Journal of Humanistic Psychology
August 18, 2022
Mark Molumby, Keith Gaynor, Suzanne Guérin et al.
3 citations
Psilocybin may become a legal medicinal drug due to growing evidence of its efficacy for mental health disorders. This work tested the validity of a model of extra-pharmacological factors—set, setting, and intention—in predicting attitudes toward psilocybin. Two hundred nineteen participants completed online measures of personality and the Attitudes Toward Psilocybin scale. A model including a positive set, openness to experience, and lower extraversion significantly predicted attitudes. The findings support the model and suggest that a psychological suitability test could help determine whether psilocybin prescription is appropriate.
November 23, 2021
Mark Molumby, Keith Gaynor, Suzanne Guérin
2 citations
preprint
A model of extra-pharmacological factors—set, setting, and intention—predicts attitudes toward psilocybin, supporting the idea that a psychological suitability test could help determine whether psilocybin is an appropriate treatment. In 219 adults, openness to experience, extraversion, and set significantly predicted scores on the Attitudes Towards Psilocybin scale, which showed good reliability and validity. The sample was evenly split between those with and without prior psychedelic use. The findings suggest that non-drug factors matter for medicinal psilocybin decisions.
PsyArXiv
March 11, 2026
Ciara Nealon, Brian Patrick Keane, Donagh Seaver O'Leary et al.
preprint
Disrupted embodiment—the integration of sensory, motor, and cognitive processes underlying self-experience and bodily awareness—is a consistent feature across psychotic disorders and psychotic-like experiences. A scoping review of 91 studies, mostly cross-sectional and using single-modality assessments, found large effect sizes in 33 studies indicating disrupted embodiment across six domains: phenomenological, interoceptive, exteroceptive, proprioceptive, multisensory integration, and social and embodied cognition. The authors propose an integrative framework to unify these fragmented findings and guide future research using multimodal tools.
International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP
January 1, 2026
Donagh Seaver O'Leary, Pat Mulvaney, Laura Moore et al.
A virtual reality simulation of auditory hallucinations (VR-sAH) based on real experiences of people with psychosis was tested in 68 non-clinical participants. The simulation produced a believable and emotionally salient analogue of hallucinatory experiences. Significant reductions in heart rate variability confirmed participants' embodied immersion. Semi-structured interviews with 29 participants and quantitative measures showed the VR-sAH was an acceptable research tool, though with important caveats for including people with psychosis and ensuring researcher integrity. While not replicating full clinical hallucinations, VR-sAH offers an ethically manageable and experimentally controllable analogue for studying perceptual and cognitive processes relevant to psychosis, especially in early-stage non-clinical research.
Psychosis
January 30, 2025
Keith Gaynor, C. Foy, K. Reddy et al.
Trauma and disrupted attachment contribute to psychotic-like experiences through dissociation. A cross-sectional online survey of 149 people who report unusual sensory experiences found that trauma exposure, anxious attachment, and dissociation predicted all six types of unusual sensory experiences tested. Structural equation modeling showed a dual path to auditory hallucinations: either through disrupted attachment or trauma exposure, both mediated by dissociation. Social comparison and compartmentalization were not strong components of the model. The findings suggest that addressing adverse events, dissociation, and attachment in clinical work could improve understanding and treatment of psychosis, and that fostering attachment security in mental health services may improve engagement.