Background: Symptom severity and social functioning are important outcomes after first episode psychosis (FEP), yet current evidence about associations between them is inconsistent and lacks (subclinical) momentary insights.
Methods: The current Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) study was conducted in 58 people in remission from FEP, as part of the HAMLETT (Handling Antipsychotic Medication: Long-term Evaluation of Targeted Treatment) trial. At baseline, participants were prompted to report momentary mental states and social context 10x/day for eight consecutive days, including psychotic experiences (PEs), motivation/drive and negative affect, that may indicate proxies of (subclinical) psychotic, negative and general affective symptoms, respectively.
Negative symptoms can be an integral part of schizophrenia spectrum pathology and can be secondary to other psychotic symptoms or caused by antipsychotic medication. As antipsychotic drugs differ in their affinity to dopamine receptors and some antipsychotics have partial agonistic effects, antipsychotic drugs are expected to vary in their ability to cause negative symptoms. The association between negative symptoms and antipsychotic medication divided into partial agonists, or antagonists with high or low D affinity was assessed in 310 remitted first episode psychosis (FEP) patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHallucinations can have rather heterogeneous aetiology and presentation. This inspired the concept of different subtypes based on symptom profiles, especially in the field of auditory hallucinations. As many people experience hallucinations in more than one sensory modality, it seems important to investigate potential hallucination subtypes across different sensory modalities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical outcomes after a first-episode of psychosis (FEP) are heterogeneous. Many patient-related factors such as gender and comorbidity have been studied to predict symptomatic outcomes. However, psychiatrist-related factors such as prescription behaviour and gender have received little attention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The concept of personal recovery after psychotic illness focuses more on patients' social and existential needs compared to traditional outcome measures including clinical and functional recovery. This research aims to contribute to a broad framework on (personal) recovery and associated factors.
Methods: Data from 203 persons with symptomatic remission of their first-episode psychosis from the ongoing HAMLETT study were analyzed.