A closer look at predicting psychosis in high-risk young people

Photo: Zen Chung

成人大片 researchers have taken a closer look at how to predict transition to psychosis in young people who meet a specific set of subthreshold psychotic symptoms and syndromes, also referred to as ultra-high risk (UHR) criteria.

UHR research provides greater insight into risk and protective factors for psychotic disorders, mechanisms that drive the onset of these disorders, and the most effective treatments for delaying or preventing the onset of psychotic disorders and other adverse outcomes in young people at high risk.

Associate Professor Scott Clark, Head of the Discipline of Psychiatry, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Simon Hartmann analysed the data of 1245 UHR adolescents from 1995 to 2020 to create a transition to psychosis model, publishing their findings in the journal

鈥淵outh mental health is currently a major global concern with increasing numbers of young people struggling,鈥 said Associate Professor Clark.

鈥淓arly intervention has shown to improve outcomes for young people with emerging mental health illnesses.

鈥淎s part of our research, we try to find data-driven methods to better identify those at risk of a mental health illness to assist with early intervention.

鈥淲e require large datasets for our research like the one we have aggregated in our study in collaboration with Orygen, Melbourne, and the Centre of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne.

鈥淭he dataset represents Orygen鈥檚 accumulated work in UHR research over the past three decades and our analysis is supported by the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) in Prediction of Early Mental Disorder and Preventive Treatment (PRE-EMPT) led by Professor Barnaby Nelson.

鈥淚t is so far the largest dataset on young people at risk of a psychotic disorder and will facilitate research into the development of data-driven methods in this field.鈥

Dr Hartmann said the study shows the accuracy of data-driven methods deteriorates over time, due to changes in treatment and clinical processes, as well as population changes.

鈥淥ur research identified potential pitfalls in existing methods to ensure a safe and successful translation into clinical practice,鈥 he said.

鈥淭his will help to get this field a step closer to implementing data-driven methods in mental healthcare services."Dr Simon Hartmann, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Discipline of Psychiatry, The 成人大片

鈥淲e expected performance to deteriorate over time based on research from other fields but were surprised by the extent and its clinical implications," said Dr Hartmann.

鈥淲e were concerned that temporal biases in existing models that are on the verge of being implemented in clinical practice may not lead to optimal decisions and could potentially do harm.

鈥淥ur results show that higher disorganised speech and unusual thought content as measured by Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States (CAARMS), higher negative symptom severity, lower social functioning, and a longer duration of symptoms prior to UHR service entry are predictive of transition to psychosis.鈥

Now Dr Hartmann and Associate Professor Clark know there is a problem with the deterioration of the data, they鈥檙e turning their attention to how to correct it.

鈥淧otential findings of this next stage will form part of a future of learning health systems that aim to constantly update knowledge from every patient by harnessing the power of data and analytics, and feed newly gained knowledge back to clinicians, nurses, and other healthcare stakeholders,鈥 said Dr Hartmann.

Tagged in featured story, mental health, psychotic disorders, youth