Help-Seeking in People with Exceptional Experiences: Results from a General Population Sample

Abstract

Background: Exceptional experiences (EE) are experiences that deviate from ordinary experiences, for example precognition, supernatural appearances, or déjà vues. In spite of the high frequency of EE in the general population, little is known about their effect on mental health and about the way people cope with EE. This study aimed to assess the quality and quantity of EE in persons from the Swiss general population, to identify the predictors of their help-seeking, and to determine how many of them approach the mental health system.Methods: An on-line survey was used to evaluate a quota sample of 1580 persons representing the Swiss general population with respect to gender, age, and level of education. Multinomial logistic regression was applied to integrate help-seeking, self-reported mental disorder, and other variables in a statistical model designed to identify predictors of help-seeking in persons with EE.Results: Almost all participants (91%) experienced at least one EE. Generally, help-seeking was more frequent when the EE were of negative valence. Help-seeking because of EE was less frequent in persons without a self-reported mental disorder (8.6%) than in persons with a disorder (35.1%) (OR = 5.7). Even when frequency and attributes of EE were controlled for, people without a disorder sought four times less often help because of EE than expected. Persons with a self-reported diagnosis of mental disorder preferred seeing a mental health professional. Multinomial regression revealed a preference for healers in women with less education, who described themselves as believing and also having had more impressive EE.Conclusion: Persons with EE who do not indicate a mental disorder less often sought help because of EE than persons who indicated a mental disorder. We attribute this imbalance to a high inhibition threshold to seek professional help. Moreover, especially less educated women did not approach the mental health care system as often as other persons with EE, but preferred seeing a healer.

The Intricate Relationship between Psychotic-Like Experiences and Associated Subclinical Symptoms in Healthy Individuals

“…In 2011, PLE and help-seeking behavior were assessed in a large online sample representative of the Swiss general population ( N = 1,580; Fach et al, 2013 ; Landolt et al, 2014 ). Ninety-one individuals from the aforementioned survey agreed to take part in this follow up study.…”

“…The Revised Exceptional Experiences Questionnaire (PAGER; Fach et al, 2013 ; Landolt et al, 2014 ) assesses the frequency of 32 exceptional experiences on five-point Likert-scales ranging from 0 ( never ) to 4 ( very often ). We implemented the PAGE-R as a measure for PLE using three subscales (Unterrassner et al, 2017 ): The odd beliefs subscale (OB), the dissociative anomalous perceptions subscale (DAP), and the hallucinatory anomalous perceptions subscale (HAP).…”

“…Recently, we investigated PLE in a sample of healthy individuals from the general population (Unterrassner et al, 2017 ) using the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ; Raine, 1991 ), the revised Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1977 ; Rössler et al, 2007 ), and the recently developed PAGE-R questionnaire (Fach et al, 2013 ; Landolt et al, 2014 ). Based on our results, we suggested that the association of psychotic experiences with socio-demographic factors and reduced psychological functioning (comorbid symptoms, psychological distress, lower educational achievement) extends to the healthy end of the psychosis continuum (Linscott and van Os, 2013 ), i.e., healthy individuals from the general population.…”

Anomalous Experiences, Trauma, and Symbolization Processes at the Frontiers between Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neurosciences

“…Accordingly, it seems appropriate to approach and conceptualize them as a whole, both from a clinical and a theoretical perspective. In this regard, anomalistic psychology tries to understand and explain these experiences (Holt et al, 2012 ; French and Stone, 2013 ), whereas the clinical psychology of anomalous experiences aims to develop therapeutic models in order to help people cope with these experiences when they are associated with mental suffering (Fach et al, 2013 ; Landolt et al, 2014 ). Psychotherapy can indeed be useful in order to re-establish the individual's well-being, especially in counseling services that are specifically dedicated to anomalous experiences (Belz-Merk, 2000 ).…”

Priming psychic and conjuring abilities of a magic demonstration influences event interpretation and random number generation biases

“…For instance, only about 10% of the general US population would label themselves as being skeptical toward the paranormal ( Rice, 2003 ). In Europe, 90% of a Swiss sample reported having exceptional experiences ( Landolt et al, 2014 ), and the German public seems pretty open-minded about exceptional experiences, and more than half of the German public report having had such experiences ( Knittel and Schetsche, 2012 ). Moreover, after experiencing anomalous events, Western adults typically deny magical beliefs on an explicit level, but frequently acknowledge implicitly, that an anomalous event had occurred (e.g., turning a drawing into a real object; Subbotsky and Quinteros, 2002 ; Subbotsky, 2004 ).…”