Do feelings contribute to people's experience of paranoid thoughts?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An exploration of the role of feelings in the development of paranoid experiences within a population who are understood to have experienced a first episode of psychosis
IRAS ID
239366
Contact name
Kiera James
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leicester
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 11 days
Research summary
The current study will involve interviewing people who are experiencing paranoid beliefs about their past and present experiences. The aim is to explore if feelings are involved in the development of paranoid thoughts/beliefs.
Background information indicates that there is a need to investigate contributory factors to psychosis to enhance the support available to people that experience distress and to minimise the impact on individual’s lives. There are many theories relating to what may contribute to development of psychosis, from biological, psychological and social perspectives, which inform the treatment options available to people. Although emotions and feelings are touched upon within different explanations there is little research into the role of feelings in the development of psychosis. Cromby (2015) suggests that psychosis develops when ‘feeling traps’ occur. A feeling trap is when feelings that occur as an understandable reaction to events become intensified and persistent over time and lead to experiences that are considered psychosis. Further exploration of this could have potential implications in relation to the way that psychosis is conceptualised within services and the treatment offered to people. For instance, therapeutic practice is increasingly considering feelings with approaches such as Compassion Focused Therapy; which was developed to build capacities to experience compassion in high shame and self-critical individuals. This study will focus on people who are experiencing paranoid thoughts.
Participants will be recruited from early intervention in psychosis services. They will be asked to share their stories about their lives before they started to experience paranoid thoughts and to think about how things they have been through impacted on how they were feeling at the time.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EM/0064
Date of REC Opinion
9 Mar 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion