Exploring the hidden mental pathways that turn early family experiences into adult psychological challenges.
Imagine a child growing up in a home where the rules change every hour or where a parent’s touch is more likely to be a strike than a hug.
This environment does more than cause immediate fear.
It teaches the child’s developing brain how to interpret every look, word, and social interaction they will encounter for the rest of their lives.
Key Takeaways
- Abusive or overcontrolling parenting does not directly cause adult psychosis but instead works through a chain reaction of mental processes.
- Childhood experiences shape an individual’s attachment style, which acts like an internal blueprint for how they relate to others.
- These attachment styles influence the development of core “schemas,” or deep-seated beliefs about the self and the world.
- Negative beliefs, such as feeling the self is worthless or others are dangerous, directly contribute to the frequency of hallucinations and paranoia.
- This discovery is hopeful because while we cannot change the first domino (the past), psychological therapies can target the second and third dominoes (attachment and schemas) to stop the fourth from falling
The Invisible Bridge from Past to Present
Researchers recently conducted a cross-sectional study to understand how these early domestic environments influence mental health in adulthood.
They focused specifically on psychosis, a condition where people experience shifts in perception, such as hearing voices or holding intense, unusual beliefs.
While we know that childhood trauma is a risk factor for psychosis, this study looked closer at the “subtle” side of parenting.
The team analyzed data from 132 adults who had received diagnoses like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
They wanted to know if the link between parenting and symptoms was direct or if it traveled through a “serial mediation” path.
Think of this as a series of falling dominoes.
Domino 1: The Rearing Environment
The first domino consists of the specific ways our parents or primary caregivers treated us during our first 18 years.
This isn’t just about extreme events; it includes the “subtle” climate of the home that shapes how a child learns to navigate the world.
The study identifies three distinct parenting styles that set the chain in motion:
- Abusive or Overcontrolling Care: This includes verbal and physical abuse that makes a child feel unsafe , or invasive, critical behavior that restricts a child’s independence.
- Indifferent Care: This represents a form of neglect where parents are unresponsive to a child’s needs or frequently leave them alone.
- Warm and Responsive Care: Ideally, this positive style creates a sense of safety, though it was negatively correlated with the development of adult symptoms in this study.
Domino 2: Attachment Styles
When the first domino falls, it hits the second: Attachment Style.
This is the interpersonal strategy a person uses to relate to others, acting as a mental “blueprint” for intimacy and safety.
The parenting style determines which blueprint a child builds:
- Anxious Attachment: Often triggered by overcontrolling or inconsistent care, this leads to a constant fear of abandonment and a need for excessive reassurance.
- Disorganized Attachment: Usually the result of abuse, where the caregiver—who should be a source of safety – becomes a source of fear, leading to unpredictable behavior in relationships.
- Avoidant Attachment: Developed as a survival mechanism against indifferent or neglectful parenting, this style involves keeping others at a distance to avoid further emotional pain
Domino 3: Core Schemas (the stories we tell outselves)
These attachment styles then tip over the third domino: core schemas.
Schemas are the deeply held beliefs we have about who we are and what others are like. They are the “filters” through which we see our entire existence.
For example, a child with an anxious attachment might develop a negative self schema, believing they are fundamentally unlovable or broken.
A child with a disorganized attachment, often resulting from abuse, may develop a negative “other” schema.
This is a belief that other people are inherently dangerous, unpredictable, or out to cause harm.
Domino 4: The Frequency of Psychotic Symptoms
The fourth and final domino in this psychological chain represents the actual experience of psychosis symptoms in adulthood.
The study found that this final domino doesn’t fall on its own; it is pushed by the negative schemas (Domino 3) that were built during childhood.
The specific way it falls often matches the nature of those beliefs:
- Paranoia and Hallucinations: When someone holds a core belief that “others are dangerous,” their brain may generate paranoia or critical voices as a way to make sense of that perceived threat.
- Social Withdrawal: If an individual’s “internal blueprint” (attachment style) is avoidant, they may experience more negative symptoms like apathy or withdrawal as a survival strategy to stay safe from others.
Why it Matters
The study found that the relationship between early parenting and adult psychosis was fully mediated by these middle steps
This means that if you remove the middle dominoes – attachment and schemas – the link between parenting and psychosis effectively disappears in the statistical model
This research shifts the focus from what happened to a person to how they processed what happened.
It suggests that while we cannot change the past, we can work on the “blueprints” and “filters” that the past left behind.
For the general public, this means recognizing that mental health is a lifelong story written by our environment and our interpretations.
For clinicians, it highlights the need for therapies that go beyond just managing symptoms with medication.
Approaches like Schema Therapy or CBT for psychosis can help individuals identify and reshape these old, painful beliefs.
By strengthening more adaptive schemas, people can begin to turn down the volume on their symptoms and find a new sense of safety in the world.
Akers, N., Taylor, C. D. J., & Berry, K. (2025). Understanding the relationships between parenting, attachment, schemas and psychosis: A serial mediation analysis. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 00, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/18387357.2025.2567398
