Associations between attachment and psychopathology dimensions in a large sample of patients with psychosis

Attachment and dissociation as mediators of the link between childhood trauma and psychotic experiences

“…This is in line with previous findings (e.g., Sheinbaum et al, ) but in contrast with others (Korver‐Nieberg et al, ; Macbeth, Schwannauer, & Gumley, ; Ponizovsky, Vitenberg, Baumgarten‐Katz, & Grinshpoon, ; Strand et al, ). This difference may be due to the possible overrepresentation of fearful attachment in this study relative to other investigations where anxious and avoidant attachment may have been more prevalent (e.g., Korver‐Nieberg et al, ). The use of continuous measures of attachment in our statistical analyses, however, mitigates some of the impact of homogeneity in attachment style observed when using the categorical RQ.…”

“…Research suggests that fearful attachment is associated with psychotic‐like experiences in both clinical and nonclinical samples (Sheinbaum, Kwapil, & Barrantes‐Vidal, ; Strand, Goulding, & Tidefors, ) and that fearful attachment, but not other insecure attachment styles, mediates the relationship between childhood trauma and psychotic‐like experiences in nonclinical participants (Sheinbaum et al, ). One study specifically found fearful attachment to be associated with both hallucinations and suspiciousness or persecution in patients with psychosis (Korver‐Nieberg, Berry, Meijer, de Haan, & Ponizovsky, ). However, this study did not control for the comorbidity between these experiences, a statistical procedure that has been proposed to be necessary to identify unambiguously the underpinnings of specific psychotic experiences, given their substantial covariation (Bentall et al, ; Varese & Bentall, ).…”

The dynamics of attachment insecurity and paranoid thoughts: An experience sampling study

“…Wickham et al, (2015) found that both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety were both associated with paranoia. Other researchers have however also shown that insecure attachment is associated with hallucinations (Berry et al, 2012;Korver-Nieberg et al, 2015), a finding which was not supported by our data once comorbid symptoms were controlled for; more recently however, some researchers have proposed that there may be links between how different attachment styles are associated with the appraisal of auditory hallucinations (Berry & Bucci, 2016).…”

“…A large and influential epidemiological study found evidence for an association between insecure adult attachment and schizophrenia (Mickelson et al, 1997), and although this association has been replicated in non-clinical (Berry et al, 2007b;Berry et al, 2006;Korver-Nieberg et al, 2014;Meins et al, 2008) and clinical samples (Berry et al, 2007a;Gumley et al, 2014;Korver-Nieberg et al, 2014;Korver-Nieberg et al, 2015;Ponizovsky et al, 2007;Ponizovsky et al, 2013) it has been suggested that it could be more informative to explore such associations in relation to specific symptoms of psychosis (Bentall, 2004). Such specificities can provide a clearer understanding of how certain psychological mechanism are meaningfully related to the experiences of individuals with psychosis (Bentall and Fernyhough, 2008) and, in turn this information may help clinicians focus psychological interventions appropriately.…”

Investigation of associations between attachment, parenting and schizotypy during the postnatal period

“…In the current study, trauma was also associated with attachment as would be expected from existing research (Murphy et al, 2014;Riggs, 2010). The consequences of early trauma histories and attachment difficulties, such as difficulties in interpersonal relationships, problems regulating affect and negative beliefs about the self and others have been implicated in psychological models of the development of psychosis (Korver-Nieberg et al, 2015). The findings here suggest that early experiences might also play a role in the development of schizotypal symptoms.…”