Research drawing on the British national survey finds that, despite the fact that psychotic conditions and mood disorders have historically been approached as separate entities, “mood instability is a prominent feature of psychotic experience and may have a role in its genesis.” Specifically, baseline mood instability predicted roughly a 2.5x greater risk of paranoid ideation and auditory hallucinations over 18 months, as well as mediating a significant portion of the total association of child sexual abuse with psychosis, persecutory ideation, auditory hallucinations.
Marwaha, S., Broome, M., Bebbington, P., Kuipers., E.; Mood Instability and Psychosis: Analyses of British National Survey Data. Schizophrenia Bulletin. Online October 25, 2013. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbt149
