If I am correct, the phrase "lose/lost/out of touch with reality" is a term which appears to have 2 separate meanings when referring to different conditions.
In https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/mice-with-hallucination-like-behaviors-reveal-insights-about-psychotic-illness/, it states, "Psychosis occurs when a person loses touch with reality. During a psychotic episode, people may acquire false beliefs (delusions) or confidently believe that they are seeing or hearing things that are not occurring (hallucinations)."
In http://www.sa.ucsb.edu/distressedstudentsguide/CommonProblems/irrationalbehavior.aspx
it describes, "The concept of 'being out of touch with reality' historically has received a number of different definitions. Eventually parts of these definitions were grouped into classifications that describe different disorders and/or associated features of disorders. The common feature of these disorders is that the person demonstrates a gross impairment in reality testing."
However, this term is also commonly used to describe normal mentally healthy people(i.e., non-psychotic people).
In https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lose%20touch, it states that "lose touch- idiom" means, "to stop knowing what is happening, how certain people feel, etc. —usually + with
For example, I read the newspaper every morning so that I don't completely lose touch with what's happening in the world.
She seems to have lost touch with reality and thinks that she can have everything she wants."
According to the above dictionary or any other idiom dictionaries), this term is not in any way described to be associated with psychosis. Rather, losing touch with(reality), is defined as just "stopping to know what is happening" in the external world.
In Dr. Johan. E. Korteling's article, Cognitive bias and how to improve sustainable decision making(Front Psychol. 2023; 14: 1129835) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10071311/, it describes, "Cognitive biases can be generally described as systematic, universally occurring, tendencies, inclinations, or dispositions in human decision making that may make it vulnerable for inaccurate, suboptimal, or wrong outcomes." This includes hindsight bias, tunnel vision, confirmation bias, self-interest bias, etc..
I do understand that when describing psychotic states, impaired reality testing would cause such people to lose connection to reality. However, if I am correct, for non-psychotic people, stopping to know what is happening in the external world would not occur from having impaired reality testing(i.e., inability to distinguish fantasy from reality), but would occur if people reduces their attention to what is happening in the external world for whatever understandable reasons(such as just preferring to daydream or being preoccupied with other non-world related activities, as a result of having cognitive bias, etc).
For example, in the article, We're Losing Touch With Reality, And It's Terrifying https://www.theodysseyonline.com/were-losing-touch-with-reality-and-its-terrifying, it states, "In America, we are extremely privileged to have all of the great things that we do - from iPads to free WiFi in coffee shops, it's a pretty amazing country that we live in. Notably, we tend to take these great things for granted, more than often, and we start to lose touch with reality and the bigger world around us."
In this article, it seems clear that losing/being out of touch with reality is caused by intentionally not paying attention to the bigger realities of the world. In other words, Americans put more value/concerns on their own personal lives compared to the real concerns of the world which is cognitive bias involving self-interest related concerns(not because these people lack the ability distinguish fantasy from reality).
Concerning all non-psychotic people, is it correct that the terms "lose touch with reality, lost touch with reality and/or out of touch with reality" do(es) NOT mean that these people are experiencing psychosis/psychotic symptom(s)[caused by impaired reality testing/inability to distinguish fantasy from reality] but rather the term(s) "lose touch with reality, lost touch with reality and/or out of touch with reality" mean(s) that these people are experiencing cognitive bias and/or just paying less attention to the external world because of some understandable reason(s)?
