Socio-demographic Characteristics, Clinical Variables, the Role of Stressor and Phenomenology in Patients with Acute and Transient Psychotic Disorders in One of the Tertiary Care Centre of North India: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Acute and transient psychotic disorders (ATPDs) have benign course and takes place in the existence of noticeable and exceptionally traumatic stressors (direct temporal association between stressors and occurrence of ATPD) which necessitate clinical investigations. Stressors are also known to affect phenomenology and its content. Aims and Objectives: This study aims to study the socio-demographic characteristics, clinical variables, the role of stressors and phenomenology in ATPDs patients. Methodology: It is a cross-sectional and observational study. This study was done on 150 patients diagnosed on the basis of International Classification of Disease-10 diagnosis criteria of ATPDs after getting an informed consent from them. Patients’ information was recorded on socio-demographic and clinical profile sheet. Thereafter, Presumptive Stressful Life Event Scale and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) scales were applied to assess the stressors and phenomenology, respectively. Results: Most of the patients were female and were between 15 and 35 years of age. Mean age of patients was 32.45 (standard deviation = 11.25) years. Majority of the patients were educated, married, and unemployed. A large amount of the patients belong to nuclear family and were resident of rural areas. Most of the patients presented within 2 weeks of the onset of the illness without any past or family psychiatric history. In 75% patients, stressors precede the onset of the illness. The average value of PANSS was higher in female. Sleep disturbances, delusions, hallucinations, poor rapport, lack of insight, and concrete thinking were the most commonly observed phenomenology in these patients. Conclusions: Maximum patients who developed the illness had psychological stressor/s in the past year (mainly before 2 weeks) of the onset of the illness. It helps to consider the person’s life events as a trigger for illness and make decisions regarding treatment accordingly.