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Schizophrenia / Psychotic Disorders

Exploring Virtual Greenspace on Anxiety Reduction in Individuals with Psychotic-Like Experiences and Trauma History

(PS13-C73) Exploring Virtual Greenspace on Anxiety Reduction in Individuals with Psychotic-like Experiences and Trauma History

Sunday, November 19, 2023
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PST
Location: Regency Ballroom, Level 7
Individuals with a history of trauma have been found to be three times more likely to develop psychotic-like experiences (PLE) than those without such a history. Specific relationships have been found between experiences of victimization (e.g. bullying) and later PLE. While not everyone who experiences trauma goes on to develop psychosis, individuals with a trauma history are still more prone to experience other difficulties including heightened anxiety, poorer social functioning, and difficulties with cognition. Compelling cognitive, genetic, and emotional processing models have attempted to explain why some individuals with a history of trauma go on to develop more severe psychopathology, with mechanisms including poor affective regulation and poor attentional control of distressing or unusual thoughts. Interestingly, few models have included the role of the living environment as a core component. While past literature has largely focused on risk-factors of urban environments (e.g. city-dwellers are more prone to symptoms of anxiety and are more likely to have transient symptoms of psychosis), very little work has looked at aspects of the environment that may be protective against mental health concerns. Recent research has explored the benefits of non-urban settings on mental health, with greenspaces (e.g. parks, forests, fields, etc.) a particular area of interest. Specifically, this research has shown that more exposure to greenspace is associated with fewer psychopathology symptoms and lower incidence of psychological disorders. While greenspace may be associated with positive mental health, not everyone has equal access to greenspace. Thus, this study explores the impact of virtual exposure to greenspace on reducing anxiety in individuals with co-occurring psychotic-like experiences, with or without a history of trauma. It was predicted that, after an anxiety induction, individuals would display significantly lower state-anxiety and better performance on tasks of attentional control and working memory following exposure to a virtual “walk” through a green area than those in the control condition ("walk" around a virtual indoor track).
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