not chronic. Indeed, the prognosis may be good and the duration limited. At the same time, it suggests that, under certain circumstances, even short-term psychiatric events can have psychotic elements and thus represent a major disruption of individual functioning.

This concept is a critical one. If one reviews the literature over the last 50 to 80 years, it is characterized by a slow recognition of the different kinds of psychoses. Careful clinical observations, correlated with treat- ment response, outcome of family history, and other significant criteria, have identified psychoses caused by physical conditions, delirium, changes in mood and the continually perplexing schizophrenia. How- ever, brief psychotic episodes have little literary documentation.