Dramatic religious conversion and schizophrenic decompensation.

The similarities between dramatic religious and psychotic experiences have long been observed and, just as long, have proved a source of confusion and misunderstanding. Recent surveys on decompensation to schizophrenic psychosis offer not only striking comparisons to the phenomenon of sudden and dramatic religious conversion but clues to the limits of continuity between these two mental processes. Using Docherty and his associates model of the stages of onset of schizophrenic psychosis and their own review of the literature of religious conversion, the authors suggest three principal similarities and the point of departure between the two phenomena.