acute schizophrenic episode

n. A brief period of one of the sorts of psychotic behaviors usually associated with schizophrenia, which lasts from a few hours to a few days to a few months. These may appear in people previously diagnosed with schizophrenia whose symptoms have partially or completely disappeared or in people with no previous symptoms of schizophrenia. Symptoms can include disorganized thought, paranoid delusions, hallucinations, inappropriately extreme emotions, or the absence of normal emotion. When a person who has no previous experience with psychosis has an acute schizophrenic episode, it is usually after prolonged stress, and he or she usually recovers with few long-term effects.