Association Between First Psychotic Episode In Young Adults And Social Deprivation

Abstract

Psychosis is a mental state in which the individual experiences a distortion or loss of contact with reality, without clouding of consciousness. It is characterized by the presence of delusions, hallucinations and/or thought disorders. When these symptoms appear for the first time in a person we speak of the first psychotic episode (FEP). Different authors have observed that there is a higher incidence of stressful life events in a 3-week interval before FEP. In this line, the preventive and compulsory social isolation experienced during the SARS-CoV 2 pandemic can be considered a stressful life event and therefore could have triggered cases of FEP. In view of this situation, there is interest in identifying studies that relate FEP in young adults and social deprivation in particular. We searched PUBMED for articles with the terms “first psychotic episode” AND “social deprivation” AND “young adults”. This search yielded 24 preliminary results. Thus, 3 articles met the inclusion criteria. Three articles were analyzed, one of which took place in Montreal, Canada and found 456 patients with a diagnosis of FEP, 25% of whom lived in areas corresponding to the worst stratum of material deprivation, and 40% resided in areas corresponding to the worst stratum of social deprivation. The other two studies were carried out in rural England (East Anglia) and showed that factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, unemployment status, social deprivation, population density and social isolation were related to the incidence of PEP. More studies investigating the relationship between social deprivation and PEP in young adults are needed, as most of the studies seeking to investigate this association were conducted in much wider age range encompassing not only young adults but also adolescents and older adults. In addition, there is a need to ascertain the causality between the relationships established by the existing articles.