Cyberpsychosis

**Cyberpsychosis** is a mental illness, specifically a dissociative disorder, caused by an overload of cybernetic augmentations to the body.

## Background

Those afflicted with cyberpsychosis are known as cyberpsychos, those who have existing psychopathic tendencies, enhanced by cybernetics, and as a result have lost their sense of identity as a person, either to themselves or others. They come to view regular people and other living things as weak and inferior. With their enhanced physical abilities and complete disregard for life, cyberpsychos are extremely dangerous to anyone that crosses their path. Cyberpsychosis can affect anyone modified with cybernetics eventually, but the less empathetic or psychologically stable a person is, the more susceptible they are to it.

There is no real cure, though treatment is available (see below). The effects are cumulative. A single cyber hand is unlikely to cause cyberpsychosis, but replacement of all four limbs and both eyes will probably start down the slippery slope to madness.

Cyberpsychosis symptoms are gradual, ranging from decay of self-preservation, distancing or disregard from friends and family, and poor or impulsive outbursts or acts. They start to identify more with machines than people, and stop doing things that used to give them pleasure (eating, sleeping, socializing, sex, etc). Eventually human interactions become irritating, and then irritation morphs into contempt, and finally violence. Not all cyberpsychos are physically violent. Some have fragmented personalities, some are kleptomaniacs, others are compulsive liars. But violence towards living things, especially people, is most common.

Cyberpsychosis has become a major problem in the technology-saturated world of Cyberpunk. It is actually quite common in many boostergangs, though fairly rare in polite society. Police departments have heavily armed and armored units, called psycho squads, who specialize in subduing or killing cyberpsychos.

Incidentally the government (and corporations) are not going to wait for you to go over the edge. It is quite common for governments or corporations (who are often the de-facto government) to track people who are known to install lots of cyberware. This is another reason ripperdocs exist; not everyone wants to be on a government watch list for cyberpsychosis.

## Registry and therapy

People who are near the edge are politely asked (that is, required) to register as such. A registered cyberpsycho is on something akin to parole. They must attend periodic therapy sessions to keep them human. They have implants to monitor their activity. So long as they don't do anything dangerous, they can go about their lives as normal.

A cyberpsycho who goes over the edge is often killed outright. Cyberpsychos usually have enough implanted hardware to cause significant damage, and are a threat to anyone they come across. Most police departments will not go out of their way to risk people's lives trying to take the psycho alive.

But if the psycho can be subdued, they will be strapped down and all of their cybernetics deactivated. They are forcibly jacked into a custom braindance, where a cyberpsychologist (sometimes called a psychoshrink) attempts to piece their personality back together.

Over weeks or months, the cyberpsycho gradually regains their humanity. They may even eventually become human enough to install cybernetics again (assuming they are not in prison for crimes committed on their rampage). But they are never really the same again. Mental damage from cyberpsychosis will change aspects of their personality, and follow them their entire lives.

## Symptoms

Symptoms of cyberpsychosis often begins with standard symptoms of mental health deterioration- depression, anxiety, mild paranoia and brain fog are recorded. Continued use of cybernetics will lead to further symptoms of paranoia , psychosis related to visual and auditory hallucinations, violent psychosis episodes and at this point, self harm idolization. The physical body will begin to experience nutrient deficiencies related to high stress, and often the patients lack of self care. At the peak of cyberpsychosis, other humans will be recognized as threat, food, or a danger to the patient, and all humanity and consciousness has deteriorated until all that is left is a monster that preys on either a specific victim, or any unsuspecting civilian.

## The CEU

The cyberpsycho Extermination unit (CEU) is a squad of highly trained combatants and military police who are focused on responding to emergencies or dangerous situations caused by cyberpsychoes that have gone rogue. often, attempts to communicate with the patient is not advised, and so small pocket bombs are dropped via AV-4 to exterminate quick and efficiently, in order to avoid more casualties.