Background: Self-injury has become increasingly prevalent among adolescents and young adults over the past decades, reflecting the intersection between individual vulnerability and sociocultural transformations. Understanding this phenomenon requires not only a clinical perspective but also a broader reflection on how current social dynamics – such as digital hyperconnectivity and weakened interpersonal bonds – shape subjectivity and emotional regulation. Summary: This article offers an integrative and interpretive study based on the authors’ previous empirical research conducted in 2022, which included semi-structured clinical interviews with 20 young people (19 females and 1 male) aged between 13 and 28 years who engaged in skin-cutting. The analysis considered four dimensions: family dynamics, identity, symptom onset and context, and the function of the symptom. The findings revealed that self-injury is associated with difficulties in identity formation, emotional regulation, and family relationships, which were interpreted in light of contemporary sociocultural changes. To enrich this perspective, theoretical contributions from sociology and philosophy were incorporated to link individual experience with the broader cultural framework. Key Messages: Self-injury reflects not only intrapsychic conflict but also the impact of sociocultural transformations characteristic of postmodernity. Understanding its meaning requires integrating clinical, familial, and sociocultural levels of analysis. The proposed therapeutic approach combines evidence-based strategies for emotion regulation with interventions that address the patient’s identity and social context. This work aims to provide clinicians with conceptual and practical tools to better understand and treat self-injury as a phenomenon rooted in contemporary culture.

Introduction: The current definition of hallucinations as perception-like experiences has been criticized for neglecting their experiential character and context. This study examined the phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) and visual hallucinations (VHs) in schizophrenia and their relation to other psychopathology, particularly basic self-disorders. Methods: Twenty patients with schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis and hallucinations participated in phenomenologically oriented, semi-structured interviews exploring the experiential characteristics and context of AVH and VH as well as a comprehensive psychopathological examination, including the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE). Results: The far majority of participants considered their hallucinations distinct from perceptual experience and described alterations of the ordinary experiential structure of sensory experience. Generally, both AVH and persistent VH were experientially intertwined with self-disorders and other subjective pathological phenomena. Moreover, AVHs were characterized by alterations of spatiality and experienced as private, i.e., not being accessible to others. Compared to a control group, the participants with hallucinations had significantly higher levels of self-disorders, earlier onset of psychopathology, and lower IQ. Conclusion: The findings align with prior research proposing that most AVHs in schizophrenia reflect an underlying alteration of the structure of subjectivity (i.e., disorder of basic self). We report novel findings suggesting that a similar link between self-disorders and VH should be further investigated. Our study highlights the importance of assessing hallucinations within the broader context of the patient’s psychopathology for adequate differential diagnostic evaluation and understanding of lived experience.

Plain Language SummaryThis paper explores the concept of: “one-way love,” where an individual loves another without expecting reciprocation. The author argues that this type of love can be meaningful in three key ways: (1) it frees the lover from dependency on the Other’s love; (2) it preserves the integrity of the lover’s own desire, protecting it from the threat of confrontation with the Other's desire; (3) it offers a heroic sense of identity and a noble self-image rooted in fidelity to feeling. The one-way lover sees their love as a radical act of freedom, asserting their existence as a person capable of loving. However, the paper also notes that this kind of love can come at a cost, limiting the chance for genuine closeness with others, which is essential for personal development. The paper presents a nuanced view of one-way love, highlighting both its potential benefits (autonomy, self-awareness) and drawbacks (avoiding intimacy, potential for isolation).

Plain Language SummaryThis study explored core elements of anxiety and fear. We analyzed information from 387 people, some mentally healthy and others with depression, who answered three common questionnaires about anxiety and fear. Using a statistical technique to detect answering patterns and group-related questions together, we identified five key components of anxiety and fear: discomfort, fright, nervousness, lack of self-confidence, and worry. We looked at how these five components related to other factors in our participants, including various mental health symptoms, bodily processes, and brain structure measurements. Doing so, we were able to examine the psychological and biological associations of each component. Because the components were identified using widely used questionnaires, our research could point future research into anxiety- and fear-related conditions to more powerful measurements and ideas.

Background: According to the standard definition, a hallucination is (1) a perceptual experience occurring in the absence of a relevant perceptual object, (2) it has the sense of reality of a veridical perception, and (3) it is unwilled and not under voluntary control of the hallucinator. This definition is supposed to encompass all hallucinations, across mental disorders and experiential modalities. Summary: In this article, we examine the standard definition’s validity by comparing visual hallucinations in delirium and auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) in schizophrenia, focusing especially on the definition’s second criterion, i.e., the sense of reality criterion. Our analysis reveals stark differences between these two disorders, their concomitant experiential structures, and the experience of hallucinations. While hallucinated objects are experienced as real in both disorders, they are typically not experienced as real in the same sense of the term. In delirium, hallucinatory objects are experienced as real in the way perceptual objects are, and they often are indistinguishable from such objects. In schizophrenia, by contrast, hallucinatory objects are often not experienced as real in the way perceptual objects are, and they often are distinguishable from such objects. Key Message: An appreciation of the different kinds of sense of reality of hallucinations is relevant for developing more precise psychopathological concepts, clinical care, and empirical research. Based on our findings, we offer a revision of the standard definition of hallucination, making it valid for the variety of hallucinations that are found across mental disorders.

Introduction: Overweight or obesity often co-occurs with depression among young adults. Major depressive disorder (MDD) frequently occurs alongside anxiety; nevertheless, research exploring the interaction between anxiety symptoms and MDD in young adults with overweight or obesity is limited. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and clinical characteristics of comorbid anxiety among young adults with overweight/obesity concomitant with MDD. Additionally, it aimed to identify predictors of anxiety within this demographic. Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 523 young adults with overweight/obesity concomitant with MDD (age 18–35 years). Their demographic characteristics, clinical variables, and fasting biochemical parameters were collected utilizing the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD), Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA), and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Results: The prevalence of anxiety symptoms was 50.8%. Correlation analysis suggested strong associations between total HAMD scores and various factors, including total HAMA scores, body mass index, suicidal tendencies, and psychotic symptoms. Binary regression identified four clinical variables, namely, HAMD scores, thyroid-stimulating hormone levels, excitement levels, and fasting blood glucose, as significant risk factors for anxiety within this demographic. Conclusion: In summary, this research highlights a substantial prevalence of anxiety symptoms among young adults with overweight/obesity concomitant with MDD. Furthermore, it elucidates four risk factors associated with concurrent anxiety symptoms among this demographic. These findings have significant clinical implications.

Introduction: Self-disturbance phenomena are increasingly recognized as fundamental and debilitating features for patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD). The concept of personal recovery describes the process of building a meaningful and satisfying life despite persistent symptoms or challenges related to mental illness. No previous study has investigated the association between self-disturbance phenomena and personal recovery in patients with SSD. Understanding the impact of self-disturbance could strengthen the therapeutic alliance with patients and contribute to the development of treatment strategies supporting their recovery. Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate whether severity of self-reported self-disturbance phenomena is associated with the level of self-reported personal recovery in patients with SSD, their unaffected siblings, and healthy controls. Methods: In a cross-sectional design with 522 patients with SSD, 608 unaffected siblings, and 369 healthy controls, the frequency and distress of self-disturbance phenomena was measured with the Self-Experience Lifetime Frequency Scale (SELF). Personal recovery was assessed with the Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS-24). Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients between both scales were examined. Subsequent multiple hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to assess additional explained variance in personal recovery by severity of self-disturbance phenomena, adjusting for positive, negative, and general symptomatology. Results: Significant correlations were reported between higher SELF and lower RAS-24 scores for patients (ρ = −0.20, p < 0.001), siblings (ρ = −0.24, p < 0.001), and controls (ρ = −0.16, p < 0.005). The severity of self-disturbance phenomena significantly albeit modestly predicted total personal recovery score after adjusting for positive, negative, and general symptoms for patients (R2 change = 0.035, β = −0.19, p < 0.001). Conclusion: Current findings suggest that self-reported self-disturbance phenomena are relevant for the personal recovery of patients with SSD. Healthcare practitioners are urged for attention to patients’ first-person perspectives, including experiences of self-disturbance.

Background: In times of rapid and profound sociocultural changes and the related metamorphosis of psychopathological forms, there is a need for greater commitment on the part of clinical phenomenology in analyzing these changes and reciprocal influences between culture and psychopathology. Summary: Questioning one-dimensional definitions of society, this work probes the dialectic of cultures inherent in every society, addressing the complex interpolation of different sets of beliefs, behaviors, and values. The aim was to introduce and discuss a couple of them, which are here named pornographic culture and erotic culture, and the forms that enjoyment and desire take in each of them. The phenomenological method, typically used to investigate individual experience, is thus extended to the analysis of the existential structures of such cultures, exploring the idea that pornographic culture and erotic culture dispose a precise symbolic framework that affects the experience of time, space, body, Self, and Otherness of individuals. Key Message: Pornographic culture is characterized by enjoyment imperative, whereas erotic culture is characterized by unattainable fulfilment of one’s desire. The “cultural existentials” structured by these cultures are conceived as the inclined plane on which human presence moves and unfolds and are examined in order to try to grasp their resonances with the various forms of suffering characteristic of contemporary age, establishing a dialogue between some distinctive anthropological forms of late modernity – namely homo nevroticus, homo œconomicus, and homo dissipans – and the forms of psychopathological existence in which they can result and crystallize.