Abstract
Background:Diagnosing people during the prodromal phase of an incipient psychosis can improve the chance of better outcome. In busy clinical settings, the ideal tool is a brief, easy-to-complete self-report questionnaire.Objective:To test the psychometric properties of the Italian version of one of the most used screening tools for the identification of the risk of psychosis, the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief (PQ-B).Methods:Cross-sectional design. A convenience sample of college students was enrolled via snowball procedure (n=243; men: 45%). After understanding and signing the consent form, the participants received a booklet containing the following questionnaires: the 21-item Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief (PQ-B); the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and the 74-item Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to assess the capacity of the PQ-B to identify individuals at risk of psychosis as independently defined based on the combination of GHQ-12 and SPQ thresholds.Results:The Italian version of the PQ-B revealed good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and adequate convergent and divergent validity. The Youden method retrieved a cut-off = 7 for the PQ-B frequency score and a cut-off = 22 for the PQ-B distress score. Both PQ-B scores had a perfect (99%) negative predictive value.Conclusion:The PQ-B is a promising screening tool in two-stage protocols. The major advantage of the PQ-B is to exclude cases that are unlikely to be at risk of psychosis.
Highlights
The early intervention model in psychiatry posits that detection and treatment of people in their early stage of psychosis can greatly improve the course of the condition [1, 2]
The major advantage of the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief (PQ-B) is to exclude cases that are unlikely to be at risk of psychosis
No differences were observed in the distribution of Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ)-B scores by age or socioeconomic status, and a barely significant difference was found for the PQ-B distress score by gender, negligible in terms of effect size (Hedges’ g: -0.17; 95%Confidence Interval (CI): -0.42 to 0.09)
Summary
The early intervention model in psychiatry posits that detection and treatment of people in their early stage of psychosis can greatly improve the course of the condition [1, 2]. Diagnosing people during the prodromal phase of an incipient psychosis can improve its outcome. For this reason, several tools have been developed to allow the early detection of people with high at-risk mental states (HARMS) for psychosis, in order to increase their early access to treatment [7, 8]. Diagnosing people during the prodromal phase of an incipient psychosis can improve the chance of better outcome. The ideal tool is a brief, easy-to-complete self-report questionnaire
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