Risk Markers in Psychosis-Prone Young Adults

Gooding, Diane

Abstract

The proposed project is a two-year longitudinal follow-up of individuals who previously underwent personality, clinical, and psychophysiological assessment. On the basis of their performance on personality measures and psychophysiological measures, these individuals were classified as being at high-risk, very high risk, or low risk (control) subjects. The high risk group had deviantly high scores on questionnaire measures associated with heightened risk for the development of schizophrenia and schizophrenia- spectrum disorders. The very high risk group had high scores on the personality measures as well as deviant scores on psychophysiological measures that are associated with risk for schizophrenia. The purpose of the proposed study is to retest all these individuals to evaluate the predictive and concurrent validity of various putative measures of risk for schizophrenia. The subjects will be administered a structured clinical interview, as well as undergo neurocognitive testing, and psychophysiological reassessment. The subjects will be evaluated in terms of the presence of psychiatric symptoms and disorders. The finding that the very high risk subjects, identified on the basis of their scale scores and the presence of at least one psychophysiological abnormality, display higher rates of psychiatric dysfunction, especially schizophrenia and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders compared to control subjects, would support the usefulness of biobehavioral markers in combination with personality scales as indicators of risk. The reliable identification of individuals at risk for schizophrenia using the combined two-tiered screening process would enhance the search for biological and clinical antecedents of the disorder. These findings could be useful in terms of elucidating the developmental trajectory from risk to manifest disorder.