Exploring the subjective experience of researchers and co-researchers with lived experience of psychosis high risk states: a qualitative analysis within a participatory research process.

Background: The involvement and engagement of people with lived experience is considered increasingly important in health research. A growing corpus of literature on the involvement of people with lived experience of mental health conditions, including people at psychosis high risk states, can be found. This study aims to explore the subjective experience of researchers and co-researchers with lived experience of psychosis high risk states who were involved in a participatory research project.

Personality functioning and self-disorders in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis, with first-episode psychosis and with borderline personality disorder.

Background: Assessment of personality functioning in different stages of psychotic disorders could provide valuable information on psychopathology, course of illness and treatment planning, but empirical data are sparse.

Aims: To investigate personality functioning and sense of self in individuals at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis and with first-episode psychosis (FEP) in comparison with a clinical control group of individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and healthy controls.

Method: In a cross-sectional design, we investigated personality functioning (Structured Interview of Personality Organization, STIPO; Level of Personality Functioning Scale, LPFS) and disturbances of the basic self (Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience, EASE) in 107 participants, comprising 24 individuals at UHR, 29 individuals with FEP, 27 individuals with BPD and 27 healthy controls.

Psychotic-like experiences in non-clinical subgroups with and without specific beliefs.

Background: Assuming a transdiagnostic and extended psychosis phenotype, psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) and psychotic symptoms are on a phenomenological and temporal continuum between clinical and non-clinical populations. Recent research points towards differences in PLE proneness in different subgroups and clinical impact of different PLE subtypes. This study examines the prevalence of PLEs in three groups of individuals with and without specific sets of beliefs aiming to elucidate the question whether proneness to PLEs varies according to traditional versus less traditional supernatural beliefs.