Browsing by Subject "help-seeking"

Aim. Attenuated positive psychotic symptoms, such as perceptual abnormalities and delusional ideas, are rather common in the general population not suffering from psychotic disorders. These psychotic-like experiences, or PLE, are usually transient and may be a common part of development of adolescents. However, there is also evidence that PLE may indicate a vulnerability to psychosis as well as other varied psychopathology, and a connection to need for care. There also seems to be differences between experiences in their impact. The current study aimed to investigate whether different types of PLE predicted further psychiatric treatment trajectories, or seeking outpatient treatment, in a seven-year follow-up using a psychiatric adolescent sample. Methods. The current study utilized a sample from the Helsinki Prodromal Study, a prospective study on psychosis risk. The sample (N=731) included adolescents aged 15–18, who had been referred to psychiatric care for the first time. The Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ), a self-report measure to assess psychosis risk symptoms, was administered to examine positive, negative, disorganized, and general symptoms of the participants at their first or second visit to the psychiatric unit. The outcome variable was a dichotomous measure of outpatient treatment starting after the completion of the PQ and assessed every year for seven consecutive years. Multilevel logistic regressions were carried out to investigate the predictive power of separate PLE and other psychosis risk symptoms. In addition, an area under the receiver operator characteristics curve was conducted to examine how the PQ total score distinguished between help-seekers and non-help-seekers in the second year of follow-up. Findings and conclusions. Of the nine psychosis risk factors that were assessed, eight predicted outpatient treatment over the follow-up, while Magical Thinking did not. There were no significant interactions between time and PLE, so these associations did not fluctuate over time. The PQ total score did not manifest as a reliable method for distinction of help-seekers in the second year of follow-up. However, these findings indicate that assessing PLE in clinical adolescent settings could help in predicting the further need for care.