Organic psychosis: using electronic patient records to define aetiology, clinical presentation, comorbidities and outcome.

Psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are known to be caused by a multitude of different factors and it is rare that a single factor can be pinpointed as the cause of a particular individual’s psychosis. In a minority of patients however, doctors do decide that the psychotic disorder is caused by a particular medical problem with the body or the brain – such as epilepsy, or a brain tumour. This study aims to use a large patient records database to find out which kinds of medical problems are thought to cause psychosis in these patients and also to find out whether there is anything about the way that these patients present to health services that makes them different from the majority of patients who have non-organic psychosis. For example, do they have different symptoms, or do they need more or less medical input?