Love and Romantic Relationships in the Voices of Patients Who Experience Psychosis: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

Love is a universal experience that most people desire. A serious, long-term, and stigmatized illness makes entering and maintaining close relationships difficult, however. Ten persons, who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and lived with their illness for between years and decades of their lifetimes, shared their stories. They reported how the illness has influenced their emotional experiences regarding love and their intimate relationship experiences. We present here a qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of their narratives. This analysis has been done with an explicit intention to give voice to the patient's perspective. The results highlight how illness adjustment and hospitalizations have an alienating effect on relationships through stigmatization and self-stigmatization; how illness creates psychological obstacles to love, such as diminished trust toward oneself and others; and how long-term patients experience practical difficulties in creating and sustaining relationships, such as poverty. Moreover, we show how patients experience changes in sexuality and the risks involved in it and discuss possible coping strategies from their perspectives.

Feminine sexuality, religiousness and psychotic distress: Tracing a pattern

“…It is not accidental, we think, that the topic of sexual chastity was found to be central in the psychotic experiences of women in Greece (Mitropoulos et al, 2015) and in Lithuania (Wittkowski et al, 2014). Moreover, voluntary abstinence from sexual activities and pleasures as a result of experiencing psychosis has been documented in the majority of cases in a study in Poland and was linked to religious beliefs (Budziszewska et al, 2020).…”

“…Women with psychosis consider intimate romantic and sexual relationships very important to their recovery (McCarthy-Jones et al, 2015). However, due to the difficulties in forming and maintaining intimate relationships, they tend to shift to loving and supporting relationships, quite often resorting to voluntary sexual abstinence (Budziszewska et al, 2020).…”

Romantic relations, sexuality and intimacy among young adults and adolescents with severe mental illness, intellectual disability and Down syndrome: a review of the literature

“…A cycle exists where selfstigmatization fosters self-isolation which leads to decreased social functioning and results in an ampli ed stigma that negatively affects the emotional and sexual dimensions of these people's lives. Furthermore, de cits in emotional, social, and cognitive skills are common and typical of the psychotic and schizophrenic spectrum disorders, and, in the majority of the cases, they are phenomenologically experienced as loss of one's sense of self and loss of trust toward oneself, toward one's own memories and feelings and others [10,27,11].…”

Social Perception Deficit as a Factor of Vulnerability to Psychosis: A Brief Proposal for a Definition

“…Schizophrenia is linked to a number of social difficulties, among them, reduced capacity for close relationships ( Budziszewska et al, 2020 ), decrease in obtaining and keeping jobs ( Hakkaart-van Roijen et al, 2015 ), decreased engagement in social activities ( Bellack et al, 2007 ), and, in general, a less adequate social functioning ( Gorostiaga et al, 2017 ). Although there is an important degree of causal overlapping with a general deficit in individual cognitive performance, most of these problems have been attributed to poor functioning in social cognition ( Schmidt et al, 2011 ; Halverson et al, 2019 ).…”