The impact of psychoticism on perceived hassles, depression, hostility, and hopelessness in non-psychiatric African Americans

Psychotic symptoms are distributed along a continuum that extends from normality to diagnosable psychotic disorders and the presence of psychoticism among individuals in the general population may lead to morbidity and social impairment. This study examined a model in which psychoticism leads to several important psychological consequences. The analysis included 134 African Americans with no psychiatric history who were being seen in medical walk-in clinics for non-emergency medical problems. Psychoticism, perceived hassles, depression, hostility, and hopelessness were measured. The Linear Structural Relations Program (LISREL) was used to test the fit of the data to the proposed model, a trimmed hierarchical version, and two alternative models. The data supported a model in which psychoticism has substantial effects on several important characteristics: perceived daily hassles, depression, and hostility. Depression mediated the association between psychoticism and hopelessness. Goodness-of-fit indices for a final trimmed model that eliminated one path from the initial postulated model revealed good fit to the data, and the two alternative models were found not to fit the data. Like psychosis itself, psychoticism appears to cause meaningful dysfunction even among non-psychiatric individuals from the general population. Additional research is needed to further characterize the detrimental effects of psychoticism or self-reported psychotic symptoms in the general, non-psychiatric population.