Social isolation and psychosis: an investigation of social interactions and paranoia in daily life

AbstractSocial isolation has been suggested to foster paranoia. Here we investigate whether social company (i.e., being alone vs. not) and its nature (i.e., stranger/distant vs. familiar other) affects paranoia differently depending on psychosis risk. Social interactions and paranoid thinking in daily life were investigated in 29 patients with clinically stable non-affective psychotic disorders, 20 first-degree relatives, and 26 controls (n = 75), using the experience sampling method (ESM). ESM was completed up to ten times daily for 1 week. Patients experienced marginally greater paranoia than relatives [b = 0.47,p = 0.08, 95% CI (− 0.06, 1.0)] and significantly greater paranoia than controls [b = 0.55,p = 0.03, 95% CI (0.5, 1.0)], but controls and relatives did not differ [b = 0.07,p = 0.78, 95% CI (− 0.47, 0.61)]. Patients were more often alone [68.5% vs. 44.8% and 56.2%, respectively,p = 0.057] and experienced greater paranoia when alone than when in company [b = 0.11,p = 0.016, 95% CI (0.02, 0.19)]. In relatives this was reversed [b = − 0.17,p <  0.001, 95% CI (− 0.28, − 0.07)] and in controls non-significant [b = − 0.02,p = 0.67, 95% CI (− 0.09, 0.06)]. The time-lagged association between being in social company and subsequent paranoia was non-significant and paranoia did not predict the likelihood of being in social company over time (bothp’s = 0.68). All groups experienced greater p...
Source: European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research