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BACKGROUND: Environmental factors have been associated with psychosis but there is little qualitative research looking at how the ongoing interaction between individual and environment maintains psychotic symptoms. AIMS: The current study investigates how people with persecutory delusions interpret events in a virtual neutral social environment using qualitative methodology. METHOD: 20 participants with persecutory delusions and 20 controls entered a virtual underground train containing neutral characters. Under these circumstances, people with persecutory delusions reported similar levels of paranoia as non-clinical participants. The transcripts of a post-virtual reality interview of the first 10 participants in each group were analysed. RESULTS: Thematic analyses of interviews focusing on the decision making process associated with attributing intentions of computer-generated characters revealed 11 themes grouped in 3 main categories (evidence in favour of paranoid appraisals, evidence against paranoid appraisals, other behaviour). CONCLUSIONS: People with current persecutory delusions are able to use a range of similar strategies to healthy volunteers when making judgements about potential threat in a neutral environment that does not elicit anxiety, but they are less likely than controls to engage in active hypothesis-testing and instead favour experiencing "affect" as evidence of persecutory intention.

Original publication

DOI

10.1017/S1352465813000830

Type

Journal article

Journal

Behav Cogn Psychother

Publication Date

01/2015

Volume

43

Pages

89 - 107

Keywords

Paranoia, cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis, persecutory delusions, safety behaviours, virtual reality, Adult, Anxiety, Case-Control Studies, Female, Humans, Male, Paranoid Disorders, Qualitative Research, Schizophrenia, Paranoid, Social Environment, Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy