Psychopathology

The concept of hysteria, although apparently surpassed by contemporary nosographic classifications, continues to be talked about. Following Charbonneau's attempt to de-feminize and de-sexualize hysteria, clinical phenomenology can offer a perspective which, freed from stigma and prejudices through the suspension of judgement, allows us to understand hysteria not as a diagnostic category but as an existential position. In this sense, hysteria would be based on a hypo-sufficiency of the embodied self, which is not perceived as solid and continuous and needs external confirmations of its adequacy...

INTRODUCTION: Individuals with schizotypy can experience a number of cognitive biases that may increase their risk in developing schizophrenia-spectrum psychopathology. However, cognitive biases are also present in mood and anxiety disorders, and it is currently unclear which biases are specific to schizotypy and which may be a result of comorbid depression and/or anxiety. METHODS: 462 participants completed measures of depression, anxiety, cognitive biases, cognitive schemas, and schizotypy...

INTRODUCTION: Despite the similarities in poor social competence and clinical manifestations of poor social behavior, no study has compared the theory of mind performance between social anxiety disorder (SAD) and schizophrenia, considering the effect of social-evaluative anxiety and neurocognitive functions. In our study, we aimed to compare the theory of mind functions and social-evaluative anxiety between patients with SAD and schizophrenia and healthy controls and to examine the relationship between the theory of mind, neurocognitive skills, and social-evaluative anxiety...

INTRODUCTION: Mental health comorbidities such as depression and anxiety are common in epilepsy, especially among people with pharmacoresistant epilepsy who are candidates for epilepsy surgery. The Psychology Task Force of the International League Against Epilepsy advised that psychological interventions should be integrated into comprehensive epilepsy care. METHODS: To better understand the psychological impact of epilepsy and epileptic seizures in epilepsy surgery candidates, we analysed interviews with this subgroup of patients using Karl Jaspers' concept of limit situations, which are characterised by a confrontation with the limits and challenges of life...

This paper sheds light on some aspects of what contemporary clinical theory calls "borderline" condition providing a description of a key figure of late-modern culture that I will call Homo dissipans (from Latin dissipatio, -onis = scattering, dispersion). Homo dissipans is the opposite of Homo œconomicus, the form that "narcissism" takes on in contemporary "achievement society," solely concerned with rational action aimed to utility and production. In order to define Homo dissipans, I follow French philosopher, anthropologist, and novelist Georges Bataille's descriptions of two core phenomena: "excess" and "expenditure...

Apophenia is the tendency to falsely detect meaningful relationships and may indicate susceptibility to more extreme expressions on the psychotic spectrum. This pilot investigated the fragmented ambiguous object task (FAOT), a new measure designed to assess apophenia behaviorally in a sample of adolescents with and without mood disorders using an image recognition task. Our primary hypothesis was that increased image recognition would be associated with PID-5 psychoticism. Participants were 33 (79% female) adolescents with (n = 18) and without (n = 15) mood disorders...

INTRODUCTION: Psychometric properties of the Self-evaluation of Negative Symptoms (SNS) in subjects with the deficit subtype of schizophrenia (SCZ-D) have not been investigated so far. This study had the following aims: (1) to assess psychometric properties of SNS in subjects with SCZ-D and (2) to explore the usefulness of SNS, in comparison with other clinical characteristics, in screening for SCZ-D. METHODS: Participants were 82 stable outpatients with schizophrenia, including 40 individuals with SCZ-D and 42 individuals with the non-deficit subtype (SCZ-ND)...

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this work was to summarize relationships between two subtypes of major depressive disorder (melancholic and atypical) and four core features of depression that reflect the domains identified consistently in previous studies of major depressive disorder endophenotypes (exaggerated reactivity to negative information, altered reward processing, cognitive control deficits, and somatic symptoms) on the one hand and selected peripheral inflammatory markers (C-reactive protein [CRP], cytokines, and adipokines) on the other...

INTRODUCTION: The fear of scrutiny central in social anxiety disorder (SAD) points to a problem of the interpersonally perceivable body. Whereas the predominant cognitive-behavioral (CBT) account of the disorder understands this as a problem of excessive self-focused attention, the phenomenological literature reveals it as a sign of a fundamental transformation of body experience. The lived body absent from experience becomes the object body at the forefront of it. The present paper contributes to this literature by refining and grounding these notions in first-person descriptions of concrete experiences of social anxiety...

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INTRODUCTION: The experience of "sensed presence" or "felt presence" in the absence of "other" has been described as a complex multimodal experience to which meaning is given. Sensed presence (SenP) is a transdiagnostic experience that exists along a continuum that can appear during isolation, spirit quests, exposure to extreme elements, bereavement, anxiety, and psychosis. Given the prevalence and vast heterogeneity of SenP, in addition to a surprising lack of targeted research into this phenomenon, this research examined the interrelationship of SenP, attenuated psychosis symptoms (APS), and transliminality...

Psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), including persecutory ideation, bizarre experiences, and perceptual abnormalities, are considered risk factors for psychotic disorders and mental distress in the general population. The cognitive-affective mechanisms associated with PLEs remain under-investigated. We aimed to longitudinally assess the reciprocal associations between perseverative cognition (PC), an emerging transdiagnostic factor of psychopathology, and PLEs facets in young adults. Participants (n = 160) from the general population completed measures of PC and PLEs at baseline and at 2-month follow-up...

INTRODUCTION: Research has consistently demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic, and resulting sudden shift to online learning (OL), had detrimental impacts on the motivation and mental health of university students. To date however this research has been cross-sectional and quantitative. METHOD: This study employed a mixed-methods design to examine the experiences of students at a large national Australian University both at the outset of the pandemic in 2020 (n = 824) and again 6 months later (n = 254) at the conclusion of their academic year...

Considering the growing sense of ambivalence about the merits of the DSM, the time seems right for the re-evaluation of nosological attempts and efforts in the pre-DSM era. One example of these attempts is the CHAM system developed by the Dutch psychiatrist R.M. Silbermann (1932-1976). This system is intended as a simple classification with 20 "psychiatric states," which are classified based on the presence of one of 12 hierarchically arranged core symptoms or key characteristics, while all "hierarchically higher" symptoms are excluded without inference about the "hierarchically lower" symptoms...

Informal caregivers of individuals affected by psychotic disorder can play a key role in the recovery process. However, little research has been conducted on the lived experiences of carers and family members. We conducted a bottom-up (from lived experience to theory) review of first-person accounts, co-written between academics and experts by experience, to identify key experiential themes. First-person accounts of carers, relatives, and individuals with psychosis were screened and discussed in collaborative workshops involving individuals with lived experiences of psychosis, family members, and carers, representing various organizations...

Acute alcoholic hallucinosis is a psychotic disorder characterized by a predominance of auditory hallucinations with delusions and affective symptoms in the clinical picture. Classically, it develops as part of the alcohol withdrawal syndrome. The prevalence of acute alcoholic hallucinosis ranks second among alcohol-related psychoses after alcohol delirium. The study aimed to systematize the scientific data on the history of alcoholic hallucinosis, its pathogenesis, clinical presentation, and treatment approaches...

There are indications for a raise in embitterment during the COVID-19 pandemic. As embitterment is related to felt social exclusion, pessimism, and a proneness toward COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs, embitterment may be a key factor to consider in the current pandemic. However, perceived social support (PSS), which is associated with hope during the COVID-19 pandemic could serve as an important resilience factor for bitterness. We therefore investigated the effects of PSS on embitterment in aftermath of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic...

INTRODUCTION: Before the COVID-19 pandemic, proximity between mothers and their newborn infants was at the core of sanitary guidelines. With the aim of stopping the virus transmission from mothers to infants and possible physical dangers due to the infection, some hospitals discouraged or even prohibited skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding. METHOD: This study recruited 180 dyads in private and public hospitals in Italy with the aim of verifying whether mother-infant separation after delivery is associated with higher maternal psychopathological distress (assessed through the SCL-90-R) and poorer quality of dyadic interactions during breastfeeding (evaluated through the SVIA)...

INTRODUCTION: The number of young adults with eating disorders or subthreshold eating disorders has increased recently. Although disordered eating behaviors persist once they appear, there have been relatively few studies on factors that might cause disordered eating behaviors. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the eating attitudes of young adults change over time and the risk factors that increase disordered eating behaviors. METHODS: A total of 1,141 college students, 639 males and 502 females, participated...

BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are among the most prevalent forms of psychopathology. The hierarchical model of cognitive vulnerability proposes that higher order risk factors explain co-occurrence among internalizing disorders, whereas lower order risk factors explain discordance. METHODS: Participants (N = 646; mean age = 38.50, SD = 10.00; 49.2% female) were recruited from Amazon MTurk to complete self-report questionnaires related to psychopathology in the summer of 2020...