From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!tektronix!tekmdp!laurir
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: "Intensive Care Psychosis": an doctor's explanation
Article-I.D.: tekmdp.1817
Posted: Sun Mar  6 17:33:17 1983
Received: Fri Mar 11 23:02:25 1983
References: rabbit.1187

  I asked my father, an internist (M.D.), about "intensive care psychosis".
He explained it this way:  you've just had a heart attack (or stroke
or been badly mauled or undergone some other life-threatening experience).
You're hooked up to a variety of machines, in a room where they never
completely turn off the lights.  At any hour of the day or night a
medical person may need to take your blood or run a tube down your
throat or otherwise do something most unpleasant.  Occasionally you're
trundled into an operating room where they fill you with drugs designed
to suppress brain activity (knock you out) and slice up various parts
of your body.

  Apparently half of "intensive care psychosis" is the result of
disrupted sleep patterns (forget trying for eight hours at night) and
the rest is the natural psychic trauma resulting from what you're going
through.  Sufferers exhibit decreased mental abilities, often appearing
to lose contact with reality.  The problem almost always goes away
as the patient recovers from physical problems.

  -- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!tekmdp!laurir)