What have we learned from research into first-episode psychosis?

A new stage in the conceptualisation of schizophrenia has begun. It is defined by greater optimism for the future for those who suffer from this disease, a future that is less damaging and fatalistic as the one postulated up until very recently. Today psychiatry stands in the middle of a crossroads. Research has achieved great advances and the time to consolidate an important qualitative change in the vision of psychiatric disorders in general and schizophrenia in particular has arrived. Proposals such as those in the controversial new edition of the DSM5 or positions such as that of Jeffrey Lieberman, President of the Americana Psychiatric Association, call for the same thing. The vertiginous accumulation of new facts and evidence being incorporated progressively into clinical practice has led to a wave of renewal. We colloquially label this new stage with the ‘‘re’’ in schizophrenia, there having been new initiatives of reformulation, reconceptualisation, reassessment and even new proposals for alternative names or for renaming the disorder in the last several years, which are added to such ‘‘classic’’ ideas like that of Colodrón.