Our team focuses on the scientific understanding of etiological factors, assessment, and treatment related to attenuated symptoms of psychosis. Click the links below to see more about the specific projects we are working on.
What is psychosis-risk?“Psychosis-risk” refers to early warning signs or symptoms that people may experience before the start of serious mental illness, including psychosis or schizophrenia. This period of time is often called the “prodromal period.” Some of the early warning signs that people may experience are:
- Hearing odd noises or voices mumbling or seeing things that others may not see
- Worrying that people may be out to get you or harm you
- Feeling as if your thoughts are strange or might not be your own
- Confusion about what is real or what is imaginary
- Difficulty communicating your thoughts in a way that others can understand
- Having beliefs that seem odd to others
- Feeling like you have special gifts or talents that no one else has
Some of the early warning signs can be very similar to the signs of full psychosis (like the ones listed above), but there are some experiences that may seem unrelated, like:
- Feeling anxious with no clear reason
- A drop in grades, job performance or other aspects of functioning
- Withdrawing from friends and family
- Noticeable changes in mood
- Persistent sleep problems
It is important to remember that even if you or a loved one is having these experiences, it does not mean that they have or will later have schizophrenia. Many of these warning signs are related to other things, such as depression, anxiety, trauma, physical illness or injuries, or frequent drug and alcohol use. These experiences are more common that many people would think, and for some, they go away on their own. However, if you or a loved one is experiencing any of these early warning signs, it is important to talk to a trusted mental-health professional.
We define our psychosis-risk research into two overlapping themes: clinical high-risk research and clinical services research.
Clinical High-Risk (CHR) Research
The clinical high-risk phase of psychotic illness is the time just preceding threshold symptom onset, and is associated with attenuated symptoms. Our current pursuits in this area include:
(1) Developing and testing methods of detecting attenuated symptoms in children and adolescents
(2) Testing the hypothesis that signs of neurological disruption previously documented in schizophrenia are similarly evident in the CHR state
(3) Assessing the psychometric properties of measures designed to detect the CHR state
(4) Applying neuroimaging paradigms to understand in vivo brain functioning among youth at CHR
(5) Uncovering how community providers conceptualize and treat individuals with CHR symptoms
(6) Creating contextually and culturally informed approaches to assessment
We are enthusiastic about what we have been able to learn with regards to screening for psychosis-risk, as well as our efforts to disseminate this information to providers. We hope that our work will lead to better, more clinically relevant ways to identify young people at risk for psychosis.
Clinical Services Research
A related line of research addresses the specific needs of young people at CHR, and their families. This work stems from an extension of the vulnerability-stress model as well as literature on expressed emotion, both suggesting that individuals prone to or with psychosis will respond positively to the reduction of stress and the acquisition of improved coping skills. To establish the justification for this type of research, we have documented that youth with psychosis have more mental health care needs and require more costly services than all other youth registered for public mental health services.