TLDR: Psychotic is a symptom, and psychopathy is a personality disorder.
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“Psychotic” is often confused as “psychopathic.” I’ve seen this all the time on TV, Wikipedia articles, etc… The confusion is understandable, because they are spelled and pronounced so similar. BUT they aren’t the same thing.
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Psychosis is a SYMPTOM, not a disorder. Many things can cause psychosis:
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Drugs, a psychotic disorder, a side-symptom of another mental disorder (like Bipolar), aural migraines, a bad enough concussion, stress, etc…
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Think of it as a fever. You can have a fever from a cold, an infection, organ failure, or something else entirely. It could also be “periodic fever syndromes,” a group of conditions that cause chronic fevers and swelling without an infection (I don’t know much about them beyond that).
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However, the fever itself isn’t a health condition – it’s a SYMPTOM of an underlying condition. The same applies to psychosis.
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Psychosis is a psychological version of a fever. It could be schizophrenia (a psychotic disorder), but a psychotic patient could also refer to a detoxing addict, a bipolar patient, or even a patient with a brain tumor.
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When someone experiences psychosis as a symptom, they are psychotic. The cause of the psychosis and the necessary treatment vary from person to person.
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Now let’s talk about psychopathy!
Psychopathy and sociopathy are both terms for Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). There are some differences associated with those two terms, but it’s the same personality disorder overall.
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Psychopathy isn’t a symptom. When you refer to someone as psychopathic, you are saying that they have a very specific personality disorder.
A psychotic individual is someone experiencing the symptom of psychosis. This means that the two can overlap.
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Psychopaths can experience psychosis as a symptom, but it’s NOT because they have antisocial personality disorder. There’s something else causing those particular symptoms.
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This is actually why the term sociopathy came around. So many people were confusing “psychotic” for “psychopathy,” that there was a push to coin ASPD as “sociopathy.”
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In addition to that, Sociopathy” as a term makes more sense, because ASPD is a social-based disorder. It also prevents headache sentences like this:
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A psychotic psychopath is not psychotic from their psychopathy. (Who wants to try saying that ten times fast?) . Anyway, I hope this clears up some confusion! Have a lovely day! 🙂
There’s a reason my text layout includes the little dots and extra paragraph breaks. If you’re interested in the reason behind this, I explained it here.