Context matters: The impact of neighborhood crime and paranoid symptoms on psychosis risk assessment

In the eye of the beholder: Perceptions of neighborhood adversity and psychotic experiences in adolescence

“…Our findings are also in keeping with those from recent studies documenting higher rates of psychotic phenomena, psychosis-proneness, and psychotic disorder among children, adolescents and young adults living in regions with higher fragmentation, disorder and crime as rated by independent or objective sources (Bhavsar et al, 2014; Kirkbride et al, 2015; Newbury et al, 2016; Newbury et al, 2017; Wilson et al, 2016). Here we identify a potential role for personal perceptions of threatening neighborhood conditions in early psychotic phenomena.…”

“…Given the potential bidirectional relationship between psychotic experiences and perceptions of threatening neighborhood conditions, psychological therapies could incorporate strategies to help young people understand whether their perceptions of threat in the neighborhood are rational, or whether these perceptions are contributing unnecessarily to a cycle of stress, fear and psychotic experiences. On the other hand, recent findings from this team (Newbury et al, 2016; Newbury et al, 2017; Odgers et al, 2015) and others (Bhavsar et al, 2014; Goldman-Mellor et al, 2016; Kirkbride et al, 2015; Polling et al, 2014; Wilson et al, 2016) suggest a need to address whether wider physical and social environmental conditions can be improved for the benefit of young people’s mental health. Within two or three decades, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities (Dye, 2008).…”

Criminal victimization and psychotic experiences: cross‐sectional associations in 35 low‐ and middle‐income countries

“…Respondents could respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following questions: During the last 12 months, have you experienced…: (i) ‘A feeling something strange and unexplainable was going on that other people would find hard to believe?’ (delusional mood); (ii) ‘A feeling that people were too interested in you or there was a plot to harm you?’ (delusions of reference and persecution); (iii) ‘A feeling that your thoughts were being directly interfered or controlled by another person, or your mind was being taken over by strange forces?’ (delusions of control); (iv) ‘An experience of seeing visions or hearing voices that others could not see or hear when you were not half asleep, dreaming or under the influence of alcohol or drugs?’ (hallucinations). For the main analyses of this study (but see sensitivity analyses in online supplement), we did not include the item on delusions of reference and persecution, which may be confounded with ‘adaptive suspiciousness’ in the context of crime exposure and therefore could have led to inflated estimates of association . Having any PE referred to endorsing at least one of the remaining three psychotic symptoms, indicating the presence of any subthreshold experiences or symptoms along the continuum of psychosis severity .…”

The application of virtual reality technology to understanding psychosis

“…Importantly, and particularly for the typical measurement of low-level paranoia in those without a clinical disorder, there remains the possibility that these manifestations of increased social withdrawal and anxiety, as well as suspiciousness, constitute rational and adaptive responses to environmental stressors [4]. In other words, whilst those with a psychotic disorder or with clinically relevant symptoms of psychosis may exhibit paranoid beliefs that are delusional and clearly inconsistent with reality, individuals from the general population who rate positively on the self-report questionnaires (or even interview measures) of psychotic experiences may, in fact, be legitimately responding to genuine fears for their safety in the context of exposure to real-world environmental stress or social stress (such as from discriminatory encounters with others, indirect experiences of high-level neighbourhood crime, or direct incidents of violent and intrusive physical threats to the self, etc.).…”