The papers included in the thesis, and summarized in this covering document, were selected, in discussion with my supervisor, Dr. Roessler, from papers I have published in the philosophy of psychiatry. In parallel to this philosophical work, I have worked clinically as a psychiatrist and academically as a research psychiatrist. My clinical work has largely been working with Early Intervention...
Converging ecological and social crises have exposed the limits of prevailing models of human progress, highlighting the need for more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches to advancing wellbeing and flourishing across human and non-human life. In this Personal View, we propose an ecological-collective-flourishing (e-co-flourishing) approach, whereby one's own human flourishing is pursued...
Delusions in psychosis involve complex and dynamic experiential, affective, cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal alterations. Their pattern of emergence during the early stages of illness remains poorly understood and the origin of their thematic content unclear. Phenomenological accounts have emphasised alterations of selfhood and reality experience in delusion formation but have not...
This editorial reflects on current methodological trends in translational research in mental health. It aims to build a bridge between two fields that are frequently siloed off from each other: interventional research and phenomenologically informed research. Recent years have witnessed a revival of phenomenological approaches in mental health, often - but not only - as a means of connecting...
BACKGROUND Delusions are a common transdiagnostic feature of psychotic disorders, and their treatment remains suboptimal. Despite the pressing need to better understand the nature, meaning, and course of these symptoms, research into the lived experience of delusional phenomena in psychosis is scarce. Thus, we aimed to explore the lived experience and subjective apprehension of delusions in...
Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) often lead to distress and functional disability, and are frequently associated with psychotic illness. Previously both state and trait magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of AVH have identified activity in brain regions involving auditory processing, language, memory and areas of default mode network (DMN) and salience network (SN). Current evidence is...
Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are core features of psychotic illness and remain significant in predicting poor outcome and risk. There has been a wide range of approaches to understanding these experiences. A systematic literature review summarizing different methods of investigation and their results; phenomenology, descriptive psychopathology, psychological, cognitive neurobiology,...
One of the leading cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) proposes such experiences result from a disturbance in the process by which inner speech is attributed to the self. Research in this area has, however, proceeded in the absence of thorough cognitive and phenomenological investigations of the nature of inner speech, against which AVHs are implicitly or explicitly...