IMPORTANCE Up to 1 million persons die by suicide annually. However, a lack of risk markers makes suicide risk assessment one of the most difficult areas of clinical practice. OBJECTIVE To assess psychotic symptoms (attenuated or frank) as a clinical marker of risk for suicide attempt. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Prospective cohort study of 1112 school-based adolescents (aged 13-16 ye...

There have been few epidemiological surveys to establish prevalence and associated risk factors of psychosis in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reports a population-based epidemiological survey in rural Kenya of the prevalence of psychotic symptoms and their relationship with demographic, socio-economic and other risk factors. A random sample of 2% of all adults living in Maseno, Kisumu District...

CONTEXT Psychotic symptoms are commonly experienced in nonclinical populations of adolescents and adults and have been shown to be predictive of later schizophreniform disorders. Associations between adverse experiences in childhood and psychotic symptoms in adulthood have been demonstrated. OBJECTIVE To examine whether peer victimization is associated with psychotic symptoms in a population-...

Data on a lay interviewer's use of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) to ascertain lifetime psychotic symptoms in patients where these experiences have been previously documented is reported. The subjects in this study had been identified as patients 11 years previously and had participated in several followup research interviews with research psychiatrists. Frequent failure to recall and/...

BACKGROUND It has long been acknowledged that hearing impairment may increase the risk for psychotic experiences. Recent work suggests that young people in particular may be at risk, indicating a possible developmental mechanism. METHOD The hypothesis that individuals exposed to hearing impairment in early adolescence would display the highest risk for psychotic symptoms was examined in a pro...

BACKGROUND Psychotic symptoms occur more frequently in the general population than psychotic disorder and index risk for psychopathology. Multiple studies have reported on the prevalence of these symptoms using self-report questionnaires or clinical interviews but there is a lack of consensus about the prevalence of psychotic symptoms among children and adolescents. METHOD We conducted a syst...

BACKGROUND Childhood risk factors for the development of adult schizophrenia have proved to have only modest and nonspecific effects, and most seem unrelated to the adult phenotype. We report the first direct examination of the longitudinal relationship between psychotic symptoms in childhood and adulthood. METHODS We analyzed prospective data from a birth cohort (N = 761), in which children ...

Borderline Personality Disorder has received diagnostic respectability with its inclusion in DSM III. Unfortunately, its popularity has outstripped its clarity. It is receiving widespread clinical attention, yet its phenomenology remains unclear. This paper describes a study of brief psychotic and depressive symptoms in inpatients with narrowly defined Borderline Personality Disorder. Almost al...

Dreaming and psychosis share important features, such as intrinsic sense perceptions independent of external stimulation, and a general lack of criticism that is associated with reduced frontal cerebral activity. Awareness of dreaming while a dream is happening defines lucid dreaming (LD), a state in which the prefrontal cortex is more active than during regular dreaming. For this reason, LD ha...