Social adversities and psychotic symptoms: A test of predictions derived from the social defeat hypothesis

2016 ◽  
Vol 245 ◽  
pp. 466-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edo S. Jaya ◽  
Tania M. Lincoln
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Vinkers ◽  
Micha Van de Vorst ◽  
Hans W. Hoek ◽  
Jim Van Os

Background: The negative experience of being excluded from the majority group (social defeat) may be associated with psychosis in immigrants. The social defeat hypothesis is supported by the high frequency of perceived discrimination and acculturation problems in psychotic immigrants. In addition, social defeat may lead to crime through social problems such as unemployment, school dropout, a broken family structure, or psychotic symptoms.Methods: We assessed the association between social defeat and acculturation on the one hand and broadly defined psychotic symptoms and crime on the other in Caribbean immigrants to Rotterdam who are aged 18–24 years. The municipality of Rotterdam provided data about Caribbean immigrants to Rotterdam. Acculturation, social defeat (perceived discrimination, sense of control, and evaluation of self and others), psychotic symptoms, and crime were assessed using online questionnaires.Results: Social defeat was associated with psychotic symptoms in women (β = 0.614, p < 0.001). This relation applied particularly to the negative self-perception domain of social defeat. Acculturation was associated with neither social defeat nor psychotic symptoms or crime and did not mediate the association between social defeat and psychosis.Conclusion: The social defeat hypothesis of psychosis may be gender-specific valid but does not extend to crime.


This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita E. Dundu

Abstract: Besides psychotic symptoms, schizophrenic patients also show alterations in cognitive function, verbal information, and emotional response, due to disturbances of interpersonal interaction. The impact of all of these is the disturbance in social function. Treatment of schizophrenic patients with psychopharmacotherapy can only suppress the symptoms, but it can not overcome the functional deficit. For this reason, combination of psychopharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and social rehabilitationin is introduced to obtain a better result in schizophrenic management. Social skill training is a part of the social rehabilitation that is very useful in improving the patients’ quality of life in preparing them to be functional in their society. Key words: schizophrenia, social rehabilitation, social skill training.  Abstrak: Pada penyandang skizofrenia selain gejala-gejala psikotik juga terdapat perubahan dalam fungsi kognisi, informasi verbal dan respon emosi akibat terganggunya interaksi interpersonal, yang berdampak gangguan dalam fungsi sosial. Pengobatan skizofrenia dengan menggunakan psikofarmaka hanya dapat menekan gejala-gejala penyakit ini tetapi tidak dapat mengatasi defisit fungsional. Untuk hal ini, pada pengobatan skizofrenia terkini digunakan kombinasi psikofarmaka, psikoterapi dan rehabilitasi sosial. Social skill training merupakan salah satu bagian dari rehabilitasi sosial yang bermanfaat meningkatkan kwalitas hidup dalam mempersiapkan penyandang skizofrenia  untuk dapat berfungsi kembali dalam masyarakat. Kata kunci: skizofrenia, rehabilitasi sosial, social skill training.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danai Riga ◽  
Leanne JM Schmitz ◽  
Yvar van Mourik ◽  
Witte JG Hoogendijk ◽  
Taco J De Vries ◽  
...  

AbstractMajor depression and alcohol-related disorders frequently co-occur. Depression severity weighs on the magnitude and persistence of comorbid alcohol use disorder (AUD), with severe implications for disease prognosis. Here, we investigated whether depression vulnerability drives propensity to AUD at the preclinical level. We used the social defeat-induced persistent stress (SDPS) model of chronic depression in combination with operant alcohol self-administration (SA). Male Wistar rats were subjected to social defeat (5 episodes) and prolonged social isolation (~12 weeks) and subsequently classified as SDPS-prone or SDPS-resilient based on their affective and cognitive performance. Using an operant alcohol SA paradigm, acquisition, motivation, extinction and cue-induced reinstatement of alcohol-seeking were examined in the two subpopulations. SDPS-prone animals showed increased alcohol SA, excessive motivation to acquire alcohol, persistent alcohol-seeking despite alcohol unavailability, extinction resistance and increased cue-induced relapse; the latter could be blocked by the α2 adrenoreceptor agonist guanfacine. In SDPS-resilient rats, prior exposure to social defeat increased alcohol SA without affecting any other measures of alcohol-seeking and -taking. Our data revealed that depression proneness confers vulnerability to alcohol, emulating patterns of alcohol dependence seen in human addicts, and that depression resilience to a large extent protects from the development of AUD-like phenotypes. Furthermore, our data suggest that stress exposure alone, independently of depressive symptoms, alters alcohol intake in the long-term.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. pyw080 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bangkun Yang ◽  
Qian Ren ◽  
Min Ma ◽  
Qian-Xue Chen ◽  
Kenji Hashimoto

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (7) ◽  
pp. 1365-1376 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Koren ◽  
N. Reznik ◽  
M. Adres ◽  
R. Scheyer ◽  
A. Apter ◽  
...  

BackgroundThe goal of this study was to explore the notion that anomalies of self-experience (ASE) are a core, ‘not-yet-psychotic’ clinical phenotype of emerging schizophrenia and its spectrum.MethodTo accomplish this goal, we examined the relationship between ASE and commonly accepted risk markers in a sample of 87 help-seeking, non-psychotic adolescents (aged 14–18 years). ASE were assessed with the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE), subclinical psychotic symptoms were assessed with the Prodromal Questionnaire and the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes, deterioration in psychosocial functioning was assessed with the Social and Role Functioning Scales, and level of distress with the Mood and Anxiety Symptoms Questionnaire.ResultsAbout 82 participants completed the entire EASE interview. The number of participants who reported ASE at a clinically meaningful level (n = 18, 22%) was smaller than that who met diagnostic criteria for a prodromal syndrome (n = 28, 34%). The degree of overlap between the two conditions was moderate but statistically significant (χ2(1) = 7.01, p = 0.008). An exploratory factor analysis revealed that ASE load on a different factor than prodromal symptoms and deterioration in functioning, but that there is a moderate correlation between the three factors.ConclusionsThese results suggest that ASE are prevalent among non-psychotic help-seeking adolescents, yet at a considerably lower rate than prodromal symptoms. In addition, they suggest that ASE and prodromal symptoms constitute distinct but moderately related dimensions of potential risk. Taken together, they provide preliminary support for the clinical usefulness of supplementing and refining the methods of early detection of risk with assessment of ASE.


2016 ◽  
Vol 233 (19-20) ◽  
pp. 3647-3657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bangkun Yang ◽  
Ji-chun Zhang ◽  
Mei Han ◽  
Wei Yao ◽  
Chun Yang ◽  
...  

2005 ◽  
Vol 187 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Selten ◽  
Elizabeth Cantor-Graae

SummaryThe hypothesis that chronic and long-term experience of ‘social defeat’ may increase the risk for schizophrenia is proposed. This increased risk may result from sensitisation of the mesolimbic dopamine system and/or increased baseline activity of this system. Data supporting the social defeat hypothesis are presented.


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