Publications by authors named "Catherine van Zelst"

Article Synopsis
  • Trauma and post-traumatic stress play a significant role in voice-hearing, and trauma-focused therapy (TFT) may help, but previous research has been inconclusive.
  • The study aimed to evaluate the impact of TFT on voice-hearing in individuals with PTSD and psychosis, using daily questionnaires to assess changes over time.
  • Results indicated that TFT led to a significant reduction in voice-hearing compared to a waiting-list control group, with improvements in PTSD symptoms also correlated with reductions in voice-hearing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Methodologies such as the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) or Ecological Momentary Assessment allow the gathering of fine-graded, dynamic, personal data within a patient's daily life. Currently, it is studied whether feedback based on experience sampling data (ESM-based feedback) can be used as a clinical tool to inform shared decision-making in clinical practice. Although the potential of feedback is recognized, little is known on how to generate, use, and implement it.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Concern for symptom exacerbation and treatment drop-out is an important barrier to the implementation of trauma-focused therapy (TFT), especially in people with a psychotic disorder. This study, which was part of a multicenter randomized controlled trial, investigated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom exacerbation during eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR) therapy and prolonged exposure (PE) in a sample of 99 participants with PTSD and psychosis. Symptom exacerbations during the first four sessions (early exacerbation) and between-session exacerbations over the course of therapy were monitored using the PTSD Symptom Scale-Self Report.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • This study, RE.PROCESS, aims to compare the effectiveness of cognitive restructuring (CR), prolonged exposure (PE), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) as trauma-focused therapies for individuals with psychotic disorders and PTSD against a waiting list control group.
  • * The trial will include 200 participants aged 16 and older who meet specific diagnostic criteria, and they will receive 16 sessions of one of the therapies alongside their usual psychosis treatment.
  • * The primary goal is to evaluate changes in PTSD symptoms over time, while secondary objectives look at symptom severity at different points and the presence of PTSD diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: A large number of people suffer from psychosocial or physical problems. Adequate strategies to alleviate needs are scarce or lacking. Symptom variation can offer insights into personal profiles of coping and resilience (detailed functional analyses).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Service providers throughout Europe have identified the need to define how high-quality community-based mental health care looks to organize their own services and to inform governments, commissioners and funders. In 2016, representatives of mental health care service providers, networks, umbrella organizations and knowledge institutes in Europe came together to establish the European Community Mental Health Services Provider (EUCOMS) Network. This network developed a shared vision on the principles and key elements of community mental health care in different contexts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Recovery, defined as a personal process of living with mental illness, has become a prominent concept in mental health care. We aimed to map the state of the art of conceptualizing recovery, its promoting and impeding factors, recovery-oriented practice, and the assessment of recovery.

Method: A scoping review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses was performed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mental healthcare needs person-tailored interventions. Experience Sampling Method (ESM) can provide daily life monitoring of personal experiences. This study aims to operationalize and test a measure of momentary reward-related Quality of Life (rQoL).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Stereotype awareness--or an individual's perception of the degree to which negative beliefs or stereotypes are held by the public--is an important factor mediating public stigma, self-stigma and their negative consequences. Research is required to assess how individuals become more sensitive to perceive stereotypes, pointing the way to therapeutic options to reduce its negative effects and increase stigma resilience. Because perception and interpretation can be guided by belief systems, and childhood trauma (CT) is reported to impact such beliefs, CT is explored in relation to stereotype awareness (SA) in persons with psychosis, their siblings and controls.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recent years have seen considerable progress in epidemiological and molecular genetic research into environmental and genetic factors in schizophrenia, but methodological uncertainties remain with regard to validating environmental exposures, and the population risk conferred by individual molecular genetic variants is small. There are now also a limited number of studies that have investigated molecular genetic candidate gene-environment interactions (G × E), however, so far, thorough replication of findings is rare and G × E research still faces several conceptual and methodological challenges. In this article, we aim to review these recent developments and illustrate how integrated, large-scale investigations may overcome contemporary challenges in G × E research, drawing on the example of a large, international, multi-center study into the identification and translational application of G × E in schizophrenia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Different psychological models of trauma-induced psychosis have been postulated, often based on the observation of "specific" associations between particular types of childhood trauma (CT) and particular psychotic symptoms or the co-occurrence of delusions and hallucinations. However, the actual specificity of these associations remains to be tested.

Methods: In 2 population-based studies with comparable methodology (Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study-1 [NEMESIS-1] and NEMESIS-2, N = 13 722), trained interviewers assessed CT, psychotic symptoms, and other psychopathology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Stigma is an important environmental risk factor for a variety of outcomes in schizophrenia. In order to understand and remediate its effects, research is required to assess how stigma experiences are processed at the level of the individual. To this end, stereotype awareness (SA) with respect to people with mental illness and their families was explored in persons with psychotic disorder.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Stigmatization represents a chronic negative interaction with the environment that most people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia face on a regular basis. Different types of stigma-public stigma, self--stigma, and label avoidance--may each have detrimental effects. In the present article, the possible consequences of stigma on onset, course, and outcome of schizophrenia are reviewed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Now that schizophrenia researchers may be moving from unilateral molecular genetic approaches to models including so-called gene-environment interactions, the question rises which environments may be considered for such research and how a user perspective may inform the field. It is argued that trauma and stigma, or perhaps better structural discrimination, represent 2 important environmental factors that deserve more attention. Experiential evidence, collected by users, suggests that trauma in childhood and/or adulthood, before, during, and after the onset of schizophrenia, as well as stigma/structural discrimination, may play important roles in the onset and course of the disorder.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF