Cats cause madness

[pilowsky]

I like reports about scientific research in the media as much as the next person who likes reports about scientific research in the media.

They are of course rarely related to the actual findings.

Here's a recent report that claims:

"SCIENTISTS FIND LINK BETWEEN CAT OWNERSHIP AND SCHIZOPHRENIA" The Independent reports.

 

A quick database search (cat+owner*+psychosis) reveals five papers.

The most recent one suggests:

Ownership of cats in childhood has been inconsistently associated with psychosis in adulthood. Parasitic exposure, the putative mechanism of this association, may be more common with rodent-hunting cats, and its association with psychosis may depend on other environmental exposures. We examined the conditional associations between childhood cat ownership and the frequency of psychotic experiences in adulthood. Adults (n = 2206) were recruited in downtown Montreal to complete a survey about childhood cat ownership (non-hunting or rodent-hunting), winter birth, residential moves in childhood, head trauma history, and tobacco smoking. The frequency of psychotic experiences (PE) was measured with the 15-item positive subscale of the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences. Associations between exposures and PE were examined in linear regressions adjusted for age and sex. Interactions among variables were explored using a conditional inference tree. Rodent-hunting cat ownership was associated with higher PE scores in male participants (vs. non-hunting or no cat ownership: SMD = 0.57; 95% CI: 0.27, 0.86), but not in female participants (SMD = 0.10; 95% CI: −0.18, 0.38). In the conditional inference tree, the highest mean PE score was in the class comprised of non-smokers with >1 residential move, head trauma history, and rodent-hunting cat ownership (n = 22; mean standard score = 0.96). The interaction between rodent-hunting cat ownership and head trauma history was supported by a post-hoc linear regression model. Our findings suggest childhood cat ownership has conditional associations with psychotic experiences in adulthood. J Psych. Res. (2022)148:197, "Conditional associations between childhood cat ownership and psychotic experiences in adulthood: A retrospective study"

 

I particularly like the use of the Psychic experiences screening tool. Clearly something the TD's will find valuable in detecting psychotic cat-owning bridge players.

[LBengtsson]

LOL I love cats, and I am not crazy. That is what my psychiatrist thinks :)

 

(Btw I do not have a psychiatrist, but if I had one...)

[kenberg]

When I started college at the University of Minnesota in 1956, all entering freshmen were required to take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory exam. They did not want to later discuss the results with me, I suppose wasting my time taking it was fine with them but they didn't want to waste their own time having one-on-one discussions, but I insisted and they gave me a brief summary that seemed more-or-less in the right general ballpark sort of.

 

 

I should have asked them if they could tell whether or not I had a pet cat growing up. Nope, no cat. But I was given a dog, Judy, when I turned 2 that chased me around the house, barking. Very traumatic, the source of all my problems. Not.

 

We dog lovers are just so much more stable than those crazy cat owners. Well, I did once have a cat. Cleo Catra. But I recovered and went back to the dogs.

 

I need more coffee.

[Winstonm]

I love cats; no, you don’t,

Is bipolar still an option?

[pilowsky]

I love cats; no, you don't,

Is bipolar still an option?

 

Sounds like you need to talk it over with yourself a bit more...

[barmar]

At least it doesn't make you cat-atonic.

[thepossum]

Something else I find interesting is the latest trend or insatiable demand for any information from anywhere to mine

 

Digging through old rubbish

 

However I now am transferring blame for my psychotic (psychic) episodes from the medication to our cats

 

EDIT And thanks for the out on my unusual bidding too :)