Cited by 531Schizophrenia research and treatmentMental Health and PsychiatryMental Health Research Topics

Psychosis as a transdiagnostic and extended phenotype in the general population

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van Os, Jim, Reininghaus, Uli·2016·World Psychiatry

Abstract

A large body of research indicates that weak expressions of positive psychotic symptoms (“psychotic experiences”) can be measured in the general population, and likely represent the behavioural manifestation of distributed multifactorial (genetic and non‐genetic) risk for psychosis. Psychotic experiences are a transdiagnostic phenomenon: the majority of individuals with these experiences have a diagnosis of non‐psychotic disorder, particularly common mental disorder, in which psychotic experiences predict greater illness severity and poorer treatment response. Some of the people with common mental disorder and psychotic experiences will present to mental health services meeting criteria for “clinical high risk”. Treatment of the transdiagnostic dimension of psychosis in individuals with common mental disorder who meet “clinical high risk” criteria thus may improve outcome (which cannot be interpreted as prevention of “schizophrenia”). Subthreshold psychotic experiences are transitory in about 80% of individuals, while around 20% go on to develop persistent psychotic experiences and 7% a psychotic disorder, with an annual transition rate of 0.5‐1%. Persistence is associated, on the one hand, with environmental exposures, particularly childhood trauma, and, on the other, with network‐type dynamic interactions between psychotic experiences themselves (e.g., interactions between hallucinatory experiences and delusional ideation) and between symptom dimensions (e.g., interactions between affective symptoms and psychotic experiences, or interactions between subthreshold negative symptoms and psychotic experiences). The study of psychotic experiences is helping to elucidate the mechanisms by which environmental and genetic influences shape the transdiagnostic expression of psychosis proneness, that is mostly transitory but may first become persistent over time and eventually give rise to transition to a psychotic disorder.

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  • Current models of autism are strikingly similar to the predictive coding account of psychosis.

    “For example, current models of autism are strikingly similar to the predictive coding account of psychosis (118–120)”

    From The Predictive Coding Account of Psychosis (2018) · cites this paper as [119]

    The Neurocognition, Aberrant Salience, Reasoning Biases and the Extended Psychosis Phenotype section discusses top-down processing and salience in psychosis, but does not compare psychosis models with autism models. Searches for predictive coding and autism-related models found no passage addressing the claimed similarity. Page numbers were unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.75)

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  • 'Psychotic experiences' are relatively frequent at the population level (prevalence about 8% in young adults aged 24) and can be measured through self-administered questionnaires.

    “For example, 'psychotic experiences' 159 are relatively frequent at the population level (prevalence about 8% in young adults aged 24 160 ) and can be measured through self-administered questionnaires (e.g., Prodromal Questionnaire, PQ) 161”

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Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. McGrath JJ, Saha S, Al-Hamzawi A et al. Psy- chotic experiences in the general population: a cross-national analysis based on 31,261 res- pondents from 18 countries. JAMA Psychiatry 2015;72:697-705.
  2. Reininghaus U, B€ ohnke J, Hosang G et al. Probing the boundaries of the Kraepelinian dichotomy: evidence for a transdiagnostic psy- chosis spectrum encompassing schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Br J Psychiatry (in press).
  3. Andrews G, Goldberg DP, Krueger RF et al. Exploring the feasibility of a meta-structure for DSM-V and ICD-11: could it improve utility and validity? Psychol Med 2009;39:1993-2000.
  4. van Winkel R. Family-based analysis of genetic variation underlying psychosis-inducing effects of cannabis: sibling analysis and proband fol- low-up. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2011;68:148-57.
  5. Reininghaus U, Kempton M, Craig T et al. Psy- chological mechanisms underlying the associa- tion between childhood adversity and psychosis: an experience sampling study. Schizophr Res 2014;153:S358.
  6. Moritz S, Woodward TS. Jumping to conclu- sions in delusional and non-delusional schizo- phrenic patients. Br J Clin Psychol 2005;44: 193-207.

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Authors
van Os, J., & Reininghaus, U.
Affiliations
  • Department of Psychiatry and Psychology Maastricht University Medical Centre P.O. Box 616 (DOT12) 6200 MD Maastricht The Netherlands
  • King's College London (GB)
Venue
World Psychiatry
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2016-06
Volume
15
Issue
2
Pages
118-124
ISSN
  • 1723-8617 (ISSN-L)
  • 2051-5545
OpenAlex
W2442768873
Cited by
531
References
98
Citations by year
2026: 40 · 2025: 47 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 52 · 2021: 71 · 2020: 69 · 2019: 47 · 2018: 58 · 2017: 42 · 2016: 13
FWCI
46.78
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • World Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • Lirias (submittedVersion)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
Organization for Autism Research (451‐13‐022)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Mental Health and Psychiatry
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Mental Health Research Topics
Keywords
psychotic experiences, extended phenotype, common mental disorders, clinical high risk, psychosis proneness, transition to psychosis, childhood trauma, hallucinations, delusional ideation, negative symptoms, psychosis prevention

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