186,501 research outputs found
Emotion and psychosis: Links between depression, self-esteem, negative schematic beliefs and delusions and hallucinations
No full textBackground: The role of emotion in psychosis is being increasingly recognised. Cognitive conceptualisations of psychosis (e.g. [Garety, P.A., Kuipers, E.K., Fowler, D., Freeman, D., Bebbington, P.E., 2001. A cognitive model of the positive symptoms of psychosis. Psychological Medicine, 31, 189-195]) emphasise a central, normal, direct and non-defensive role for negative emotion in the development and maintenance of psychosis. This study tests specific predictions made by Garety et al. [Garety, P.A., Kuipers, E.K., Fowler, D., Freeman, D., Bebbington, P.E., 2001. A cognitive model of the positive symptoms of psychosis. Psychological Medicine, 31, 189-195] about the role of emotion and negative evaluative beliefs in psychosis.Methods: 100 participants who had suffered a recent relapse in psychosis were recruited at baseline for the Prevention of Relapse in Psychosis (PRP) trial. In a cross-sectional analysis, we examined the role of depression, self-esteem and negative evaluative beliefs in relation to specific positive symptoms (persecutory delusions, auditory hallucinations and grandiose delusions) and symptom dimensions (e.g. distress, negative content, pre-occupation and conviction).Results: Analysis indicated that individuals with more depression and lower self-esteem had auditory hallucinations of greater severity and more intensely negative content, and were more distressed by them. In addition, individuals with more depression, lower self-esteem and more negative evaluations about themselves and others had persecutory delusions of greater severity and were more pre-occupied and distressed by them. The severity of grandiose delusions was related inversely to depression scores and negative evaluations about self, and directly to higher self-esteem.Conclusions: This study provides evidence for the role of emotion in schizophrenia spectrum-disorders. Mood, self-esteem and negative evaluative beliefs should be considered when conceptualising psychosis and designing interventions. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
A validation of a new measure of activity in psychosis
No full textDespite demonstrated relationships between activity and clinical change, we lack effective measures of time use in psychosis. Existing time budget measures of activity are demanding to complete, and thus unsuited to routine clinical use as measures of change. Less burdensome 'check-box' measures are prone to bias and omission in the activities selected. We recently devised a simplified time budget measure of activity in psychosis which was piloted on a small sample [Jolly, S., Garely, P., Dunn, G., White, J., Aitken, M., Challocombe, F., Griggs, M., Wallace, M., Craig, T. 2005. A pilot validation study of a new measure of activity in psychosis. Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr. Epidemiol. 40, 905-911]. This study is a larger scale validation. 276 participants with a recent relapse of non-affective psychosis completed the new time budget, together with an established measure of global social functioning, measures of positive and negative psychotic symptoms, positive symptom distress and affect. The time budget measure showed a correlation of 0.5 with both the SOFAS and the SANS avolition/apathy subscale. Activity levels were related to psychotic symptomatology, both positive and negative. Positive symptom distress was more strongly associated with activity levels than symptom severity and affective disturbance. We conclude that the time budget measure can be used as an indicator of social functioning, with potential as a measure of therapeutic change. We are currently investigating its sensitivity in this context. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
The psychological effect of an urban environment on individuals with persecutory delusions: the Camberwell walk study.
No full textBACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies have found that individuals who live in urban areas are at increased risk of developing psychosis. However it is unknown whether exposure to urban environments exacerbates psychotic symptoms in people who have a diagnosed psychotic disorder. The aim of the study was to examine the psychological and clinical effects of exposure to one specific deprived urban environment on individuals with persecutory delusions. It was predicted that the urban environment would affect emotional and reasoning processes highlighted in a cognitive model of persecutory delusions and would increase paranoia. METHOD: Thirty patients with persecutory delusions were randomised to exposure to a deprived urban environment or to a brief mindfulness relaxation task. After exposure, assessments of symptoms, reasoning, and affective processes were taken. Thirty matched non-clinical participants also completed the study measures to enable interpretation of the test scores. RESULTS: In individuals with persecutory delusions, exposure to the urban environment, rather than participation in a mindfulness task, increased levels of anxiety, negative beliefs about others and jumping to conclusions. It also increased paranoia. The individuals with persecutory delusions scored significantly differently from the non-clinical group on all measures. CONCLUSIONS: For individuals with psychosis, spending time in an urban environment makes them think more negatively about other people and increases anxiety and the jumping to conclusions reasoning bias. Their paranoia is also increased. A number of processes hypothesised in cognitive models to lead to paranoid thoughts are exacerbated by a deprived urban environment. Further research is needed to clarify which aspects of urban environments cause the negative effects. Methodological challenges in the research area are raised
Rationale and protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis on reduced data gathering in people with delusions
No full textBackgroundThe tendency to form conclusions based on limited evidence is known as the ‘jumping to conclusions’ (JTC) bias, and has been a much studied phenomena in individuals with psychosis. Previous reviews have supported the hypothesis that a JTC bias is particularly linked to the formation and maintenance of delusions. A new systematic review is required as a number of studies have since been published, and older reviews are limited by not systematically assessing methodological quality or the role of study design in influencing effect size estimates. This review aimed to investigate if there is an association between psychosis or delusions and JTC bias.MethodsThe current protocol outlines the background and methodology for this systematic review and meta-analysis. Eligible articles will be identified through searches of the electronic databases PsycInfo, PubMed and Medline using relevant search terms, supplemented by hand-searches of references within eligible articles and key review articles within the field. Eligibility criteria were as follows: studies must recruit individuals with: i) schizophrenia spectrum conditions or ii) experiences of delusions. Case-control, cross-sectional, observational and prospective designs will be included but treatment trials and experimental studies excluded. Studies must use the beads task to assess JTC or a conceptually equivalent task. The outcomes will be the average number of ‘draws to a decision’ in the beads task (or related variant) and the proportion of the sample judged to demonstrate a JTC bias. Literature searches, study selection, data extraction, risk of bias assessment and outcome quality assessment will be undertaken by two independent reviewers. Meta-analyses will be undertaken for continuous (mean number of ‘draws to a decision’) and binary outcomes (number of people classified as having JTC bias).DiscussionUnderstanding of the size of the JTC effect and the contexts within which it occurs is important both in terms of informing models of delusional thinking and in guiding treatments for those with delusions or psychosis. However, a definitive, up-to-date review and meta-analysis of the JTC bias is currently lacking. The proposed review will fill this gap and resolve key issues regarding the factors which moderate the JTC bias
Psychological treatments in schizophrenia: II. Meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of social skills training and cognitive remediation
No full textBackground. Social skills training and cognitive remediation are psychological techniques with considerable face validity for the treatment of negative symptoms of schizophrenia and their consequences. This paper provides a meta-analytical review of these treatments. It includes an appreciable number of randomized controlled trials, using comparisons against both standard care and other active interventions. However, the assessment of particular outcomes sometimes had to be based on single studies.Method. A detailed search strategy was used to identify randomized controlled trials of social skills training and cognitive remediation, primarily employing electronic databases. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that met predefined criteria were then subjected to meta-analysis on a variety of outcome measures.Results. There was no clear evidence for any benefits of social skills training on relapse rate, global adjustment, social functioning, quality of life or treatment compliance. Cognitive remediation had no benefit on attention, verbal memory, visual memory, planning, cognitive flexibility or mental state.Conclusions. Social skills training and cognitive remediation do not appear to confer reliable benefits for patients with schizophrenia and cannot be recommended for clinical practice
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A cognitive model of the positive symptoms of psychosis
No full textIn the last 10 years a consensus has developed that the symptoms of psychosis may be better understood by linking the steps between the phenomenological experiences and social, psychological and neurobiological levels of explanation. Cognitive models of psychosis are an important link in this chain. They provide a psychological description of the phenomena from which hypotheses concerning causal processes can be derived and tested; social, individual, and neurobiological factors can then be integrated via their impact on these cognitive processes. In this paper, we set out the cognitive processes that we think lead to the formation and maintenance of the positive symptoms of psychosis and we attempt to integrate into our model research in social factors. If this model proves useful, a fuller integration with the findings of biological research will be required (Frith, 1992)
Persecutory delusions and catastrophic worry in psychosis: developing the understanding of delusion distress and persistence.
No full textIn a recent theoretical account of persecutory delusions, it is suggested that anxiety and worry are important factors in paranoid experience [Freeman, D., Garety, P. A., Kuipers, E., Fowler, D., and Bebbington, P. E. (2002). A cognitive model of persecutory delusions. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41(4), 331-347]. In emotional disorders worry has been understood in terms of catastrophising. In the current study, the concept of catastrophising is applied for the first time with persecutory delusions. Thirty individuals with current persecutory delusions and 30 non-clinical controls participated in a cross-sectional study. The group with persecutory delusions was also followed up at 3 months to assess predictors of delusion persistence. At its most severe, 21% of individuals with persecutory delusions had clinical worry, 68% had levels of worry comparable with treatment seeking GAD patients. Further, high levels of anxiety, worry and catastrophising were associated with high levels of persecutory delusion distress and with the persistence of delusions over 3 months. If future research replicates these findings, worry reduction interventions for individuals with persecutory delusions may be warranted
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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