Prediction of Psychosis in Youth at High Clinical Risk--also in ATS'ers?

Prediction of Psychosis in Youth at High Clinical Risk--also in ATS'ers?

news.yahoo.com

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 9 (HealthDay News) -- It may be possible to predict who will develop psychotic illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, very early in the disease process, a new study says.
#2 snippet: Results The risk of conversion to psychosis was 35%, with a decelerating rate of transition during the 21/2-year follow-up. Five features assessed at baseline contributed uniquely to the prediction of psychosis: a genetic risk for schizophrenia with recent deterioration in functioning, higher levels of unusual thought content, higher levels of suspicion/paranoia, greater social impairment, and a history of substance abuse. Prediction algorithms combining 2 or 3 of these variables resulted in dramatic increases in positive predictive power (ie, 68%-80%) compared with the prodromal criteria alone.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
archpsyc.ama-assn.org

This study I find interesting. Maybe all us paranoid "believers" are developing or have developed bipolar or schizophrenia disorder. The five factors here kill me. Higher levels of suspicion? Is this what they are going to claim when the thought police try to say we are homegrown terrorists? Very interesting in deed.
Second snippet is results from Archives of General Psychiatry. Link is below.
"--also in ATS'ers" added by OP

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Higher levels of unusual thought content

That is really a stretch.

How do you really nail that one. Higher than what? Asking for the remote control?

You do make a good point, PH about the thought police and the homegrown terrorist bit. It isn't heading in a good direction when the above statement is used as one of five criteria!

reply to post by interestedalways


If there really is a way to read peoples minds, then the ATS membership could start dropping like flies!!

Maybe they'll stick us all in some huge complex somewhere, nice matching orange jumpsuits and thought controlling headgear.

Sounds like a blast!! Sign me up!!

Monkey.

In reality that would make pretty much everyone I know unstable at some level... Crazy.

The last time I heard of criteria for potential psychopaths it was

1. Killing or harming animals

2. Arson

3. Don't remember the third, but it wasn't because you had higher levels of unusual thought content or were hyper "aware".


I can see the orange jumpsuit and Bob Barker toothbrushes now! I wonder if we can take our tinfoil hats?

Yet another thread attempting to link Conspiracy Theorists with mental illness. That's what like the fifth one in last couple weeks? Seeing it mentioned alot in the media lately as well, particularly Fox. Reminds me of the recent Wisenthal's comparison of theorists to terrorists... They already made the association Palehorse, and they just recently passed the thought crime-ish legislation to do it with the I's dotted and the T's crossed.
I refuse to be labeled as a 'Crazy Truther Terrorist Sympathizer' just because such 'truths' as I would espouse are a threat to some establishment. Whose establishment? How grand an establishment it must be that truth becomes a threat to it.

It doesn't seem strange to me that psychosis can be predicted for someone who meets the criteria listed in the quote above. While these factors are not sufficient for a diagnosis schizophrenia or even psychosis, they certainly point to the probability of someone in the prodromal phase of psychosis, schizophrenic or otherwise.

Clearly, a teenager, or anyone, whose social functioning deteriorates, become overly suspicious and is abusing drugs needs an intervention, but it should be noted that drug abuse alone can cause the other symptoms.

I'm not knocking the study, but these are things that any clinician would know and, with all the mental health information that has been available to the public for decades now, almost everyone else should know, as well.

I hope this raises awareness among parents and others who work with young people that sudden or even gradual changes in personality warrant further investigation.

Originally posted by interestedalways
The last time I heard of criteria for potential psychopaths it was

1. Killing or harming animals

2. Arson

Psychopaths and psychotics are people with two distinct disorders.

Those who used to be called psychopaths are now referred to as people with Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott

Those who used to be called psychopaths are now referred to as people with Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

Yes, there is a distinction to be made, and then there is Borderline Personality disorder which doesn't mean your on the edge of getting one, but it is it's own definition of one of the many types of psychosis.

Sheez, I can barely spell these words, and I know some people suffer with some serious tormented thinking. It just doens't seem necessary to label groups of people because of similar behaviors with all this negativity attached to it. I don't like my websurfing habits attached to mental illness that is a given.

Help is here.

[Edit: The vibrations... they were too much]

[edit on 10/1/2008 by Nyorai]

Originally posted by interestedalways
It just doens't seem necessary to label groups of people because of similar behaviors with all this negativity attached to it. I don't like my websurfing habits attached to mental illness that is a given.

Labeling can lead to a lot of problems in its own right, but referring those whose behavior and personality are undergoing changes that are not explained by situational stimuli can only benefit the person in question and those around him.

If a person in your living room suddenly jumps up and screams at the top of his lungs, gets woozy, has to sit back down, and then begins talking incessantly, rapidly and loudly might warrant a psychiatric evaluation, especially if there is no discernible external stimulus.

If, however, you're watching TV and your friend has just realized that he's matched the Powerball lottery numbers, it is quite obvious that his agitation is warranted and might even be infectious.

Simply calling someone whose behavior you don't like names, such as retard, schizo, psycho, or bipolar, which seems to be a popular word now among young people, is not very productive and even cruel.

Having someone evaluated who shows well-known signs of a prodromal phase of psychosis is a charitable thing to do.

If your friend is sitting on the couch and suddenly bolts to the bathroom where he vomits copious amounts of blood, it would be a highly negligent thing to do if you started calling him "blood-hurler" and sent him home and then called all your friends to them that "Bob" is a "blood-hurler" and he should now be ostracized.

If you called 911 and had him transported to the hospital, you might be applauded by all for your quick response to a potentially life-threatening malady.


[edit on 2008/1/10 by GradyPhilpott]

Originally posted by Nyorai

I found this rather entertaining in can you just imagine a person who is paranoid and some people want to put a chip under their skin, and want them to be watched 24/7, and other actions that would all feed their paranoia?

Originally posted by Xtrozero
I found this rather entertaining in can you just imagine a person who is paranoid and some people want to put a chip under their skin, and want them to be watched 24/7, and other actions that would all feed their paranoia?

It's a good thing that you found the post you refer to as entertaining, because the link provided in that post is to "The Onion", a satirical news site.

I hope you knew that.

www.theonion.com...

My concern is the possible application of these expanded definitions of aberrant behavior by the government as a means of population control. Dissenters could potentially be labelled mentally ill, psychotic, and a threat to society, then carted off to indefinite incarceration simply because they are speaking out against restrictive, unwarranted, un-Constitutional government policies.

Is that being paranoid?

reply to post by interestedalways


I have suffered from depression of varying degrees, and the anxiety that sometimes goes along with it.

From what I know, hyper awareness is part of anxiety, albeit quite bad anxiety.
It's an anxiety reaction to uncomfortable or difficult situations. When the adrenaline starts to course and the fight or flight response starts the subject is typically looking for danger - hence the shaking and panicky feeling that comes with an anxiety attack.

At least that's what the doc told me



[edit on 10/1/2008 by budski]

People, who are leaning towards depression or similiar emotional problems, have a high tendency to look for alternative explanations.

It is self evident, that many of them are going to come here and try to find support for what they're experiencing in some comforting belief system.

But i speak from personal experience, when i say that if only they would search for the underlying problems and solve them, the need for many of these beliefs would vanish.

It's easy to believe something that makes you feel special.

It's much harder to face your own (real) problems and try to solve them.
But it's more than worth it.

Using comforting beliefs to feel better is like modern medicine - symptomatic treatment.

For any real healing to occur, you have to remove the causes, and not just plaster them with nonsense.

Any REAL spirituality first teaches you to remove the emotional luggage, BEFORE you can dabble in anything else.

Doing it the other way around can cause even more problems, than you had in the beginning. It can even result in full blown psychosis.

I've seen it happen many times. People thought of themselves as highly spiritual, while they were only trying to feel important, because their self esteem was so very low otherwise.

[edit on 10-1-2008 by deezee]

Originally posted by interestedalways

Higher levels of unusual thought content

That is really a stretch.

How do you really nail that one. Higher than what? Asking for the remote control?

Actually it's not really a stretch. It's just one of the common traits seen in such people.

While any of them might seem meaningless by itself, a number of them together show you the probability of a person having these problems.

Besides, once you personally know such people and notice these traits yourself, it becomes very easy identifying them in others.

Originally posted by deezee
Actually it's not really a stretch. It's just one of the common traits seen in such people.

Besides, once you personally know such people and notice these traits yourself, it becomes very easy identifying them in others.

I would disagree. It is a stretch when you consider that in order for a diagnosis to happen, the clinician(etc) needs to have a valid idea of what is a usual thought process for the individual.

A person who was raised on ATS material from birth will have an 'unusual' thought process to a psychologist/psychiatrist whose main stimulii are science journals and mainstream media.

Kind of like the difference between CNN and Fox....there really is no difference, but if their audience came here, there would be a transitory phase of adjustment to the different angles available for analysis. In my opinion.

As for the last statement, I find it difficult to believe that ambiguous symptoms applied to a human necessitates a mental illness....

I hate to admit it (NOT!) but I talk to myself in the company of others(I let my company answer ), I believe in conspiracy, I get paranoid, and I'm not always the most social person. And if anyone tried to suggest that I needed a mental health evaluation and a prescription for a new pharmaceutical/psychotropic....let's just say I would bring out the charts and color coded references....

My point is...we have a proliferation of media and technology. We have an advertising industry who is hell bent on selling something to us, specifically for us, but with a generalized statement. We are being impacted like never before through environmental stimulii.

This article really begs the question...

What is 'Different Behaviour?'

[edit on 10-1-2008 by MemoryShock]

Originally posted by MemoryShock
I would disagree. It is a stretch when you consider that in order for a diagnosis to happen, the clinician(etc) needs to have a valid idea of what is a usual thought process for the individual.
.
.
This article really begs the question...
What is 'Different Behaviour?'

What i was trying to say was that, while any one of these symptoms doesn't really mean all that much, a number of them together in one individual can give a clinician a clue of what might be going on.

It's just the first filter, to see if a person should be further looked into.

But the really defining symptoms show themselves as bizzare beliefs and delusions.

Like, when a person is incapable of diferentiating between reality and imagination.

I've had personal experience with many such people and after a while i started seeing common traits. These common traits now help me identify similiar conditions in other people with a high probability.

I could make a list of them, but a psychiatrist has an even longer list and better understanding of this.

I've often heard people saying, that delusional people are just tuned into another (higher) reality. While this is true, the reality they are tuned into is imaginary.

If you were ever personally involved with any of them, you'd know what i mean.

If you want, i can ellaborate and explain why i think so in great detail, but i don't know if it belongs here.


Anyway, as i've said before, any one of these traits is not necesarily devastating and does not imply mental illness. But bizzare beliefs do.

All of us here are slightly more subceptible to theories and ideas, someone else might describe as insane. But many of us are just trying to consider all of the possibilities. Others want to believe, but this is still not really mental illness.

Of course we also have examples of real mental illness on ATS and while the percentage is higher than on boards with "normal" topics, this is to be expected for reasons i explained in my first post.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
A person who was raised on ATS material from birth will have an 'unusual' thought process to a psychologist/psychiatrist whose main stimulii are science journals and mainstream media.

This is not true.

A clinician might think that some ATSers have strange beliefs, but that has little to do with pathological thought processes, or thought disorders.

Strange beliefs are quite different from bizarre delusions, like say, thinking that one's unborn child is the offspring of an extraterrestrial.

Besides it takes more than one feature to get a diagnosis of any mental illness.

Some ATSers might be psychotic, but no one is psychotic because they are ATSers.