Stressors
BRP generally occurs 'following a stressful life event (i.e. house move, divorce, becoming homeless, etc.)' - but the trigger 'may be any experience deemed catastrophic by the affected individual'.
Such 'stressful life event' can thus take many forms, including (but not limited to) the death of a loved one, professional loss such as unexpectedly losing one's job or otherwise becoming unemployed, or serious adverse changes in the patient's personal life, such as the breakdown of their family through divorce, etc.
It must be emphasised that this is by no means an exhaustive list of stressful life events, because the events which trigger brief reactive psychosis tend, due to the individualistic nature of human psychology, to be extremely personalized. BRP may be the first breakdown for someone with a chronic psychiatric disorder but only time will tell whether the disorder will be brief or lifelong, whether BRP or a chronic condition that is controlled well enough by medication that symptoms do not return.
Read more about this topic: Brief Reactive Psychosis