Dissociation in Recovery from Psychosis
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Dissociation in Recovery from Psychosis
IRAS ID
280021
Contact name
Claudia Zenaida/CZ Calciu
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The relationship between dissociation and psychosis has always interested clinicians and researchers. The existent literature suggest that dissociation can be functional in some circumstances, despite being a cause of concern for many.
Dissociative mechanisms are employed by individuals to protect themselves against stress.
Our clinical observations whilst working with patients recovering from an episode of psychosis showed that people can live with residual symptoms and have a meaningful life, which suggests that they have mental systems which help them manage different ‘compartments’ of their mental life separately. This has sometimes been referred to as ‘sealing over’ of psychotic symptoms (Tait et al, 2018).
The question we would like to answer is: Do people with psychosis, who dissociate, differ in their recoveries from those who do not dissociate? The aim of our study is to explore the association between dissociative experiences and recovery from psychosis and analyse whether dissociative experiences (compartmentalisation, detachment and absorption) can predict recovery.
The study will be developed in the Gloucester Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust and the patients included will need to have been diagnosed with a psychotic illness. There are 5 questionnaires and a demographic data form which will be applied once to each participant. It will take approximately one hour to fill in the questionnaires and the study will run for a year.
REC name
East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/EM/0218
Date of REC Opinion
27 Oct 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion