Schizophrenia spectrum disorders are typically described using positive and negative symptoms, yet standard diagnostic systems may not reflect the full range of how individuals experience the disorder. We hypothesized that synthesizing first-person accounts would yield a broader, clinically useful symptom framework that better represents lived experience. We performed a systematic review and...
The ultra-high-risk (UHR) and at-risk mental state (ARMS) constructs were originally developed to identify individuals at imminent risk of transition to psychosis. However, declining transition rates, limited predictive value, and the persistence of significant non-psychotic morbidity increasingly challenge the view of ARMS as a brief, transitional stage along a linear continuum from health to...
Background: We aimed to test predictions made by the metacognitive model of psychopathology, which assumes associations of metacognitive beliefs and consequent strategies (dubbed cognitive-attentional syndrome, CAS) with symptoms of schizophrenia and psychopathological symptoms in general. Study design: Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia with current auditory hallucinations (n = 64) and...
Abstract: Background and Hypothesis: Psychotic experiences (PEs) frequently occur at a subclinical level in the general population, including symptoms like hallucination and delusion. An important hypothesis is the aberrant salience hypothesis, according to which the salience network (SN) plays a decisive role coordinating between inner and outer world, anchored in the dorsal anterior cingulate...
Depersonalization (DP) and derealization (DR) are phenomena involving alterations in sense of self and lifeworld. These phenomena often co-occur in psychosis, suggesting dimensional psychopathology and complex phenomenological alterations in consciousness, embodiment, and meaning-making. The primary aim of this study was to examine phenomenological associations, dynamics, and diagnostic...
Abstract Background and Hypothesis A sex difference in the clinical presentation of schizophrenia is well known. Males have on average an earlier symptom onset, worse functional capacity, and more negative symptoms. Studies on the neurobiological correlates of psychosis show that brain endocannabinoid system (ECS) is dysregulated in male patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP). We now...
Background: Research on basic self-disorders (BSD) has expanded since the introduction of the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE). Although originally formulated as characterizing schizophrenia spectrum disorders, EASE-defined BSD have been reported in other psychiatric conditions and in individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR-P), raising questions about their...
Abstract Background Vocational college students generally face the dilemma of anxiety, while traditional forms of mental health education are relatively single. Mindfulness training emphasizes conscious and non judgmental awareness of the present, and has been proven to effectively alleviate anxiety. The research aims to explore the innovative approach of integrating mindfulness training into...
Abstract Background College students with social anxiety often exhibit negative self-evaluation, social avoidance, and excessive self-focus, which significantly impair their social functioning and academic performance in classroom presentations, interviews, and interpersonal interactions. Although cognitive behavioral interventions and group counseling are widely used, some individuals still...
Abstract Background In recent years, mental health problems among middle school students have shown a trend of younger age and diversification. Difficulty in emotional regulation has become a core factor affecting their academic performance and social adaptation. The research takes the improvement of middle school students’ emotional management ability as the core goal, proposes an intervention...
A recent theme in the development of psychological interventions for hearing voices (auditory verbal hallucinations) has been the emergence of a group of overlapping approaches increasingly referred to as relational therapies: Relating Therapy (RT), Talking with Voices (TwV), and AVATAR Therapy (AT). Collaborative discussion among a group of researchers involved in developing these...
Pre-attentive information processing deficits are associated with poor outcomes in schizophrenia. The auditory mismatch negativity (MMN), observed when an auditory signal changes, is reduced in schizophrenia, related to glutamatergic dysfunction and is considered a response biomarker. We hypothesized that glycine, an N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) coagonist, could reverse the...
Individuals with schizophrenia have less priors than controls, meaning they rely less upon their prior experiences to interpret the current stimuli. These differences in priors are expected to show as higher alternation rates in bistable perception tasks like the Structure-from-Motion (SfM) paradigm. In this paradigm, continuously moving dots in two dimensions are perceived subjectively as...
Hallucinations figure prominently in a range of psychiatric disorders but, to date, their developmental origins are not well understood. The aim of the present article is to explore how ideas from mainstream developmental psychology can enhance understanding of how hallucinations develop in different modalities across the lifecourse. Hallucinations vary in their clinical significance depending...
BACKGROUND: Sleep dysfunction shares a bidirectional relationship with hallucinatory experiences, with the strongest path from sleep dysfunction to the occurrence of hallucinatory experiences. This review aimed to identify potential mechanisms through which sleep dysfunction leads to hallucinations. STUDY DESIGN: A narrative review was conducted across 4 levels of explanation: phenomenology...
Schizophrenia BulletinOctober 1, 2025Julia Cassaniti, Chaiyun Sakulsriprasert, T M Luhrmann
Background and hypothesis: Research has found that the content and valence of voices heard by persons with schizophrenia appear to be shaped by local culture. We interviewed twenty participants about their voices in Suan Prung Hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand to see if, and how, there appeared to be such local influences. Study design: In an ethnographically driven and phenomenological study,...
Background: Since the late 1990s, there has been a worldwide surge of scientific interest in the pre-psychotic phase, resulting in the introduction of several clinical tools for early detection. The predictive accuracy of these tools has been limited, motivating the need for methodological and perspectival improvements. The EASE manual supports systematic assessment of anomalous...
Schizophrenia BulletinJune 17, 2025Daphne J Holt, Rachel Sussman, Daniel Johnson et al.1 citation
Stress sensitivity may represent an important target for resilience-promoting, preventive interventions. Resilience Training (RT) is a 4-session, group-based behavioral intervention, focusing on mindfulness-based skills, that leads to reductions in psychopathology. To investigate the mechanisms of RT, the current study tested whether acquiring the skills taught in RT leads to decreases in...
Self-disorders (SD) designate a pattern of non-psychotic anomalous self-experiences, which specifically aggregate in clinical and subclinical forms of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), including familial high-risk configurations. SD have been corroborated as a valuable, quantitatively tractable, trait phenotype for indexing genetic liability to SSD, and, as a risk phenotype, they offer...
Abstract Background and Hypothesis Visual hallucinations (VH) are a core symptom of both Lewy body diseases (LBDs; eg, Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies) and serotonergic psychedelics (SPs; eg, psilocybin and mescaline). While these conditions differ in etiology, overlapping phenomenology, and neural mechanisms suggest shared pathways. This review explores similarities and...
Schizophrenia BulletinFebruary 21, 2025Hella Janssen, K.C. van den Berg, Ger P. J. Keijsers et al.2 citations
BACKGROUND: In psychosis spectrum disorders, maladaptive mental imagery is associated with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). This study evaluates the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of the following 4 imagery techniques in targeting mental imagery and AVHs severity: Imagery Rescripting (ImRs), Promoting positive Imagery de novo (Pos-Im), Metacognitive Imagery techniques...
Abstract Background With the arrival of the new era, teenagers face enormous academic and life pressures, which are accompanied by various psychological and physiological problems, and in severe cases, even depression. Depression can affect various aspects of people’s lives and is gradually becoming younger, with teenagers experiencing more severe depression problems. Therefore, it is necessary...
The efficacy of yoga as an adjunctive treatment for schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) has garnered interest. While yoga may positively influence various symptom domains, further investigation is needed due to the limited number, quality, and generalizability of studies. This study assessed the feasibility and acceptability (primary outcome) of a yoga-based group intervention (YoGI)...
Schizophrenia BulletinAugust 27, 2024Bianca Bianciardi, Helena Mastek, Michelle Franka et al.6 citations
N-Methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDA-R) hypofunctioning has been hypothesized to be involved in circuit dysfunctions in schizophrenia (ScZ). Yet, it remains to be determined whether the physiological changes observed following NMDA-R antagonist administration are consistent with auditory gamma-band activity in ScZ which is dependent on NMDA-R activity. This systematic review investigated the...
BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS: Up to 43% of people with schizophrenia have a lifetime cannabis use disorder (CUD). Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has been shown to exacerbate psychosis in a dose-dependent manner, but little research has assessed its effects on schizophrenia and co-occurring CUD (SCZ-CUD). In this double-dummy, placebo-controlled trial (total n = 130), we hypothesized that a modest dose...