Childhood Stressors in Patients with First Episodes of Psychosis

Abstract

All people face inevitable painful events during their life that can threaten their personality structure. These painful events can be adverse childhood experiences such as childhood abuse or neglect or the child growing up in a disturbed family environment, which have harmful consequences in the later stages of life. Considering the negative consequences that exposure to childhood traumatic events has on the personality of the affected people and considering that a comprehensive study that examines the prevalence of all childhood stressors in people with psychosis was not found, therefore, the present study aimed to investigate childhood stress in patients with the first episode of psychosis in 2023 in Tabriz. Methods: The present study was a cross-sectional descriptive research. In order to do that, the information related to the childhood stress of the clients in 2021 to 2022 in the ARAS cohort study with the first episode of psychosis was extracted via a total population sampling from the patient files. Finally, the information of 50 patients of the ARAS cohort study was extracted and included in the study. In this study, a questionnaire based on the clinical experience of therapists was used. After completing the questionnaires, the information of the questionnaires was entered into SPSS software version 26 and the results were reported using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage). Results: In total, 50 people participated in this study, 60% of them were men and the rest were women, and mean (SD) of their age was 33 (12.38) years. About 36% of the study participants had paranoid personality disorder, 24% had delusional disorder, and 14% had psychotic disorder caused by drug/amphetamine/opium use. Also, 8% of the people participating in the study had schizophrenia. Based on the results, stressors such as not meeting psychological needs, not meeting emotional needs, disorder in the environment, loss of health, loss of position or privilege, physical-psychological and family-social labels, being punished by the teacher and Academic issues have influenced the childhood tensions of more than half of the participants. While the rest of the stressors, such as not meeting material needs, separation, death of relatives, natural disasters, war scenes on TV, etc., have affected the childhood tensions of less than half of the participants.