The relation between childhood maltreatment and psychosis in patients with schizophrenia and non-psychiatric controls.

Several lines of evidence suggest that childhood maltreatment is associated with an increased risk for both psychotic disorders and subclinical psychotic-like experiences in the general population. Few studies, however, have sought to examine whether the strength of this relationship is comparable across patient and non-patient groups. The present study sought to compare the strength of the association between childhood maltreatment and self-reported psychotic symptoms in 447 healthy adult volunteers and 184 stable outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.