rt
Interesting questions. Intrusive thoughts and images are not typically considered a symptom of psychosis, but I think it depends on the intensity and what else the person is experiencing at the time. There are no clear distinctions for this kind of thing. If it is mild, I would say it's not psychosis, and probably reassurance is all the person would need. It's unlikely that a person would act on mild thoughts or images if it was not aligned with what they actually wanted to do. That's called ego dystonic. If the images are aligned with what the person wants to do it is called ego syntonic, and that is much more dangerous.

I have had this experience, but only during severe depression. But I was not suicidal at the time. It was really violent images, and very real and intense. It felt like the images were coming from somewhere external to my normal thoughts. At the same time as I was having these images, I was also having very intense lucid dreams, and I was having trouble determining if I was awake or asleep, or what was real. So for me, I would consider that part of psychosis. It stopped when I started taking an antipsychotic.

It's interesting to see how many of us have had this experience. It looks like it's pretty common in bipolar.