Continuing the discussion from Psychosis Research Opportunity - Survey Opportunity to help Researchers Help You:
Which category would you say you fit in? For me it has to be Sensitivity. I have always had difficulty socially and was bullied because of it. The thought of going to university ,and coping as a young adult, if I passed the necessary exams was stressful. It was a catalyst to developing full blown mental illness.
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I don’t fit any of the categories. I suppose I would be closest to traumatic, but I have none of the criteria for borderline personality disorder. I was completely unimpressed with the subgroups.
Traumatic/sensitive the most although I’m a combo of all of the above. Those were the most root causes.
I think “genetics” should be in the poll
Are you saying subgroups are a bad idea or that they are not comprehensive enough?
Yeah, what about people like flame and hedgehog who have had hallucinations their entire lives?
Traumatic/anxiety, I guess, but I wasn’t happy with the subgroups either. I don’t think they work as definitive models, just possible auxiliary explanations. They’re more trend markers than diagnostically valid classifications.
I think the subgroups should focus less on the triggering event and more on the current symptoms. Knowing why the house caught on fire doesn’t help you put it out.
I would say anxiety as well as sensitivity but the age of onset in the 30s didn’t fit in with my situation. I would question the age of onset criteria for the anxiety subgroup.
My psychosis happened because I took an herbal antidepressant called st. Johns wort which is known to trigger schizophrenia. It brought out my genetic vulnerability.
I also think that if the subgroups became widely used, folks in the drug induced group would face even more stigma, the way smokers who develop lung cancer get blamed for their condition.
I didn’t really find a good fit with the definitions that they provided. I’m in either the trauma or the anxiety subgroup. Are they going to contact us. They asked for an email address and didn’t really ask that many questions. At least it seemed like the questions didn’t go that much in depth.
True but it may lead to better ways of minimising the house catching on fire in the first place.
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Yeah as if the drug users face less pain/misery or something…drug use didn’t bring on my schizophrenia but it made it much worse. I know so many people who use drugs and don’t develop sz, and just as many szs who self medicate with drugs. We don’t need more stigma about drugs, genetics play a factor regardless of who you are. Drugs can bring on anxiety in one individual, mood disorder in another and schizophrenia in another, it’s just a faster conclusion when you use drugs.
For prevention, I really think the thing to do is find the genetic markers and screen people for it when they’re young.
Maybe we can have gm babies and eliminate it entirely. We would still need to know more though.
One may have the genetic markers but does it follow from that one will develop psychosis/schizophrenia? Surely environmental/psychological/social
factors play their part too.
It’s the same thing the other direction, though - only a very small percentage of the people who have trouble adjusting to adulthood, have had traumatic or abusive childhoods, have used substances that might trigger psychosis, or who experience extreme anxiety actually develop psychotic symptoms. The model they’re proposing seems to look at environmental factors exclusively, and that’s not any more valid.
All of the above
Aren’t they perhaps looking at triggers for psychosis/schizophrenia? Does that necessarily deny a biological/genetic component?
I don’t see it as an either/or thing. It’s a combination of factors leading to a perfect storm.