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Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders

BACKGROUND: Although numerous studies have supported the role of childhood maltreatment in the etiology of psychosis, underlying mechanisms have not been well understood yet. The present study aimed to investigate the mediating role of particular forms of dissociation in the relationship between fiv...

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Autores principales: Khosravi, Mohsen, Bakhshani, Nour-Mohammad, Kamangar, Niloofar
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8142477/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34024281
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03290-3
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author Khosravi, Mohsen
Bakhshani, Nour-Mohammad
Kamangar, Niloofar
author_facet Khosravi, Mohsen
Bakhshani, Nour-Mohammad
Kamangar, Niloofar
author_sort Khosravi, Mohsen
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although numerous studies have supported the role of childhood maltreatment in the etiology of psychosis, underlying mechanisms have not been well understood yet. The present study aimed to investigate the mediating role of particular forms of dissociation in the relationship between five major types of childhood abuse and psychotic symptoms among patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. METHODS: In this cross-sectional correlation study, 70 first-episode psychotic patients and 70 chronic psychotic patients were selected by systematic random sampling (with the sampling interval of 3) from among inpatients and outpatients referring to Baharan Psychiatric hospital, Zahedan, Iran, and were matched based on age, gender, and education level. Moreover, 70 age-, gender-, and education level-matched community controls were recruited from hospital staff and their relatives and friends. All of the participants completed a research interview and questionnaires. Data on experiences of childhood maltreatment, psychosis, dissociation, and demographics were collected and analyzed by SPSS V25 software. RESULTS: The obtained results revealed that the mean scores of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse were higher in psychotic patients than community controls (without any significant difference between first-episode psychotic patients and chronic psychotic patients). Furthermore, the highest mean scores of dissociative experiences belonged to chronic psychotic patients. Multiple-mediation also indicated that absorption and dissociative amnesia played a mediating role in the relationship between sexual abuse and positive symptoms. Moreover, this study demonstrated the role of physical abuse in predicting psychotic symptoms even in the absence of sexual abuse. CONCLUSIONS: This study illustrated specific associations among childhood maltreatment, dissociative experiences, and psychotic symptoms in the clinical population. Thus, to provide appropriate interventions, patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders were asked about a wide range of possible adverse childhood experiences and dissociative experiences. Nevertheless, further studies using prospective or longitudinal designs need to be carried out to realize the differential contribution of various forms of childhood maltreatment and their potential interactions, more precisely.
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spelling pubmed-81424772021-05-25 Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders Khosravi, Mohsen Bakhshani, Nour-Mohammad Kamangar, Niloofar BMC Psychiatry Research BACKGROUND: Although numerous studies have supported the role of childhood maltreatment in the etiology of psychosis, underlying mechanisms have not been well understood yet. The present study aimed to investigate the mediating role of particular forms of dissociation in the relationship between five major types of childhood abuse and psychotic symptoms among patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. METHODS: In this cross-sectional correlation study, 70 first-episode psychotic patients and 70 chronic psychotic patients were selected by systematic random sampling (with the sampling interval of 3) from among inpatients and outpatients referring to Baharan Psychiatric hospital, Zahedan, Iran, and were matched based on age, gender, and education level. Moreover, 70 age-, gender-, and education level-matched community controls were recruited from hospital staff and their relatives and friends. All of the participants completed a research interview and questionnaires. Data on experiences of childhood maltreatment, psychosis, dissociation, and demographics were collected and analyzed by SPSS V25 software. RESULTS: The obtained results revealed that the mean scores of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse were higher in psychotic patients than community controls (without any significant difference between first-episode psychotic patients and chronic psychotic patients). Furthermore, the highest mean scores of dissociative experiences belonged to chronic psychotic patients. Multiple-mediation also indicated that absorption and dissociative amnesia played a mediating role in the relationship between sexual abuse and positive symptoms. Moreover, this study demonstrated the role of physical abuse in predicting psychotic symptoms even in the absence of sexual abuse. CONCLUSIONS: This study illustrated specific associations among childhood maltreatment, dissociative experiences, and psychotic symptoms in the clinical population. Thus, to provide appropriate interventions, patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders were asked about a wide range of possible adverse childhood experiences and dissociative experiences. Nevertheless, further studies using prospective or longitudinal designs need to be carried out to realize the differential contribution of various forms of childhood maltreatment and their potential interactions, more precisely. BioMed Central 2021-05-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8142477/ /pubmed/34024281 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03290-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Khosravi, Mohsen
Bakhshani, Nour-Mohammad
Kamangar, Niloofar
Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders
title Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders
title_full Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders
title_fullStr Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders
title_full_unstemmed Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders
title_short Dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders
title_sort dissociation as a causal pathway from sexual abuse to positive symptoms in the spectrum of psychotic disorders
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8142477/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34024281
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03290-3
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