Exploring the Interplay Between Adversity, Neurocognition, Social Cognition, and Functional Outcome in People With Psychosis: A Narrative Review.

History of adversity is associated with subsequent psychosis, and with a spectrum of cognitive alterations in individuals with psychosis. These cognitive features go from neurocognitive aspects as working memory and attention, to complex social cognitive processes as theory of mind and emotional perception. Difficulties in these domains impact patients' social and occupational functioning, which has been shown to be more impaired in those previously exposed to childhood trauma.

A systematic review on mediators between adversity and psychosis: potential targets for treatment.

Various psychological and biological pathways have been proposed as mediators between childhood adversity (CA) and psychosis. A systematic review of the evidence in this domain is needed. Our aim is to systematically review the evidence on psychological and biological mediators between CA and psychosis across the psychosis spectrum.

Schematic beliefs and problem solving performance predict depression in people experiencing persecutory delusions.

Depression occurring alongside psychosis is an important treatment target, both in its own right and as a potential maintenance factor for positive psychotic symptoms. The present paper reports a prospective longitudinal analysis of depression and its predictors over six months in a group of 60 participants experiencing persecutory delusions. We hypothesised that negative schematic beliefs about the self and problem solving difficulties would predict the persistence of depression over time.

Depression, goals and motivations in people with persecutory delusions.

Goals motivated by avoidance, rather than approach, and by external, rather than internal, motivations, have been implicated in the persistence of depression. This paper reports the first empirical investigation of the goals and motivations of individuals experiencing persecutory delusions. Participants completed assessments of goals and motivations, depression and paranoia.

The use of immersive virtual reality (VR) to predict the occurrence 6 months later of paranoid thinking and posttraumatic stress symptoms assessed by self-report and interviewer methods: a study of individuals who have been physically assaulted.

Presentation of social situations via immersive virtual reality (VR) has the potential to be an ecologically valid way of assessing psychiatric symptoms. In this study we assess the occurrence of paranoid thinking and of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to a single neutral VR social environment as predictors of later psychiatric symptoms assessed by standard methods. One hundred six people entered an immersive VR social environment (a train ride), presented via a head-mounted display, 4 weeks after having attended hospital because of a physical assault.