Psychotic‐like experiences in Chinese children and adolescents: The effect of earthquake exposure, maltreatment and negative life events

Abstract

Aim: Psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) are common in adolescents who have experienced or are experiencing trauma. However, the potential relationships between exposure to a major earthquake, negative life events or maltreatment and PLEs in Chinese adolescents are poorly understood. Therefore, this study explored the prevalence of PLEs and the psychosocial correlates in adolescent earthquake survivors.Methods: A total of 6132 adolescents from 11 primary and high schools in the areas most severely affected by the Ya'an earthquake completed questionnaires on earthquake exposure, maltreatment, negative life events and PLEs, which included paranoid ideation and psychoticism.Results: It was found that earthquake exposure significantly contributed to the PLEs, child maltreatment explained a significant amount of the PLE variances, emotional abuse had the most important PLE role and negative life events also explained a large amount of the PLE variances, of which interpersonal difficulties and academic pressure had the greatest effects.Conclusions: Interventions should seek to reduce parental emotional abuse, reduce academic performance pressure, improve interpersonal skills and resolve interpersonal difficulties, and specific interventions should target children and adolescents exposed to the earthquake to prevent PLEs, schizophrenia or other mental illnesses arising from multiple traumas.

Cumulative stressful events and mental health in young adults after 10 years of Wenchuan earthquake: the role of social support

“…Previous studies have reported that stressful events increased the risk of developing mental health problems (Suliman et al, 2009 ; Tang et al, 2021 ). However, these studies were mostly cross-sectional in nature.…”

“…When stressful events accumulate across the lifespan, they can lead to adverse health consequences (Evans et al, 2013 ; Scoglio et al, 2019 ; Su et al, 2022 ), and the more stressful the events experienced, the more possibility of developing mental health problems (Myers et al, 2015 ). For example, in a study of 6132 adolescents exposed to the Ya'an earthquake, researchers found that childhood maltreatment, negative life events, and earthquake exposure significantly contributed to psychotic-like experiences (Tang et al, 2021 ). Similar results were found in adolescents who had been exposed to severe and DSM-IV qualifying traumatic events.…”

The relationship between family functioning and psychotic‐like experiences of college students: Chain multiple mediating effects

“…This has been confirmed in existing studies, for example, Xia et al (2021) found that adolescents in cohesive and alliance families had high conflict resolution and high companionship, whereas adolescents in disengaged and average families had the worst friendships. Tang et al (2020) indicated that interpersonal difficulties have a greater impact on adolescents' PLEs. Meanwhile, Interpersonal needs theory also points out that in the process of interpersonal communication, everyone has the three needs of tolerance, control, and emotion, which determine the quality of individual interpersonal communication, and its formation is also closed related to the individual's early growth experience (Atelsek & Schutz, 1959).…”

“…Interpersonal adaptation, as an important criterion to measure college students' social adaptation, could directly affects the development of college students' physical and mental health. Previous studies have shown that interpersonal difficulties have a greater impact on adolescents' PLEs (Tang et al, 2020), and poor interpersonal function can predict a higher level of bizarre experiences and persecution fantasies in the later stage of adolescence (Collip et al, 2011) and young people with a short experience of PLEs reported significantly higher interpersonal difficulties in adolescence (Coughlan et al, 2021). In addition, family functioning could be also an important factor that affects college students' interpersonal adaptation.…”

The effects of sustained COVID‐19 emergency and restrictions on the mental health of subjects with serious mental illness: A prospective study

“…As an example, paranoid thoughts increase during long‐lasting crises due to terroristic attacks, natural disasters, or viral pandemics (van Prooijen & Douglas, 2017 ; Smallman, 2015 ). Paranoid subjects may be more likely to endorse conspiracy theories about pandemics, mask‐wearing, and vaccines, leading to risky behaviors and less adherence to public health countermeasures (Bronstein et al, 2021 ; Suthaharan et al, 2021 ; Tang et al, 2021 ).…”