Dr Tess Maguire

2020

Background

Current psychological treatments for psychosis mainly focus on cognitive and behavioural management of delusions and hallucinations, and they are generally helpful. Emotions are not usually addressed in these treatments, even though we know people with psychosis have difficulty identifying, accepting and changing their mood.

Aims

This study looked at how well emotion regulation skills practice worked to change mood and paranoia in seven people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.

Method

The study utilised a single case ABA design, which involves observing a behaviour during a baseline phase (A) when no intervention has been used, then seeing what happens after a person has tried an intervention (B), and then what happens when the intervention is stopped again (A). 

The team measured emotion regulation skills, affect and paranoia over baseline, intervention and withdrawal of intervention phases. We predicted that eight sessions of skills rehearsal would help to improved emotion regulation, reduced negative mood, increased positive mood, and reduced paranoia.

Results

Most participants were able to learn to regulate their emotions, and reported reduced negative mood and paranoia. There was no clear change for positive mood.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that emotion can be addressed in therapy for psychosis, and is associated with reduced paranoia. Emotion regulation may be a key treatment target in cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis.

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More from Tess

I am a qualified Clinical Psychologist and I work as Clinical Director of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology Programme and as one of the Module Lead on a postgraduate CBT training course for people experiencing complex mental health difficulties. I am interested in gaining a greater understanding of the experiences of people who have complex and ongoing mental health difficulties, especially those with unshared (psychosis type) experiences and treatments that can help people to cope with these experiences and live meaningful lives. I research this through the lens of attachment, cognitive behavioural and recovery approaches. In addition, I am particularly interested in the role of emotion and emotional responses within complex mental health. More recently, I have been collaborating with others to understand help seeking and barriers to access to services for minoritized groups experiencing complex mental health difficulties.