Prevalence of clinical high risk criteria of psychosis in the community: results from the BEAR study.
Poster C3, Saturday, October 22, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Le Baron
Frauke Schultze-Lutter1, Chantal Michel1, Benno G. Schimmelmann1; 1University of Bern
Psychotic-like experiences were reported to be frequent in the community, in particular when assessed with self-report measures. However, prevalence and clinical significance of clinical high risk (CHR) criteria of psychosis in the community, when assessed in the same way as in patients, are still unclear. Therefore, we studied the 3-month prevalence of ultra-high risk and basic symptom criteria assessed with the Structured Interview for Psychosis-Risk Syndromes and the Schizophrenia Proneness Instrument in a random 16- to 40-year old Swiss community sample. Subjects were assessed in a telephone interview by trained clinical psychologists. Exclusion criteria were communication problems and life-time psychosis. At a cooperation rate of 68% and a response rate of 63%, 2’683 interviews were completed. While 24.6% acknowledged having experienced any CHR symptom at least once in their life, only 15.2% reported any currently present CHR symptom, in 9.8% any basic symptom, in 7.5% any attenuated psychotic symptom (APS) and in 0.1% any brief intermittent psychotic symptom (BIPS). CHR criteria (incl. their respective frequency, onset/worsening and/or novelty requirements) were considerably less frequent, only 0.6% met APS criteria, 0.7% cognitive disturbances (COGDIS) criteria and 1.9% cognitive-perceptive basic symptoms (COPER) criteria. While CHR symptoms occurred at least temporarily in every fourth participant, only few participants reported them in sufficient recency, frequency or change in severity to meet CHR criteria. This highlights the importance of these additional CHR requirements. These might play a crucial role in the differentiation between ill and non-ill persons and thus should be studied in more detail.
Topic Area: Epidemiology