Elsevier

Psychiatry Research

Volume 220, Issues 1–2, 15 December 2014, Pages 233-236
Psychiatry Research

The Janus face of schizotypy: Enhanced spiritual connection or existential despair?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2014.07.028Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Spirituality and schizotypy display two distinct patterns of relationship.

  • Hopelessness and guilt are negatively associated with schizotypy.

  • Cognitive-perceptual features of schizotypy are linked to spiritual connectedness.

Abstract

It has been asserted that schizotypy has a negative relationship with subjective well-being. By employing a multidimensional measure of spiritual well being with 400 British College students we report a more complex relationship. The Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief Version were used and analysis made use of Canonical Correlational Analysis. Results suggested that two distinct relationships emerged between schizotypy and spirituality. First, a positive association between cognitive/perceptual features of schizotypy and spiritual connectedness emerged. Second a more global negative relationship between feelings of spiritual isolation and despair was found for all aspects of schizotypy. These findings challenge the previous literature based on one-dimensional subjective well being measures which have found only a negative relationship. However, the positive association between connectedness and cognitive-perceptual aspects of schizotypy raises import questions about the possible benefit of certain types of schizotypal experience.

Introduction

Despite the widespread interest in the relationship between religion and mental health, the relationship between spirituality and vulnerability to psychosis has been mostly confined the religious content of delusions and hallucinations (Greenberg et al., 1992, White et al., 1995, Holm and Järvinen, 1996, Seybold and Hill, 2001, Claridge, 2010, Bennett et al., 2013). However, it is increasingly understood that psychotic experiences occur frequently in the general population (Van Os and Kapur, 2009) and differing degrees of schizotypal traits appear to be continuously distributed throughout the population. What then might be the ‘normal’ function of these less severe schizotypal traits?

The Cognitive/Perceptual deficits of schizotypy have been linked to negative aspects of mental functioning such as borderline, depersonalization and avoidant personality features (Raine and Benishay, 1995, Axelrod et al., 2001). However, it remains unclear whether other schizotypal traits are associated with enhanced functioning of any kind given that these traits are widely distributed in the population (Day and Peters, 1999, McCreery and Claridge, 2002) A possible link between ‘normal’ schizotypy and positive aspects of religiosity/spirituality has attracted some commentary but little empirical examination.

The small number of studies which have examined this association show conflicting findings (Diduca and Joseph, 1997, Jackson, 1997, Bennett et al., 2013). Abbott and Byrne (2012a) report a negative association between schizotypal personality traits and well being in all areas except spiritual well-being, where they found no relationship (see also Abbott et al., 2012b for similar results). Notably, findings such as this are derived from a mono-dimensional measurement of religiosity/ spirituality. In contrast, our previous work identified a significant positive correlation between Magical Thinking (closely linked to schizotypy) and a subscale of our multidimensional scale of religiosity/spirituality called Connectedness (a general feeling of connection or significance at a universal level). Connectedness was also found to be associated with a higher subjective well-being (Unterrainer et al., 2010) suggesting that there may be positive aspects of schizotypy not previously identified in this literature.

This study examines the relationship in greater depth by using a multidimensional approach to both schizotypy and religiosity/spirituality in order to examine the complexity of this relationship apparent in previous findings. We aim to examine whether both positive and negative associations between sub-components of both schizotypy and religiosity/spirituality can be teased apart using a more sophisticated measurement approach for both constructs, data analysis able to examine multivariate predictors of multiple dependent variables, and in a larger sample than previous studies. Finally as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) continues to classify schizotypy as both a personality disorder, and as part of the schizophrenia spectrum of disorders, we aim to examine whether a different pattern of associations exists in those who score in the highest decile of schizotypal traits.

Section snippets

Participants

Students were registered at London Heythrop College or were registered at other London Universities and were invited to participate in an online survey. The students were invited via an e-mail sent out by the student union to take part in the study and were also provided a link to the survey platform. The inclusion criterion was that the participants spoke English and were excluded if they reported a history of severe psychiatric disorder or current psychiatric/psychological treatment.

The Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief Version (SPQ-B)

It was

Results

The sample of 400 British college students (n=318 females) were between the ages of 18 and 46 years (M=25.32, S.D.=6.93). The sample consisted of 327 (81.8%) who identified as Christians, 29 (7.2%) were affiliated to another non-Christian religious community, 12 (3%) seceded from a recognized church and 32 (8%) were never affiliated with a religious community. This is higher than the British population as a whole where about 60% identify as Christians (Office for National Statistics, 2011).

Discussion

There is an ongoing debate about schizotypal elements in spiritual experiences (Claridge, 2010). In line with our hypotheses and recent research (Abbott and Byrne, 2012a, Abbott et al., 2012b), our findings show that overall there is a small negative correlation between schizotypy and spirituality. However, as we also predicted, a more fine-grained analysis using Canonical Correlational Analysis showed that two distinct functions emerged.

The first function, which we labeled as “Hopeless Guilty

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