Ria Spooner

I am interested in the relationship between interoception and mental health. My PhD research is focused on whether interoception, the perception of one’s internal states (e.g., feeling one’s heartbeat), represents the general psychopathology factor (the ‘p-factor’). Proposals suggest that the p-factor underlies most common mental health disorders, representing lesser-to-greater severity of psychopathology. If vulnerability to psychopathology can be explained by one factor, then identification of this factor is crucial for diagnosis, intervention, and treatment of mental ill health. Using dimensional and network approaches, I will be investigating whether interoception can explain relationships between mental health symptoms, and therefore be considered the p-factor.