Psychosis

Most of my research is conducted with people who have a diagnosis of primary psychosis. In this research, I am interested in enhancing the autonomy of individuals with psychosis through technology as well as understanding their lived realities. Next to my ongoing research on NLP, I currently work on a DFG funded project on neurocognition in psychosis.

Publications on psychosis:

  • Montag, C., Bröcker, A.-L., Bayer, S., Becker, K., Bertram, G., Büttner, M., Funcke, J., Grimm, I., Just, S.A., … & von Haebler, D. (2026). The efficacy of modified psychodynamic psychotherapy for patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in Germany: a prospective, single-centre, assessor-blinded, parallel-group, randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Psychiatry, 13(10), 870-883, doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(26)00240-3

  • Hüppi, R.M., Bautista, L., Cecere, G., Omlor, W., Just, S.A. et al. (2026). Speech-based relapse prediction in psychosis using explainable AI: Protocol for the international multicentre observational TRUSTING study. BMJ Open,16:e114585. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2025-114585

  • Just, S.A., Pandey, S., Stein, D. Nenchev, I., Bröcker, A.-L., Montag, C., & Morgan, S.E. (2026). Changes in speech reflect changes in psychotic symptom severity: a longitudinal natural language processing analysis. Translational Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/s41398-026-04389-5

  • Stein, D., Bobrovskiy, D., Stede, M., Montag, C., & Just, S.A. (2026). Cross-linguistic benchmarking of NLP metrics for psychosis research. npj Digital Medicine,9, 594. doi: 10.1038/s41746-026-03053-y

  • Ghelfi, L., Healy, J., Piacenza, F., French, I., McNamara, N., Rabbi, K.A., Bond, B., O'Hora, E., Roddy, D., Kamali, M., Das, S., Just, S.A., Tedeschi, E., Hussain, M., Mikalsen, K.Ø., Kaiser, S., Cecere, G., Koops, S., de Boer, J., Nguyen, E., Bora, E., Hinzen, W., Homan, P., Sommer, I.E., Cotter, D., Cannon, M. & Lyne, J.P. (2026). Using AI to detect psychosis relapse: scoping review. JMIR Mental Health, 13:e92192. doi: 10.2196/92192

  • Just, S. A., DeLuca, V., Rothman, J., & Elvevåg, B. (2026). Rethinking language, cognition and assessment in psychosis: How bilingualism challenges psychiatry and how natural language processing can help. Schizophrenia. doi: 10.1038/s41537-026-00742-1

  • Just, S. A., Elvevåg, B., Pandey, S., Nenchev, I., Bröcker, A.-L., Montag, C., & Morgan, S. E. (2025). Moving beyond word error rate to evaluate automatic speech recognition in clinical samples: Lessons from research into schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Psychiatry Research, 352. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2025.116690

  • Hüppi, R. M., Bautista, L., Cecere, G., Just, S. A., … & Homan, P. (2025). TRUSTING: An international multicenter observational study of speech-based relapse prediction in psychosis using explainable AI. medRxiv 2025.11.14.25339774. doi: 10.1101/2025.11.14.25339774

  • Bröcker, A.-L., Sauter, H., Haebler, D., Montag, C. & & Just, S. A. (2025). Gender differences in social cognition and their association with functioning in individuals with non-affective psychosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1-8. doi: 10.1002/jclp.70052

  • Nenchev, I., Montag, C., & Just, S. A. (2025). Reverse Prompting: A Novel Computational Paradigm in Schizophrenia Based on Large Language Models. Peer-reviewed conference paper, Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing 2025. https://acl-bg.org/proceedings/2025/RANLP%202025/pdf/2025.ranlp-1.92.pdf

  • Bayer, S., Bröcker, A.-L., Stuke, F., Just, S. A., … Lempa, G., von Haebler, D. & Montag, C. (2024) Level of structural integration in people with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders – applicability and associations with clinical parameters. Frontiers of Psychiatry, 15. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1388478

  • Nenchev, I., Scheffler, T., … Just, S. A. & Montag, C. (2024). Linguistic markers of schizophrenia: a case study of Robert Walser. Peer-reviewed conference paper and poster, Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych 2024), Malta, 41–60. https://aclanthology.org/2024.clpsych-1.4‍ ‍

  • Just, S. A. & Bröcker, A-L., Ryazanskaya, G., Nenchev, I., Schneider, M., Bermpohl, F., Heinz, A. & Montag, C. (2023). Validation of natural language processing methods capturing semantic incoherence in the speech of patients with non-affective psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1208856

  • Bröcker, A. L., Zimmermann, J., Stuke, F., Just, S. A., ... & Montag, C. (2022). Exploring the Latent Structure and Convergent and Incremental Validity of the Metacognition Assessment Scale–Abbreviated in a Sample of Patients with Non-Affective Psychosis. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1-11. doi: 10.1080/00223891.2022.2048843

  • Maaßen, E., Büttner, M., Bröcker, A. L., Stuke, F., Bayer, S., Hadzibegovic, J., Just, S. A., Bertram, G., Rau, R., von Haebler, D., Lempa, G., & Montag, C. (2021). Measuring Emotional Awareness in Patients With Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective Disorders. Frontiers in Psychology, 12:725787. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.725787

  • Just, S. A., Haegert, E., Kořánová, N., Bröcker, A-L., Nenchev, I., Funcke, J., Heinz, A., Bermpohl, F., Stede, M. & Montag, C. (2020). Modeling incoherent discourse in non-affective psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 846. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00846

  • Bröcker, A-L., Bayer, S., Stuke, F., Just, S. A., Bertram, G., Funcke, J., Grimm, I., Lempa, G., von Haebler, D., & Montag, C. (2020). Levels of structural integration mediate the impact of metacognition on functioning in non-affective psychosis: Adding a psychodynamic perspective to the metacognitive approach. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 269. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00269

  • Montag, C., Schöner, J., Speck, L. G., Just, S. A., Stuke, F., Rentzsch, J., Gallinat, J., & Majić, T. (2020). Peripheral oxytocin is inversely correlated with cognitive, but not emotional empathy in schizophrenia. Plos one, 15(4), e0231257. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0231257

  • Just, S. A., Haegert, E., Kořánová, N., Bröcker, A.-L., Nenchev, I., Funcke, J., Montag, C., & Stede, M. (2019). Coherence models in schizophrenia. Peer-reviewed conference paper and poster, NAACL Conference, The Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology, Minneapolis. doi: 10.18653/v1/W19-3015