Jean Addington1; 1University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
In the Canadian Psychiatric Risk and Outcome Study (PROCAN), using McGorry and Hickie’s clinical staging model, our sample included 42 healthy controls (HCs), 41 youth with a family risk of mental illness (stage 0), 52 distressed youth with mild depression and anxiety and 108 with attenuated psychiatric syndromes, the majority of whom met criteria for being at clinical high risk for psychosis. In order to determine if the criteria for these different stages were useful and made sense, the groups were first compared on a range of clinical measures and secondly on social, and neurocognitive functioning. Stage 0 participants did not differ from healthy controls on any clinical measure. Stage 1a differed from HCs and Stage 0 in anxiety, depression, rumination, anhedonia, negative symptoms and negative beliefs about the self. Stage 1b participants presented with significantly more severe symptoms than all other groups in anxiety, depression, anhedonia, attenuated psychotic symptoms, negative symptoms and negative beliefs about the self and from HCS and stage 0 in anhedonia and rumination. These results suggest that the clinical staging of our sample was a good fit. In terms of social functioning, Stage 1a and 1b participants both differed from the HCs and stage 0 participants. Interestingly, in examining neurocognition, only the stage 1b group differed significantly from the HCs and stage 0 participants in IQ and in the speed of processing, attention, working memory domains from the MATRICS. Thus, the staging model is further supported with neurocognitive and social functioning performance.
