Not all psions who suffer from PD have the strength and ability to project a full psyghost. The majority of PD cases will instead exhibit bouts of unconscious telekinesis, indiscriminate telepathy, emotional projection and even uncontrolled
White Noise.
Treatment
Treating psychogenic dejection is no different than treating any other form of severe depression. While therapy has proven to be quite effective, albeit slow, the most common form of treatment is chemical. Psions suffering from depression or even early stages of PD usually self-medicate with whatever drugs they can get their hands on. The few who do seek help are often prescribed common, off-the-shelf anti-depressants that are less effective than street drugs or sensotech stimulants.
Dealing with psyghosts
A psyghost projection is a psionic entity but does partially interact with the physical world. While it cannot be harmed by physical projectiles or even stopped by physical walls, it does get hindered by them, as if it was like water. The only way to truly harm a psyghost is to attack it with enough energy to completely disrupt it. Energy weapons are all about equally effective against psyghosts. A psyghost who is destabilised to the point of dispersion dies and the psion with them as the body cannot live without the mind. The psion becomes a comatose, braindead individual often living for only a few more hours before the body shuts down.
Prevention
Preventing PD is a case of mental health care. In a society like Fusion City it is hard not to be struck by melancholy or depression, at least if you aren't one of the people swimming in money. However, far from every depressed psion will suffer from PD. It's usually only the most traumatized individuals who will ever reach the point of mental escape.
Prognosis and sequela
While most psions will either die due to burnout or recover from their depression, not all recover entirely and some might even suffer lasting consequences of their PD bout. Extreme cases include:
- Memory bleed: Waking up having absorbed other people's worst memories and experiences, suddenly remembering them as your own.
- Projection addiction: Feeling compelled to seek unconsciousness to repeat the mental escape.
- Mental possession: Repeatedly seeking out an individual that appeals to you and gradually supplant their mind with your own.
Memory bleed is a horrifying effect that can happen during PD where a psion functions a conduit or psychic "vacuum cleaner". They absorb other people's memories and experiences and make them their own, waking up with tens or maybe hundreds of emotionally distressing experiences they now believe to be their own, yet feel completely alien in.
Some grow addicted to the psyghost experience and even though the projection is largely a traumatic experience, they find that they are compelled to seek unconsciousness in order to escape their mind, "be free" and have an outlet for their pent up frustration, rage and pain.
The most egregious of effects commonly only affect those that suffer from body or gender dysphoria, severe disassociation or dissociative identity disorder. These PD-sufferers tend to unconsciously try to escape the confines of their own body and inhabit another body they feel they identify better with. Over time, this mental possession can become permanent and the target victim's personality is completely erased as the psion transfers their mind to the new body. This usually ends in tragedy as the psions mind is ill-equipped to physically maintain the new body, and differing hormone levels or even species means that these psions usually die within hours of transferrance, causing the effective death of both individuals.
Cultural reception
Treatment comes with great risk to anyone near the psion as they have a tendency to lash out against the people they know when they project. Even friends, family and loved ones can become threats and enemies in the twisted world of the paranoid, terrified and violent PD sufferer. This becomes particularly dangerous with a psion that exhibits full on psyghost projection.
PD psions are the poster boys for anti-psion propaganda. Every time there is a PD incident and people get hurt or injured, there is always someone who tries to score political points on the incident and use it as fuel to enact anti-psion legislation. A PD psion is usually very quickly discovered and "taken care of" by government medical services.
Anna Elizabeth Boyett
T?his is.... What is there to say about this. It's really, really hard to find anything to say about this article that isn't praise; It's well researched. It's honest. It's brutal. It covers all the bases... And yet it still remains sensitive to the issue of mental health; I particularly enjoyed the use of quotes on the bit at the end where you say "taken care of"- and the mention of society's ill treatment of the individuals. I just... Wow. Damn. I really wish I could find something to critique in this but I just can't. You deserve a standing ovation.
Tobias Linder
<3 That means a lot to me. Thank you! It's very hard writing about a subject that you have no experience of. I've been depressed at times, but never suffered severe depression or chronic depression, so I had to do a fair bit of research for this one.
Anna Elizabeth Boyett
As someone with Bipolar type II, I really R E A L L Y appreciate the amount of research and effort you put into it. Thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart <3