Identification of the prodromes of psychosis in a population of psychiatric service users at their first contact: correlations between prodrome-specific and non-specific psychopathology scales and with socio-occupational functioning

Background and Objectives The Scale Of Prodromal Symptoms (SOPS) and its accompanying semistructured interview, the SIPS, have been developed to assess prodromal symptoms of psychosis. It has been correlated inversely with the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) in a number of studies, a DSM-IV-derived scale to assess personal, social and occupational functioning, which has been often shown to correlate inversely with general psychopathology, as assessed through the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). Some items of the latter have been used in identifying at-risk cases in the past, but the SOPS and other screening tools for early detection of psychosis appear to be more specific at this respect. While the SOPS/SIPS are best complemented by the PANSS, the role of the BPRS at this respect has still to be assessed. We aimed to compare the Italian version of the SOPS with the BPRS in people at their first contact with a psychiatric service and to examine their concordance in inversely correlating with the GAF.