Associations between childhood adversity, cognitive schemas and attenuated psychotic symptoms

Abstract

Aim: Childhood Adversity (CA) is strongly linked to psychotic-like symptoms across the clinical spectrum, though the mechanisms underlying these associations remain poorly understood. Negative cognitive schemas are associated with both CA exposure and psychotic symptoms, highlighting the possibility that cognitive schemas may be a key risk pathway. The purpose of this study was to determine whether negative cognitive schemas mediate the association between CA and specific attenuated psychotic symptoms in a large sample of clinical-high risk youth. Given the variability in experiences that encompass CA (eg, abuse, neglect and poverty) and attenuated psychotic symptoms (eg, suspiciousness and perceptual abnormalities), we also tested whether these associations differ by CA type (threat vs deprivation) and attenuated positive psychotic symptom domain. Methods: Data were collected from 531 clinical-high risk youth between 12 and 35 years of age (mean = 18.80, SD = 4.21) who completed a clinical assessment that included the Structured Interview of Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS), Childhood Trauma and Abuse scale and questionnaires on cognitive schemas and depressive symptoms.Results: No direct effects of threat or deprivation exposure on any of the psychotic symptom domains were found. However, there was a unique indirect effect of threat, but not deprivation, on delusional thinking and suspiciousness through negative cognitive schemas about others. Conclusion:Cognitive vulnerability in the form of negative schemas about others may be one mechanism linking childhood threat experiences and attenuated psychotic symptoms. The results underscore the importance of targeting negative schemas in interventions to mitigate psychosis risk.

COVID‐19‐related stress exacerbates the effect of child maltreatment on negative affect via increased identity confusion during adolescence

“…In contrast to developmental psychopathology perspective (Russotti et al, 2021;Turiano et al, 2017;Xiang et al, 2021), our results showed that neither dimension of child maltreatment (threat, nor deprivation), were directly associated with negative affect. On the other hand, this null finding aligns with other research indicating that potential underlying mechanisms may link childhood threat and deprivation to later downstream negative affect (Busso et al, 2017;Duprey et al, 2022;LoPilato et al, 2021;McLaughlin et al, 2021).…”

Formalising social representation to explain psychiatric symptoms

“…Theories on the effect of early trauma on later risk of developing psychopathology have variously suggested that it disrupts certainty about the sense of self [117] leads to overcertainty about threat from others [118] or leads to maladaptive schemas that can represent a range of pathological beliefs about the self and others [30,98].…”

Childhood Maltreatment and Its Association with Cognitive Ability in Young People Suspected to Be at Clinical High Risk of Psychosis

“…The relationship of childhood maltreatment, cognitive ability, and psychotic symptoms is complex and multifaceted, and different mechanisms are involved in mediating the pathways [80][81][82]. To explain the underlying association of this relationship, several biological systems have been proposed [83][84][85][86].…”