IEPA 11

The main focus of treatment for youth at clinical high risk (CHR) of psychosis has been to prevent transition to full-blown psychosis. However, there are other targets that have been considered less often such as attenuated psychotic symptoms, negative symptoms, social functioning, and cognition. Although the literature is promising there are many areas that are not impacted by current treatments in particular social functioning which is of concern since many of these young people continue to have poorer social functioning even when they do not make the transition to psychosis and attenuated psychotic symptoms have remitted. The first presentation (Addington) will present a critical overview of some of the promising areas of psychosocial treatment (such as cognitive behavior therapy, social skills training, cognitive remediation, and family focused therapy) and pharmacotherapy. The other three presentations will review the most recent research, highlight the features of the interventions and describe future goals for making the intervention more effective. The second presentation (Cadenhead) will focus on group-based CBT and social skills training to address social functioning. The use of cognitive remediation will be addressed in the third presentation (Friedman-Yakoobian). The fourth presentation will offer a critical examination of the current use of antidepressants in the CHR population (Woods). Finally, the discussant (Keshavan) will summarize the extant findings and propose a potential treatment algorithm for CHR.