ABSTRACT
In this introductory chapter we have undertaken a selective review of contemporary integrated aetiological accounts of psychosis. We include a detailed description and critical analysis of the stress vulnerability models (SVM) of psychosis. We acknowledge their limitations, but argue that these models have provided a valuable theoretical platform for the development of integrated treatments in psychosis and for multidisciplinary research efforts which could expand our understanding of psychosis beyond classical linear models of aetiology. However, we lament the gap between the vision, offered in the 1970s, via the so-called ‘new view’ of schizophrenia and its translation into both practice and research. We conclude that more needs to be done, especially by the leaders of psychosocial research, to actualize the vision of integration.
