Schizotypy and mental health in women and men from the general population

Abstract

Schizotypy is a construct that has been connected both to psychosis disorders and to variation in general behavior. There is a dispute whether schizotypy should be viewed as something connected to mental ill-health, or can be viewed as personality traits not automatically connected to mental ill-health. Therefore, the present study investigated the relations between schizotypy factors and mental health in a randomized sample from the general population (n = 764, 58% women). A simultaneous multiple regression analysis of the total sample showed that negative and disorganized schizotypy predicted mental health, whereas positive schizotypy and impulsive nonconformity did not. Higher levels of negative and disorganized schizotypy were associated with worse mental health. Separate regression analyses for women and men showed that the pattern for women was the same as for the total sample, whereas only disorganized schizotypy predicted mental health (negative relation) for men. The main gender difference was that the regression model for women explained a larger amount of variance than that for men. The fact that positive schizotypy did not predict worse mental health supports the notion of “healthy” schizotypy.