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BACKGROUND: Childhood adversity has been associated with onset of psychosis in adulthood but these studies have used only general definitions of this environmental risk indicator. Therefore, we sought to explore the prevalence of more specific adverse childhood experiences amongst those with and without psychotic disorders using detailed assessments in a large epidemiological case-control sample (AESOP). METHOD: Data were collected on 182 first-presentation psychosis cases and 246 geographically matched controls in two UK centres. Information relating to the timing and frequency of exposure to different types of childhood adversity (neglect, antipathy, physical and sexual abuse, local authority care, disrupted living arrangements and lack of supportive figure) was obtained using the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Questionnaire. RESULTS: Psychosis cases were three times more likely to report severe physical abuse from the mother that commenced prior to 12 years of age, even after adjustment for other significant forms of adversity and demographic confounders. A non-significant trend was also evident for greater prevalence of reported severe maternal antipathy amongst those with psychosis. Associations with maternal neglect and childhood sexual abuse disappeared after adjusting for maternal physical abuse and antipathy. Paternal maltreatment and other forms of adversity were not associated with psychosis nor was there evidence of a dose-response effect. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that only specific adverse childhood experiences are associated with psychotic disorders and only in a minority of cases. If replicated, this greater precision will ensure that research into the mechanisms underlying the pathway from childhood adversity to psychosis is more fruitful.

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BACKGROUND: Several studies have suggested that neuropsychological and structural brain deficits are implicated in poor insight. Few insight studies however have combined neurocognitive and structural neuroanatomical measures. AIMS: Focusing on the ability to relabel psychotic symptoms as pathological, we examined insight, brain structure and neurocognition in first-onset psychosis.METHOD: Voxel-based magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired from 82 individuals with psychosis and 91 controls assessed with a brief neuropsychological test battery. Insight was measured using the Schedule for the Assessment of Insight. RESULTS: The principal analysis showed reduced general neuropsychological function was linked to poor symptom relabelling ability. A subsequent between-psychosis group analysis found those with no symptom relabelling ability had significant global and regional grey matter deficits primarily located at the posterior cingulate gyrus and right precuneus/cuneus. CONCLUSIONS: The cingulate gyrus (as part of a midline cortical system) along with right hemisphere regions may be involved in illness and symptom self-appraisal in first-onset psychosis.

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BACKGROUND: It remains unclear if the excess of neurological soft signs, or of certain types of neurological soft signs, is common to all psychoses, and whether this excess is simply an epiphenomenon of the lower general cognitive ability present in psychosis. AIMS: To investigate whether an excess of neurological soft signs is independent of diagnosis (schizophrenia v. affective psychosis) and cognitive ability (IQ). METHOD: Evaluation of types of neurological soft signs in a prospective cohort of all individuals presenting with psychoses over 2 years (n=310), and in a control group from the general population (n=239). RESULTS: Primary (P<0.001), motor coordination (P<0.001), and motor sequencing (P<0.001) sign scores were significantly higher in people with any psychosis than in the control group. However, only primary and motor coordination scores remained higher when individuals with psychosis and controls were matched for premorbid and current IQ. CONCLUSIONS: Higher rates of primary and motor coordination signs are not associated with lower cognitive ability, and are specific to the presence of psychosis.

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BACKGROUND: People from Black ethnic groups (African-Caribbean and Black African) are more prone to develop psychosis in Western countries. This excess might be explained by perceptions of disadvantage. AIMS: To investigate whether the higher incidence of psychosis in Black people is mediated by perceptions of disadvantage. METHOD: A population-based incidence and case-control study of first-episode psychosis (Aetiology and Ethnicity in Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses (AESOP)). A total of 482 participants answered questions about perceived disadvantage. RESULTS: Black ethnic groups had a higher incidence of psychosis (OR= 4.7, 95 per cent CI 3.1-7.2). After controlling for religious affiliation, social class and unemployment, the association of ethnicity with psychosis was attenuated (OR=3.0, 95 per cent CI 1.6-5.4) by perceptions of disadvantage. Participants in the Black non-psychosis group often attributed their disadvantage to racism, whereas Black people in the psychosis group attributed it to their own situation. CONCLUSIONS: Perceived disadvantage is partly associated with the excess of psychosis among Black people living in the UK. This may have implications for primary prevention.

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BACKGROUND: Grey matter and other structural brain abnormalities are consistently reported in first-onset schizophrenia, but less is known about the extent of neuroanatomical changes in first-onset affective psychosis. AIMS: To determine which brain abnormalities are specific to (a) schizophrenia and (b) affective psychosis. METHOD: We obtained dual-echo (proton density/T2-weighted) magnetic resonance images and carried out voxel-based analysis on the images of 73 patients with first-episode psychosis (schizophrenia n=44, affective psychosis n=29) and 58 healthy controls. RESULTS: Both patients with schizophrenia and patients with affective psychosis had enlarged lateral and third ventricle volumes. Regional cortical grey matter reductions (including bilateral anterior cingulate gyrus, left insula and left fusiform gyrus) were evident in affective psychosis but not in schizophrenia, although patients with schizophrenia displayed decreased hippocampal grey matter and increased striatal grey matter at a more liberal statistical threshold. CONCLUSIONS: Both schizophrenia and affective psychosis are associated with volumetric abnormalities at the onset of frank psychosis, with some of these evident in common brain areas.

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CONTEXT Convention suggests uniformity of incidence of schizophrenia and other psychoses; variation would have implications for their causes and biological characteristics. OBJECTIVE To investigate variability in the incidence of psychotic syndromes in terms of place, ethnicity, age, and sex. DESIGN Three-center, prospective, comprehensive survey of clinically relevant first-onset psychotic syndromes over a 2-year period (1997-1999). Census data provided the denominator. SETTING Southeast London, Nottingham, and Bristol, England. PARTICIPANTS One million six hundred thousand person-years yielded 568 subjects aged 16 to 64 years with clinically relevant psychotic syndromes. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The World Health Organization Psychosis Screen and the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry to classify, blind to ethnicity, all DSM-IV psychotic syndromes and the subclasses of schizophrenia, other nonaffective disorders, affective disorders, and substance-induced psychosis.

RESULTS All syndromes showed a characteristic age distribution. Schizophrenia was significantly more common in men (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 2.3 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.7-3.1]); affective disorders occurred equally in men and women (IRR, 1.0 [95% CI, 0.7-1.3]). All psychoses were more common in the black and minority ethnic group (crude IRR, 3.6 [95% CI, 3.0-4.2]). Differences in age, sex, and study center accounted for approximately a quarter of this effect (adjusted IRR, 2.9 [95% CI, 2.4-3.5]) in each psychosis outcome. The age-sex standardized incidence rate for all psychoses was higher in Southeast London (IRR, 49.4 [95% CI, 43.6-55.3]) than Nottingham (IRR, 23.9 [95% CI, 20.6-27.2]) or Bristol (IRR, 20.4 [95% CI, 15.1-25.7]). Rates of all outcomes except affective disorders remained significantly higher in Southeast London when the model was expanded to control for ethnicity. CONCLUSIONS There is significant and independent variation of incidence of schizophrenia and other psychoses in terms of sex, age, ethnicity, and place. This confirms that environmental effects at the individual, and perhaps neighborhood level, may interact together and with genetic factors in the etiology of psychosis.

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BACKGROUND: There is a common assumption that Black patients with a psychotic mental illness experience longer treatment delays during a first episode. We sought to investigate this issue in a large cohort of patients with a first episode of psychosis. METHOD: All patients with a first episode of psychosis presenting to secondary mental health services within tightly defined catchment areas in south-east London and Nottingham over a 2-year period were included in the study. Data relating to duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) and clinical and sociodemographic characteristics were collected from patients, relatives and case-notes. RESULTS: There was no evidence that African-Caribbean or Black African patients experienced longer periods of untreated psychosis than White British patients prior to first contact with services. There was evidence that Black African patients experienced shorter periods of untreated psychosis than White British patients. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to what is commonly assumed, our study suggests that Black patients with a psychotic mental illness do not experience longer treatment delays prior to first contact with services than White British patients. This suggests that strategies to reduce treatment delays targeted specifically at Black patients will be of limited value.

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Subjects at their first psychotic episode show an enlarged volume of the pituitary gland, but whether this is due to hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis hyperactivity, or to stimulation of the prolactin-secreting cells by antipsychotic treatment, is unclear. We measured pituitary volume, using 1.5-mm, coronal, 1.5 T, high-resolution MRI images, in 78 patients at the first psychotic episode and 78age- and gender-matched healthy controls. In all, 18 patients were antipsychotic-free (12 of these were antipsychotic-naý¨ve), 26 werereceiving atypical antipsychotics, and 33 were receiving typical antipsychotics. As hypothesized, patients had a larger pituitary volume than controls (+22percent , p=0.001). When divided by antipsychotic treatment, and compared to controls, the pituitary volume was 15 percent larger in antipsychotic-free patients (p¼0.028), 17 percent larger in patients receiving atypicals (p¼0.01), and 30 percent larger in patients receiving typicals (p=0.001). Patients receiving typicals not only had the largest pituitary volume compared to controls but also showed a trend for a larger pituitary volume compared to the other patients grouped together (11 percent, p¼0.08). When divided by diagnosis, and compared to controls, the pituitary volume was 24 percent larger in patients with schizophrenia/schizophreniform disorder (n¼40, p=0.001), 19 percent larger in depressed patients (n¼13, p¼0.022), 16 percent larger in bipolar patients (n¼16, p¼0.037), and 12 percent larger in those with other psychoses (n¼9, p¼0.2). In conclusion, the first-episode of a psychotic disorder is associated with a larger pituitary independently of the presenceof antipsychotic treatment, and this could be due to activation of the HPA axis. Typical antipsychotics exert an additional enlarging effecton pituitary volume, likely to be related to activation of prolactin-secreting cells...

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BACKGROUND: Many studies have found high levels of compulsory admission to psychiatric hospital in the UK among African–Caribbean and Black African patients with a psychotic illness. AIMS: To establish whether African–Caribbean and Black African ethnicity is associated with compulsory admission in an epidemiological sample of patients with a first episode of psychosis drawn from two UK centres. METHOD: All patients with a first episode of psychosis who made contact with psychiatric services over a 2-year period and were living in defined areas were included in the (ÆSOP) study. For this analysis we included all White British, other White, African–Caribbean and Black African patients from the ÆSOP sampling frame. Clinical, socio-demographic and pathways to care data were collected from patients, relatives and case notes. RESULTS: African–Caribbean patients were significantly more likely to be compulsorily admitted than White British patients, as were Black African patients. African–Caribbean men were the most likely to be compulsorily admitted. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that factors are operating at or prior to first presentation to increase the risk of compulsory admission among African–Caribbean and Black African patients.

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BACKGROUND: Previous research has found that African–Caribbean and Black African patients are likely to come into contact with mental health services via more negative routes, when compared with White patients. We sought to investigate pathways to mental health care and ethnicityin a sample of patients with a first episode of psychosis drawn from two UK centres. METHOD: We included all White British, other White, African–Caribbean and Black African patients with a first episode of psychosis who made contact with psychiatric services over a 2-year period and were living in defined areas. Clinical, socio-demographic and pathways to care data were collected from patients, relatives and case notes. RESULTS: Compared with White British patients, general practitioner referral was less frequent for both African–Caribbean and Black African patients and referral by a criminal justice agency was more common. With the exception of criminal justice referrals for Black African patients, these findings remained significant after adjusting for potential confounders. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that factors are operating during a first episode of psychosis to increase the risk that the pathway to care for Black patients will involve non-health professionals.

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