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.”
