Abigail M. Judge

Recognizing and responding to early psychosis: a qualitative analysis of individual narratives.

OBJECTIVE The ways in which individuals recognize and respond to emerging psychotic illness remain poorly understood. This retrospective study explored when and how individuals recognized changes in themselves and responded to these changes. METHODS This study used qualitative methods to explore when and how 15 individuals recognized changes and identified how they responded. Standardized information on the onset of psychosis was also collected. RESULTS Themes relating to recognizing and responding to emerging psychosis were identified through qualitative analysis of interview transcripts. Themes included normalization, explanatory models, withdrawal, avoiding help, and coming to terms with psychosis. CONCLUSIONS Participants recognized changes in themselves but tended not to understand the observed changes as part of a mental illness. Individuals avoided professional help because of stigma concerns and identified domains of recovery beyond the management of symptoms and medication. Qualitative methods offer a promising strategy for understanding subjective illness experience and suggesting psychosocial treatment approaches.

The misattribution of salience in delusional patients with schizophrenia

INTRODUCTION Delusions may arise from abnormalities in emotional perception. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that delusional schizophrenia patients are more likely than non-delusional schizophrenia patients and healthy participants to assign affective meanings to neutral stimuli. METHODS Unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral words were randomly presented to three subject groups--patients with schizophrenia with prominent delusions, patients with schizophrenia without delusions, and healthy participants. Participants performed three tasks: one in which they decided whether a letter string was a word or a non-word (lexical decision) and two affective classification tasks in which they judged whether words were 1) neutral or unpleasant, or 2) neutral or pleasant. RESULTS While there were no significant between-group differences in lexical decision performance, patients with delusions showed selective performance deficits in both affective classification tasks. First, delusional patients were significantly more likely than non-delusional patients and healthy participants to classify words as unpleasant. Second, delusional patients took significantly longer than both other groups to correctly classify neutral words in both affective classification tasks. CONCLUSIONS Taken together, these findings suggest that delusions are associated with the explicit misattribution of salience to neutral stimuli.

Sexting among U.S. adolescents: psychological and legal perspectives.

&NA; This article will discuss the phenomenon of “sexting” (i.e., the exchange of sexually explicit images between adolescents via cell phone) in the United States, with a particular focus on clinical and legal implications. Although sexting is frequently discussed in the popular press, there is virtually no scientific literature available on this topic. In contrast, the legal literature has discussed sexting more comprehensively due to the implications of child pornography statutes for the social response to involved youth. This article will consider sexting from a clinical and legal perspective, and recommend ways to understand and address this practice clinically with adolescent patients.

Pathways to care in first episode psychosis: A pilot study on help-seeking precipitants and barriers to care

Background: It is well documented that individuals experiencing first episode (FE) psychosis encounter significant delays in obtaining appropriate treatment, but why this occurs remains poorly understood. Aims: To examine the duration of untreated psychosis in a FE population, to describe precipitants of help-seeking attempts, and to identify barriers to obtaining appropriate treatment. Methods: Twenty individuals who recently received antipsychotic treatment for a FE of psychosis were interviewed about help-seeking behaviors. Results: A total of 75 help-seeking attempts were reported. Fifty percent of the sample reported aggressive behaviors toward the self or others prior to obtaining treatment. Patients and their families experienced significant delays in linking with appropriate psychiatric care. The most common barrier to treatment was a failure to recognize the seriousness of behavioral changes as part of a mental illness. Conclusions: Further investigations on treatment delay that highlight barriers to care and emphasize the patients perspective are warranted. Declaration of interest: None.

The virtual doppelganger: Effects of a virtual reality simulator on perceptions of schizophrenia

Recent scholarship suggests that virtual environments can serve as effective proxies in battling implicit stereotypes. However, existing experimental research has rarely examined the effectiveness of virtual simulations of mental illnesses in inducing empathy to combat stereotypical responses. We report results from a 4-condition, between subjects experiment (N = 112), wherein participants were exposed to either a virtual simulation of schizophrenia, a written empathy-set induction of schizophrenia, a combination of both the simulation and written empathy conditions, or a control condition. The results indicated that the virtual simulation + empathy condition induced greater empathy and more positive perceptions toward people suffering from schizophrenia than the control or written empathy-set condition. Interestingly, the simulation-only condition resulted in the greatest desire for social distance whereas not significantly differing on empathy and attitude measures from either the written empathy or simulation + empathy conditions. We discuss the implications of the findings and recommend directions for future research.

Lurking on the Internet: A Small-Group Assignment That Puts a Human Face on Psychopathology

Lurking on the Internet aims to put a human face on psychopathology for the abnormal psychology course. Student groups are assigned major diagnostic categories and instructed to search the Internet for discussion forums, individual blogs, or YouTube videos where affected individuals discuss their symptoms and lives. After discussing the ethics of passively observing public sites, students monitor relevant sites throughout the term and evaluate what they are learning in class from the perspective of affected individuals. At the end of the term, students submit individual papers based on their observations. Periodically, individual groups are given opportunities to share their findings and, depending on the size of the class, to make formal presentations.