ns for increased substance use in psychosisClinical Psychology Review
Volume 27, Issue 4 , May 2007, Pages 494-510
Around half of all patients with schizophrenia are thought to abuse drugs or alcohol and there is good evidence to suggest that they have poorer outcomes than their non substance using counterparts.
This paper provides an update of the literature examining the reasons for substance use by people with psychosis, and includes a comprehensive review of the self report literature. The main theories as to why people with psychosis use substances are presented.
The self report literature provides support for an ‘alleviation of dysphoria’ model of substance use but there is little empirical support for the self medication hypothesis, or for common factor models and bidirectional models of comorbidity.
It is likely that there are multiple risk factors involved in substance use in psychosis and more work to develop and test multiple risk factor models is required.
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