Risk factors and prevention
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| Topics: adolescents, bipolar disorder, psychosis
The January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry (subscription required) has published two different articles addressing the predictive value of risk factors for psychiatric or substance abuse disorders. One article, a follow-up (n=591) study of young adults in Zurich, showed the specificity of manic symptoms in Bipolar II for predicting co-occurring substance use and addiction.
A second articles discusses how combinations of five factors can predict the onset of full-blown psychosis in youth. The study was based on a sample of adolescents (n=291) from eight American research centers. The strong predictive value of the study -- a 35 percent rate of conversion to psychosis -- led authors to conclude, “These findings demonstrate that prospective ascertainment of individuals at risk for psychosis is feasible, with a level of predictive accuracy comparable to that in other areas of preventive medicine.”
