SNAPP - Writing abilities and narrative competence in psychosis and prepsychosis

SNAPP: The SNAPP is a joint project between Centre for Reading Research, Stavanger University College and Psychiatric clinic, Helse Stavanger. The work will be done by Sigrun Hodne (MA in contemporary literature), supervisors are; professor Finn Egil Tønnessen (Centre for Reading Research, HiS), associate professor T.K. Larsen (University of Oslo and Psychiatric clinic, Stavanger), and professor Sven Strömqvist (Lund University and Centre for Reading Research, HiS).

Purpose: To examine writing abilities and narrative competence, that is the capability to produce a coherent oral and written story, in people with psychosis - or in risk of developing psychosis.

Method: Writing abilities and narrative competence will be examined by using Mercer Meyers picture story: Frog – where are you? This is a wordless picture story of 24 black and white drawings, which the patients will be asked to compose a story for. The Frog-story has been used in more than 160 research projects, in 72 different languages, and in 13 different phylum (language families). All written work will be done in ScriptLog.

Design: SNAPP will examine written and spoken stories done by patients included in the ongoing studies TIPS-II and TOPP at Psychiatric clinic, Helse Stavanger (patients who are diagnosed psychotic or pre/hypo-psychotic). We expect to have included 50 patients by the end of 2005. TIPS-II and TOPP are research projects witch work to detect and treat psychosis as early as possible. The researchers in these projects have close contact with researchers in several countries all over the world (USA, Australia, Denmark Germany, Sweden, Finland, England etc.)