Predictors of treatment response to psychological interventions in people at clinical high risk of first-episode psychosis.

Aim: Psychological interventions, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and supportive counselling (SC), are used to treat people with schizophrenia and people at clinical high risk (CHR) of psychosis. However, little information is available on predictors of treatment response. This study aims to identify such predictors of psychological interventions in CHR.

The early recognition inventory ERIraos assesses the entire spectrum of symptoms through the course of an at-risk mental state.

Aim: Functional disability and social consequences frequently occur at the prodromal stage of schizophrenia. Efforts to recognize an increasing risk of psychosis onset have thus become a topical issue worldwide. This is to introduce the English version of the ERIraos early-recognition inventory.

[Neuropsychological Functioning as a Predictor of Treatment Response to Psychoeducational, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in People at Clinical High Risk of First Episode Psychosis].

Objective: Investigate whether treatment response in people at clinical high risk of psychosis (CHR) is predicted by their cognitive performance.

Method: 128 CHR outpatients were randomized into two treatment groups, one receiving integrated psychological intervention (IPI), including psychoeducation, the other receiving supportive counselling (SC) for 12 months. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify neurocognitive predictors of treatment response in a subgroup of n = 105, measured by symptomatic and functional improvement at 1-year follow-up.

Shades of vulnerability: latent structures of clinical caseness in prodromal and early phases of schizophrenia.

The underlying structures of clinical caseness and need of care in prodromal (i.e., at-risk) and early phases of schizophrenia remain poorly characterized in their essential psycho-behavioral coherence.

Prodromal unfolding: the validation of the Schizotypic Syndrome Questionnaire model in a sample of first-episode schizophrenic patients.

Aim: Validation of Van Kampen's Schizotypic Syndrome Questionnaire (SSQ) model of schizophrenic prodromal unfolding. The SSQ model comprises 12 negative, asocial and psychotic-like symptoms that are hypothesized to determine each other in terms of cause and effect.

Method: Use was made of the Interview for the Retrospective Assessment of the Onset of Schizophrenia (IRAOS)-dependent retrospective data assembled in the Mannheim Age-Beginning-Course Study sample of first-episode schizophrenic patients to measure the SSQ symptoms.

Evidence for separate diseases?: Stages of one disease or different combinations of symptom dimensions?

Objective: We tested Kraepelin's dichotomy model by studying the separability of schizophrenia and depression on the basis of symptoms and illness course.

Materials And Methods: Matched untreated patients with schizophrenia and depression (n = 130 each) and 130 "healthy" controls were assessed from onset to first admission. In a second study the same variables were studied in 107 patients with schizophrenia over a homogenised follow-up of 134 months (11.

Early detection of schizophrenia: current evidence and future perspectives.

RESEARCH INTO THE EARLY COURSE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA HAS IDENTIFIED A PREPSYCHOTIC PRODROMAL STAGE (MEAN DURATION: 4.8 years) and a psychotic prephase (mean duration: 1.3 years).

[Developmental conditions and subjective experiences of children with a schizophrenic parent--qualitative and quantitative studies from the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk].

Objective: 35 children 12-42 years of age of patients with schizophrenia (ABC-Cohort-12-year-follow-up) were interviewed for studying objective and subjective effects of growing up with a schizophrenic parent.

Material And Method: Social development and childhood experiences were assessed and quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated.

Results: The majority of probands had to take on early responsibilities in their family.

Schizophrenia and depression: challenging the paradigm of two separate diseases--a controlled study of schizophrenia, depression and healthy controls.

Background: We studied descriptive and causal associations between schizophrenia, depressive symptoms and episodes of depression.

Methods: Untreated psychotic, depressive and negative symptoms were assessed retrospectively from onset until first admission using the IRAOS in a population-based sample of 232 first episodes of schizophrenia. A representative subsample of 130 patients, studied retrospectively until onset and followed up prospectively over 6 months after first admission, were compared with 130 age- and sex-matched healthy population controls and with 130 equally matched first admissions for unipolar depressive episodes.

Depression in the long-term course of schizophrenia.

Depressive symptoms are quantitatively and qualitatively among the most important characteristics of schizophrenia. The following contribution reports on the prevalence of depression in 107 patients of the ABC schizophrenia study over 12 years after first hospital admission, looks into a preponderance of depression at certain stages of the illness and the predictive value of depressive symptoms for course and outcome. All but one of the 107 patients experienced one to 10 episodes of depressed mood between index assessment and long-term follow-up.

The early course of schizophrenia and depression*.

Objective: Risk factors, emergence and accumulation of symptoms in the untreated early course were studied as a basis for understanding the relationship between schizophrenia and depression.

Materials And Methods: 130 representative first admissions for schizophrenia were compared retrospectively with 130 individually matched first admissions for depressive episodes and with 130 healthy controls.

Results: Onsets of schizophrenia and severe depression were marked by depressive symptoms, followed by negative symptoms and functional impairment.

Early detection and secondary prevention of psychosis: facts and visions.

As effective and practical approaches to primary and universal prevention of psychosis are lacking, intervention efforts are targeted at the early stages of schizophrenia to prevent (by way of secondary prevention) or postpone psychosis onset, reduce severity of illness or at least ameliorate the social consequences involved. Early intervention requires early detection and early recognition (diagnosis) of persons at risk and early prediction of psychosis. Within the German Research Network on Schizophrenia (GRNS) awareness programmes are being carried out in several German cities, and these efforts are already improving utilisation of early-recognition and early-prediction services by at risk persons.

Modeling the early course of schizophrenia.

Using the Interview for the Retrospective Assessment of the Onset of Schizophrenia (IRAOS), we assessed 170 first illness episodes with a nonpsychotic prodromal stage (73% of the population-based Age, Beginning, Course [ABC] study sample of 232 first illness episodes of schizophrenia from a German population of about 1.5 million). Conrad's (1958) and Docherty et al.