(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-10 14:36

Cannon and his colleagues prospectively studied 291 young people who sought mental health treatment at one of eight different treatment centers in North America. The average age of the study participants was 18 years, and all sought treatment for early symptoms of psychosis, such as unusual thoughts.

During the two-and-a-half-year follow-up, 35 percent of this group went on to develop psychotic illness.

The researchers identified five factors that could help predict the eventual development of psychosis. These included a family history of schizophrenia with recent deterioration in functioning; higher levels of unusual thoughts; higher levels of suspicion or paranoia; greater social impairment; and a history of substance abuse.

When two or three of these factors were present, the odds of psychotic illness jumped. Two factors increased the likelihood of psychotic illness to 68 percent, and three factors combined raised the risk to 80 percent.

"This was a really good study in terms of size, and once it's replicated can add on to the field," said Dr. Christopher Lucas, an associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and the director of the Early Childhood Service at the New York University Child Study Center.

But, the question is, Lucas added, "If you have somebody with this picture, do you treat them prophylactically?"

Both Lucas and Cannon noted that this study was done on a high-risk population, so it can't be generalized for the whole population.

Parents need to be on the lookout for a child who withdraws socially and stops participating in activities he or she once enjoyed, according to Cannon. He said it's not usually until a child is receiving mental health treatment that they admit to having delusions or hearing voices or feeling a greater sense of suspicion, so parents might not notice such symptoms. Parents should be especially wary of any of these symptoms if there's a family history of psychotic illnesses, according to the study.

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