The duration of untreated psychosis: a phenomenological study

Abstract

Mounting evidence has indicated that early intervention leads to improved clinical and functional outcomes for young persons experiencing recent onset psychosis. As part of a large early detection campaign, the present study aimed to investigate subjective experiences during the duration of untreated psychosis (DUP), or time between psychosis onset and treatment contact. Participants were 10 young adults participating in early intervention services for psychosis. After DUP was estimated during standardized baseline assessment, participants engaged in qualitative interviews focused on their life experiences prior to treatment and leading up to the present. Mixed methods data analyses compared standardized DUP estimates with participants’ subjective narratives. Findings revealed that participants experienced and conceptualized a longer trajectory of subjective difficulties (TSD) beginning before and extending beyond standardized DUP estimates. Participants emphasized striving for independence and social belonging. The majority of participants reported benefiting from their current services and believed that earlier support of some kind would have been beneficial. These findings support previous research on subjective barriers to early detection and treatment seeking in young adults experiencing psychosis. Implications and future research directions include further efforts to differentiate the struggles unique to early psychosis from psychosocial risk factors and other challenges of young adulthood.

“We all have a responsibility”: a narrative discourse analysis of an information campaign targeting help-seeking in first episode psychosis

“…Research has revealed that people may experience longer trajectories of subjective distress than what was emphasized in the focus on DUP [12]. A recent systematic review and meta-synthesis explored distinct sources of distress in the first-person accounts of 33 qualitative studies of first-episode psychosis.…”

Spiritual understandings of psychosis: the perspectives of spiritual care staff

“…Author All 15 studies were conducted in the West (Table three): five in the United States (US) (Cabassa et al, 2018;Hardy et al, 2020;Judge et al, 2008;Kamens et al, 2018;Melton et al, 2020) three in the United Kingdom (UK) (Bogen-Johnston, 2019;Singh et al, 2013;Tanskanen et al, 2011), three in Denmark (Jansen et al, 2014;Jansen et al, 2015;Nordgaard et al, 2020), two in Canada (Ferrari et al, 2018;Macnaughton et al, 2015), one in Norway (Bay et al, 2016), and one in Northern Ireland (Spikol & Murphy, 2019). Most studies did not state an epistemological position; two studies claimed a social constructivist (Jansen et al, 2018;Melton et al, 2020) position and one a constructivist (Macnaughton et al, 2015) position.…”

“…Most studies did not state an epistemological position; two studies claimed a social constructivist (Jansen et al, 2018;Melton et al, 2020) position and one a constructivist (Macnaughton et al, 2015) position. Every study included was qualitative-only except for two mixed-method studies (Kamens et al, 2018;Singh et al, 2013). 10 studies included only first-person accounts of FEP and the remaining used both first-person FEP accounts and caregivers (Cabassa et al, 2018;Hardy et al, 2020;Melton et al, 2020;Singh et al, 2013;Tanskanen et al, 2011).…”

“…An interpretive qualitative analysis was used for each study; Braun and Clarke's (2006) Thematic Analysis was used most (Bogen-Johnston et al, 2019;Ferrari et al, 2018;Hardy et al, 2020;Jansen et al, 2014;Jansen et al, 2015;Nordgaard et al, 2020;Singh et al, 2013;Tanskanen et al, 2011), followed by Grounded Theory for one study (Melton et al, 2020) and three studies combining grounded theory with case study methodology (Cabassa et al, 2018), content analysis (Judge et al, 2008), or narrative analysis (Kamens et al, 2018). Two studies used phenomenological analysis; one used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Spikol & Murphy, 2009) and the other Wertz's (2019) systematic phenomenological procedures (Kamens et al, 2018). Finally, one study used a systematic meaning condensation procedure for their analysis (Bay et al, 2016).…”

“…Eight out of 15 studies reported its mean ages (Bogen-Johnston et al, 2019;Cabassa et al, 2018;Kamens et al, 2018;Ferrari et al, 2018;Judge et al, 2008;Melton et al, 2020;Nordgaard et al, 2020;Tanskanen et al, 2011), yielding a total mean age of 24.55 (SD= 1.52).…”