How people negotiate for success as psychosis emerges

Abstract

This study focuses on how people try to successfully manage daily life despite emerging but undetected psychosis and explores how those who know them support their success. The findings we report here are part of a larger qualitative study. After a diagnosis of psychosis was made, participants were asked to reflect on the period before their first episode. We categorize and describe how participants actively negotiated for success in activities and social situations during the prepsychotic period. We also explain strategies used by significant others to support this success and how all study subjects portrayed emerging difficulties as normal. We give some examples of how early detection and recovery programmes may modify their current practices as they consider that individuals may have already discovered strategies to actively deal with functional and social decline that was occurring during the prepsychotic period.