What is spiritual emergency and how is it different from a mental health crisis?

Spiritual emergency is when a genuine opening — of energy, awareness, or identity — moves faster than the person can integrate, and starts to look like crisis from the outside. It can share symptoms with psychosis (visions, insomnia, ego dissolution) but the underlying process is coherent and often self-resolving with the right support. Ordinary psychiatric care can sometimes suppress it rather than hold it; find a practitioner familiar with transpersonal work if you or someone you love is in this territory.