Details of the contents of paranoid thoughts in help-seeking adolescents with psychotic-like experiences and continuity with bullying and victimization: A pilot study

Background: Psychosis recognizes an interaction between biological and social environmental factors. Adversities are now recognized to be consistently associated with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). The purpose of this study was to describe the contents of paranoid symptoms and to focus on their relationship with bullying and victimization in help-seeking adolescents. Methods: Help-seeking adolescents who screened positive for PLEs participated in the study. They performed a battery self-report questionnaire for data collection (paranoia: the Specific Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire (SPEQ); the content of paranoid thoughts: the Details of Threat (DoT); bullying victimization: the Multidimensional Peer Victimization Scale (MPVS); depression: the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI); and anxiety: the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale (MASC)). Results: The participants were 50 adolescents (52% female; mean age: 170 months). The contents of their paranoid symptoms were related to victimization and, in particular, the certainty of threats was correlated with physical (0.394, p < 0.01) and verbal bullying (0.394, p < 0.01), respectively. The powerfulness of the threats correlated with verbal victimization (0.295, p < 0.05). The imminence of the threats was linked to verbal (0.399, p < 0.01) victimization. Hours under threat correlated with verbal (0.415, p < 0.01) victimization. The sureness of the threat had a moderate correlation with physical (0.359, p < 0.05) and verbal (0.443, p < 0.01) victimization, respectively. The awfulness of the threat was linked to social manipulation (0.325, p < 0.05). Conclusions: We described the content of the persecutory symptoms. The powerfulness, imminence, sureness, and awfulness of threats correlated with the level of physical, verbal and social manipulation victimization. Teachers and family must actively monitor early signs of bullying victimization, and school psychologists should promote preventive and therapeutic intervention. From a social psychiatry perspective, the prevention of bullying victimization is necessary.