Social isolation and social cognition in thought disorder
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Testing the role of social isolation and social cognition in thought disorder
IRAS ID
211422
Contact name
Paulo Alexandre Brito de Sousa
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpool
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 9 months, 31 days
Research summary
Over the course of the last decade, research in the field of psychosis and schizophrenia has shown that environmental adversities (e.g. neglect, relative deprivation, urban upbringing, etc.) are important factors in mental health problems. \nMore recently, researchers have started to look at relationships between specific adversities (e.g. physical abuse and neglect), specific psychological processes (e.g. insecure attachments), and individual symptoms (e.g. paranoia and suspicious thoughts). \nThe identification of these symptom-specific pathways is a promising avenue for the development of effective psychological treatments for psychosis. \nThe current study will test the relationship between social isolation, social cognition (i.e. ability to infer and understand the intentions, emotions, and mental states of other people), and communicational and thought disturbances aka formal thought disorder (i.e. speech that is jumbled up and difficult to follow) in service users diagnosed with psychosis-spectrum disorders.\nEligible for the study are service users aged 18-65 who have a diagnosis of psychotic-spectrum disorder (e.g. schizophrenia, etc.). \nThe study aims to recruit service users who are under the care of local community mental health services (e.g. early intervention in psychosis teams, etc.), inpatient services (e.g. rehabilitation services) and other specialist mental health sites. \nParticipation in the study involves taking part in one meeting that should take approximately 1-hour and that will be conducted in a place of convenience for the service user (e.g. NHS site or service user’s home). \nDuring this meeting, each participant will be interviewed on her or his unusual experiences (e.g. hearing voices, suspiciousness, etc.) and will be asked to fill out 1 short questionnaire on social support and 2 tasks. In one of the tasks, the individual is asked to guess human emotions from pictures of faces and in the other task the individual is asked to guess the intentions of characters in short stories.
REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/NW/0647
Date of REC Opinion
6 Oct 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion