The relation between emotional awareness and hallucinations and delusions in acute psychiatric inpatients

Consistent with the results of past research using college and community samples, we found that diminished emotional clarity is associated with elevated levels of hallucinations in both mood disorder/substance abuse and schizophrenia spectrum inpatients. We also found that greater attention to emotion was associated with more severe delusions, though only among the mood disorder/substance use group. The present research findings support the role of emotional awareness in hallucination formation and suggest that the factors that contribute to delusions in schizophrenia spectrum patients differ, in part, from the factors that contribute to delusion formation in other groups of individuals.