ABSTRACT
Folklore also refers to associations between life’s vicissitudes and ‘madness’. Systematic, empirical research since the 1960s has established the role of ‘expressed emotion’ and ‘life events’ in determining the risk of troublesome psychotic experiences. This is reviewed. A meta-analysis computes that risk to be more than three times what it would otherwise be, following a significant life event.
More persistent experience of life’s difficulties is less easy to quantify but where attempts have been made people subsequently acquiring a ‘diagnosis’ of Schizophrenia are found to have previously suffered a variety of difficulties such as poor education, unemployment or living alone. Digital technology is beginning to offer insights into associations between everyday experiences and reactions to them. How individuals respond to vicissitudes and how those around them interpret such responses could influence the readiness with which they are identified as being troubled by psychosis.
