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This study examined how negative social beliefs impact social support-seeking behaviour among 42 emerging adults with first-episode psychosis (FEP). The researchers found that perceived burdensomeness (PB) and thwarted belongingness (TB) - beliefs about being a burden to others and feeling disconnected from others - were negatively correlated with perceived social support at baseline. Utilizing four weeks of ecological momentary assessment (EMA), it was found participants were more likely to seek social support when experiencing higher than usual negative affect, and that baseline PB and TB prospectively predicted less social support-seeking behaviour in daily life. These findings suggest that PB and TB may be important therapeutic targets for improving social functioning in young people with psychosis, as social support positively augments the early course of psychosis.

Major strengths

·       Novelty & Specificity - this paper is the first to demonstrate the prospective influence of specific negative social beliefs (e.g PB and TB), addressing a gap in understanding how negative cognitions translate into actual social behaviours. Rather than examining broad defeatist beliefs, the study focuses on specific interpersonal beliefs (PB and TB), which provides more targeted insights.

·       EMA Methodology - this allowed for the disentangling of within-person and between-person relationships, aiding understanding of how negative affect influences social behaviour in a way which would not have been apparent if only cross-sectional measures were utilized.  EMA results in real-time real-world data with higher ecological validity and reduced recall bias, and the study has a particularly high compliance rate, demonstrating its suitability in this clinical population.

• Easy to follow- This paper was well-structured and clearly presented, making it an easy read. 

Major issues

·       No major issues identified

Minor issues/Suggestions

·       We recognise that writing papers involves a constant balancing act between being precise and accurate with language within a tight word count, while also aiming to keep the content accessible to readers outside the immediate field. That said, the introduction could benefit from slightly clearer explanations of key terms and more explicit statements of underlying assumptions linking arguments, to support researchers who may be newer to the area.

·       Use of secondary data – Although it is noted that this is a secondary analysis, it is not clear to the reader whether the analyses were preregistered, or the extent to which these analyses are exploratory in nature. Additionally, one hypothesis lacks clarity regarding directional expectations—the authors 'predicted that baseline PB and TB would prospectively influence social support-seeking behaviour', without specifying whether this influence would be positive or negative, or providing justification for why a non-directional hypothesis was appropriate given the theoretical framework suggesting negative social beliefs impair social functioning.

·       EMA item for social support – Although we recognise that the questionnaires were not selected by the authors for this specific analysis, the study could acknowledge the potential limitations of using only a single EMA item ("talking about your feelings to others") to assess social support-seeking behaviour, which may oversimplify this complex construct and limit the validity and clinical applicability of their findings.

·       EMA sampling strategy – The authors could provide further detail in regards to the timing blocks and scheduling parameters used for the pseudorandom delivery, and if there were minimum intervals between prompts.

·       Time variable – "Time" is included as a fixed effect in the statistical models but it is not explicit what this time variable represents i.e survey number, time since baseline etc.

·       Missing data - The paper reports 83.3% EMA compliance but does not explicitly describe how missing data is handled in their mixed-effects models, or consider the impact of factors affecting missingness.

·       Interaction analyses? – There is a line in the methods stating that ‘Interactions between key variables were also explored.', however the Results section does not report any interaction analyses or findings. The authors should make it clear if these analyses were conducted but not reported, or if the Methods section includes planned analyses that weren't actually performed.

·       Terminology - The paper should not use the terms ‘social support’ and ‘perceived social support’ interchangeably.  

·       Figures: Inclusion of graphs or figures could help illuminate relationships between the key variables, and thus improve reader understanding.

·       Discussion/Clinical implications – The discussion section could perhaps benefit from greater focus and specificity. Although the paper does suggest that these negative social beliefs may be important targets for psychosocial interventions, this could be strengthened by inclusion of more specific therapeutic suggestions regarding techniques, implementation strategies, or how to differentially target perceived burdensomeness versus thwarted belongingness. The paragraph about understanding suicidality feels somewhat disconnected from the paper's primary focus on social support-seeking behaviour and while interesting, it introduces a new line of inquiry that wasn't directly examined in this study. This section could be condensed or moved to limitations/future directions to maintain focus on the core findings about social support-seeking.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.