Locus of Control and Mental Health in Adolescence and Adulthood

Abstract

Eighty-nine subjects of the original sample of the National Institute of Mental Health joint study by the United States and Israel, known as the Israeli High-Risk Study, were given a clinical interview and a questionnaire measuring locus of control (LOC) during the second phase of the study, when the subjects were adolescents. During phases 3 and 4, approximately 8 and 15 years later, the subjects were psychiatrically assessed and 56 of them repeated the LOC questionnaire. The two measures of LOC were correlated, as were general assessments of mental health (MH). Adolescent LOC was related to lifetime MH, although LOC and MH were not related to each other concurrently in either adolescence or adulthood. The best predictive model for lifetime MH outcomes was a combination of adolescent MH and LOC variables; background variables, including parental schizophrenia, were superfluous. The data suggest that whereas adolescent MH is the best predictor of general MH, adolescent LOC is the better predictor of schizophrenia and major affective disorders.

Self esteem and self agency in first episode psychosis: Ethnic variation and relationship with clinical presentation

“…Our patients with first episode psychosis also had a more external LoC than controls without psychosis, similarly to that reported in individuals at-risk of psychosis and in patients with chronic schizophrenia (Frenkel et al, 1995;Schmidt et al, 2014). However, we found no association between LoC and delusions and hallucinations.…”

Factorial Structure of the Hallucinatory Experience

“…Consistent with this interpretation, a recent study has found that cognitive processes associated with reality discrimination rather than the level of perceptual experiences themselves may play an important etiological role in the origin of hallucinations (Aleman et al, 2000). As a consequence of attributing many types of internally generated stimuli to external sources, it may be the case that hallucinators are more prone to experience life impairment and clinical dysfunction from their symptoms (Bentall, 1990;Frenkel, 1995;Johns and van Os, 2001). This interpretation is also consistent with previous studies finding that active hallucinators (e.g., Bentall et al, 1991;Keefe et al, 2002) and individuals at high risk for hallucinations (e.g., Aleman et al, 2000;Levine et al, 2004;Young et al, 1986) are more apt to make external attributions to internally generated stimuli, to have biased beliefs about unusual perceptual experiences (e.g., Morrison et al, 1995), and to misidentify subvocalized speech as externally generated (Burns et al, 1983).…”

Implications for the Neural Basis of Social Cognition for the Study of Schizophrenia

“…Despite the fact that high-risk and follow-back studies indicate that impairments in social functioning predate the onset of schizophrenia (3,(132)(133)(134)(135)(136)(137)(138)(139)(140), there has been little work on the role of social cognition in the development of psychosis. The most notable exception is the finding that an external locus of control in adolescence, which is similar to attributional style, was predictive of poor mental health in adulthood in an Israeli high-risk study (141). Additionally, Cornblatt and colleagues (142) have long hypothesized that deficits in social information processing might mediate the relationship between nascent cognitive deficits in childhood and subsequent behavioral difficulties in adolescence and adulthood in persons with schizophrenia.…”