Attenuated psychosis in primary caregiver of psychiatric patients: a cross-sectional study

Attenuated or transient Psychosis is experienced by a substantial proportion of the general population. Research also predicted that subjects perceiving psychotic-like experience are at high risk to develop psychotic spectrum disorder in the future. Aim The present study planned to estimate the psychotic-like experience or Attenuated psychosis in caregivers of psychotic patients attending the psychiatry department at JN Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Aligarh. In this study, we will also assess the relationship between disturbed sleep, perceived stress, and transient psychosis. Materials and methods: Purposive sampling was used to recruit all the subjects with informed written consent. All data were collected by applying a self-administered semi-structured proforma. Peters Delusions Inventory (PDI), Launay Slade Hallucination Scale-Revised (LSHS-R), Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ), and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) on the subjects. Statistical analyses was done by using SPSS software 20 version. Result:  Result shows the majority of caregivers belong to the age group 18-30 years (56.45%). Maximum patients have the persecutory type of psychotic-like experience and among hallucinatory experience maximum subjects responded that “no matter how hard I try to concentrate; unrelated thoughts always creep into my mind”. Delusion experiences were strongly positively correlated with hallucinatory experiences, perceived stress. Hallucinatory experiences were positively correlated with perceived stress poor sleep quality. Conclusion: It can be concluded that stress increases subclinical delusional and hallucinatory experiences. Though disturbed sleep is positively correlated with hallucination but not a delusion.