Psychotic Experiences and Mental Health in Diverse Populations

Psychotic experiences encompass a range of perceptual and belief disturbances, from fleeting subclinical phenomena to full‐blown psychotic disorders. These experiences occur across all populations but vary markedly in prevalence, severity and associated impairment according to cultural, socioeconomic and health contexts. In diverse settings, factors such as infectious disease burden, trauma exposure, social adversity and comorbid physical illness modulate the risk and impact of these experiences. Recent work emphasises a psychosis continuum, in which non‐distressing subclinical experiences may transition to impairing symptoms under the influence of additional risk factors such as sleep disruption, chronic pain or anxiety. At the same time, studies of brain functional networks reveal that individual differences in network topography relate to the severity of psychotic experiences and predict progression to clinical syndromes. Understanding these phenomena requires integration of epidemiological surveys, neuroimaging analyses and culturally sensitive screening approaches. Such integration not only clarifies mechanisms driving psychotic experiences in marginalised communities but also informs targeted early‐intervention and public‐mental‐health strategies across low-resource and high-resource environments.

Research from Nature Portfolio

No recent Nature Portfolio content available.

Psychotic Experiences and Mental Health in Diverse Populations publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in psychotic experiences and mental health in diverse populations across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Psychotic experiences: Perceptual or belief disturbances (e.g. hallucinations, delusions) that may occur outside formal psychotic disorders.

Psychosis continuum: The concept that psychotic phenomena range from mild, transient experiences to severe, clinically diagnosed disorders.

Subclinical experiences: Symptoms that do not reach clinical thresholds for diagnosis but may signal vulnerability.

Functional connectivity: The temporal correlation of neural activity across distinct brain regions, reflecting network communication.

References

1. Functioning, symptom expression and risk along the psychosis continuum. Psychological Medicine (2023).
2. Association between tuberculosis and psychotic experiences: Mediating factors and implications for patient care in low- and middle-income countries. Journal of Global Health (2024).
3. Exploring psychotic symptoms among substance-naïve individuals and recent abstainers without a psychosis diagnosis: A cross-country study across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Psychiatry Research (2024).
4. Size and Topography of the Brain’s Functional Networks with Psychotic Experiences, Schizophrenia, and Bipolar Disorder. Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science (2024).