P03-214 - Anxiety sensitivity depending on presence of positive symptoms in psychosis

Abstract

IntroductionAn important corpus of scientist evidence is linking psychotic activity and anxiety-related processes (Freeman and Garety, 2003).ObjectivesWe intended to assess differences in Anxiety Sensitivity dimensions between patients diagnosed by psychosis with and without positive symptoms.MethodsParticipants: 49 patients with DSM psychosis diagnosis (42 men and 7 women; mean age: 40), who attended a Mental Health Rehabilitation Service in 2008, of whom 24 patients had positive symptomatology.Design, materials and procedure: A Cross-sectional design (one measurement) for a co-relational method of comparison between groups.We used the Spanish validated Anxiety Sensitivity lndex-3 -ASI 3- (Sandîn et al, 2007), a 18-item Likert self-report that assesses fears of anxious symptoms. It presents a hierarchical structure (a general factor and three subscales -Physical, Cognitive and Social Concerns-). It's also used the first and third items (delusions and hallucinatory behaviour) of The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale -PANSS- (Kay, Opler and Lindenmayer, 1988) to detect positive symptoms.ResultsPatients with positive symptoms showed a higher sensitivity to cognitive (z = -3.22, p < 0.01) and social anxiety (z = -2.66, p < 0.01), as well as higher punctuations in ASI-total (z = -2.91, p < 0.01), than patients without positive symptoms.ConclusionsPatients with positive symptoms show significant fears of symptoms of different anxious domains (ASI-total) with regard to patients without this kind of symptomatology. Specially, they are worried about the possibility that concentration difficulties and restlessness lead to mental incapacitation (ASI-cognitive) and about social reactions before their own publicly observable anxiety manifestations (ASI-social).