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Youth-caregiver Agreement on Clinical High-risk Symptoms of Psychosis

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Abstract

Early identification of individuals who will go on to develop schizophrenia is a difficult endeavor. The variety of symptoms experienced by clinical high-risk youth make it difficult to identify who will eventually develop schizophrenia in the future. Efforts are being made, therefore, to more accurately identify at-risk individuals and factors that predict conversion to psychosis. As in most assessments of children and adolescents, however, both youth and parental report of symptomatology and resulting dysfunction are important to assess. The goals of the current study were to assess the extent of cross-informant agreement on the Structured Interview for Prodromal Symptoms (SIPS), a widely-used tool employed to determine clinical high-risk status. A total of 84 youth-caregiver pairs participated. Youth and caregiver raters displayed moderate overall agreement on SIPS-rated symptoms. Both youth and caregiver ratings of youth symptomatology contributed significantly to predicting conversion to psychosis. In addition, youth age and quality of youth-caregiver relationships appear to be related to cross-informant symptom ratings. Despite differences on individual SIPS domains, the majority of dyads agreed on youth clinical high-risk status. Results highlight the potential clinical utility of using caregiver informants to determine youth psychosis risk.

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Sponsorship

Funding for this study was provided by NARSAD Young Investigator Award (Maxine and Jack Zarrow Investigator Award to CEB), National Institute of Mental Health grants K23MH74644 (CEB), MH65079 (TDC) and NIMH P50 MH066286 (TDC and CEB), as well as donations from the International Mental Health Research Organization (IMHRO) and Staglin Music Festival for Mental Health to the UCLA Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of California – Los Angeles, 300 Medical Plaza, Suite 2265, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Shana Golembo-Smith, Tyrone D. Cannon & Carrie E. Bearden

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California – Los Angeles, 300 Medical Plaza, Suite 2265, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Peter Bachman, Tyrone D. Cannon & Carrie E. Bearden

  3. Department of Biostatistics, University of California – Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Damla Senturk

  4. Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT, 06520-8205, USA

    Tyrone D. Cannon

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  1. Shana Golembo-Smith
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  2. Peter Bachman
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Correspondence to Shana Golembo-Smith.

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Golembo-Smith, S., Bachman, P., Senturk, D. et al. Youth-caregiver Agreement on Clinical High-risk Symptoms of Psychosis. J Abnorm Child Psychol 42, 649–658 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9809-x

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