Psychosis,Psychosis - hallucinations,Psychosis - schizophrenia
VISION-QUEST
Calling for participants until
31 Mar 2026
Participant type
16 to 65 years old
Rewards
£10 voucher for taking part
Overview
Visions (visual hallucinations) are common in people with psychosis. They can be distressing and difficult to talk about.
We find that visions are not often spoken about in people's care.
We want to change this by developing better treatments. To do so, firstly, we must listen to and learn from people's experiences. So, we are running VISION-QUEST: a questionnaire study about visions in psychosis.
Summary
One in three people with psychosis experience distressing visual hallucinations (VH) - seeing things that others cannot. When VH occur, they can have a detrimental impact on people's lives, such as more frequent and prolonged hospital admissions, and greater likelihood of suicide.
We found that the way in which people make sense of their VH are one of the keys factors driving distress. For example, when people thought VH were negative or threatening, they found them to be more distressing and this had a bigger impact on their lives. The next step is therefore to explore this on a larger scale to understand more about people's appraisals of VH.
To do so, this study will develop a questionnaire focused on people's beliefs about VH. It will also explore the relationship of visions to other potential casual mechanisms such as poor sleep, and excessive worry.
900 people with psychosis will complete self-report questionnaires (approximately 30-45 minutes).
By developing a new measure and our knowledge of causal mechanisms of visions, it will be the next important steps to developing better treatments for these.
You must be willing and able to give informed consent for your participation in the study
Male or female aged 16-65 years
Diagnosed with non-affective psychosis i.e. schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder, psychosis not otherwise specified
Experienced visual hallucinations within the last month
Currently being supported by specialist NHS mental health services
Not able to read or fill in questionnaires written in English
Experiences visions because of a medical condition, brain injury, or when under the influence of drugs or alcohol
Meet the researcher
Becky ParkBecky Park is a Research Practitioner at Devon Partnership NHS Trust. She joined the Research Department in 2023 after graduating with a BSc in Psychology and has worked in various roles across community and hospital settings. Becky has supported studies including SPACES, PPiP2, ASSURED, STOP, NCISH, GLAD, EDGI, VISION-QUEST, DiPS, and Anger and Aggression. She has a special interest in psychosis mental health research.
Collaborators
