Reducing DUP in the Age of the Internet and Social Media
Poster A84, Thursday, October 20, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Le Baron
John Kane1, Michael Birnbaum1, Leonardo Lopez1, Keren Baumer1, Asra Rizvi1; 1The Zucker Hillside Hospital
Purpose: The RAISE-ETP clinical trial included 404 first episode psychosis patients receiving care at 34 community mental health centers in 21 U.S. states. Duration of untreated psychosis, with a median of 74 weeks, had a strong moderating impact on treatment effectiveness. We have been conducting several pilot initiatives to establish potential strategies to reduce DUP. Materials and Methods: We have conducted retrospective interviews to explore how youth and their families are using the Internet and social media during symptom emergence. We are reporting on 207 participants (102 with psychosis, 23 affective psychosis, 53 mood disorder and, 29 healthy controls) Mean age: 21 years, 54.1% male. We have also conducted linguistic inquiry/word count on social media postings from 25 individuals with first episode psychosis and 42controls. Results: 96.4% used social media, checking 12 times daily, spending an average 2 hours/day online. 61% indicated that they would have accepted proactive social media based outreach when they were ill, but not yet receiving treatment. 72% interested in getting help online or via social media. Average time to reach out for help-first episode psychosis =16 weeks. Reached out to relative (48%), friend (36%). The linguistic inquiry/word count was able to identify psychosis significantly better than chance, differentiated by frequency of use of negations (e.g. not, never), prepositions (e.g. under, above), concepts and themes (e.g. truth and faith) as well as complexity of language use. Conclusions: These results support the potential value of social media strategies to reduce the duration of untreated psychosis.
Topic Area: First Episode Psychosis