Factors impacting intent to seek treatment within youth at clinical high risk for psychosis.

Existing work indicates that there is unmet need for care in those at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. However, research on the factors that drive treatment seeking behaviors in this population is limited. Further, it is unknown how help-seeking behavior in CHR individuals compares to those seen in mood disorders, who have a higher rate of treatment seeking behavior. Participants (n = 559) completed an assessment of their intent to seek mental health treatment, attenuated psychosis-risk symptoms, and psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses. Participants were divided into CHR (n = 91), Mood Disorders (MD) (n = 72), or Community Controls (CC) groups (n = 396), whose intent to seek treatment was compared. Associations between intent to seek treatment with past treatment, depression, anxiety, positive and negative symptoms, distress from symptoms, intelligence quotient (IQ) estimates, and insight were assessed in CHR individuals. Further, it was assessed how this differs for the MD group. The MD group reported higher intent to seek treatment than CHR individuals, which reported higher intent to seek treatment than the CC group. In those at CHR, previous treatment, greater depression and anxiety severity, and higher distress all independently predicted higher intent to seek treatment. Depression predicted intent to seek treatment in both MD and CHR individuals. Previous treatment predicted intent to seek treatment in those at CHR. Our findings suggest that depression and past treatment utilization are critical factors in increasing intent to seek treatment in those at CHR, potentially serving as important targets for engaging this population in treatment.

Value Representations of Spite Sensitivity in Psychosis on the Minnesota Trust Game.

BACKGROUND: Spite sensitivity provides a valuable construct to understand persecutory ideation and its underlying neural mechanisms. We examined the relationship between persecution and spite sensitivity in psychosis to identify their neural substrates. METHODS: In a 3T magnetic resonance imaging scanner, 49 participants with psychosis played the Minnesota Trust Game, in which they decided whether to take a small amount of money or trust a partner to choose between fair and unfair distributions of money. In some conditions, the partner benefited from the unfair option, while in others, the partner lost money. Participants who were untrusting in the second condition (suspiciousness) showed heightened sensitivity to spite. Behavioral measures included mistrust during the 2 conditions of the game, which were compared with Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale persecution and computational modeling. Functional connectivity and blood oxygen level-dependent analyses were also conducted on a priori regions during spite-sensitive decisions. RESULTS: Behavioral results replicated previous findings; participants who experienced more persecutory ideation trusted less, specifically in the suspiciousness condition. Functional connectivity findings showed that decreased connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex-insula and the left frontoparietal network was associated with increased persecutory ideation and estimated spite-guilt (a marker of spite sensitivity). Additionally, we found differences between conditions in caudate nucleus, medial prefrontal cortex, and lateral orbitofrontal cortex activation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide a new perspective on the origin of positive symptoms by identifying primary brain circuits that are related to both spite sensitivity and persecutory ideation.

Comparing a Computerized Digit Symbol Test to a Pen-and-Paper Classic.

Background and Hypothesis: Processing speed dysfunction is a core feature of psychosis and predictive of conversion in individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Although traditionally measured with pen-and-paper tasks, computerized digit symbol tasks are needed to meet the increasing demand for remote assessments. Therefore we: (1) assessed the relationship between traditional and computerized processing speed measurements; (2) compared effect sizes of impairment for progressive and persistent subgroups of CHR individuals on these tasks; and (3) explored causes contributing to task performance differences. Study Design: Participants included 92 CHR individuals and 60 healthy controls who completed clinical interviews, the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia Symbol Coding test, the computerized TestMyBrain Digit Symbol Matching Test, a finger-tapping task, and a self-reported motor abilities measure. Correlations, Hedges' g, and linear models were utilized, respectively, to achieve the above aims. Study Results: Task performance was strongly correlated (r = 0.505). A similar degree of impairment was seen between progressive (g = -0.541) and persistent (g = -0.417) groups on the paper version. The computerized task uniquely identified impairment for progressive individuals (g = -477), as the persistent group performed similarly to controls (g = -0.184). Motor abilities were related to the computerized version, but the paper version was more related to symptoms and psychosis risk level. Conclusions: The paper symbol coding task measures impairment throughout the CHR state, while the computerized version only identifies impairment in those with worsening symptomatology. These results may be reflective of sensitivity differences, an artifact of existing subgroups, or evidence of mechanistic differences.

Do the Components of Attenuated Positive Symptoms Truly Represent One Construct?

BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES: Psychosis-risk inventories, like the Structured Interview for Psychosis-Risk Syndromes (SIPS), utilize symptom components and coalesce the information into a single-severity rating. These components include frequency, duration, in-the-moment conviction, retrospective insight, distress, and effect on social/role functioning. While combining components distills a great deal of important information into one practical symptom rating, this approach may mask important details of the greater clinical picture. STUDY DESIGN: Individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (n = 115) were assessed with the SIPS Score Separable Components (SSSC) scale, created to accompany the SIPS positive items by dividing each item into the 7 components identified above. The latent structure of the SSSC was identified with an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The factors were followed up with validation analyses including hypothesized cognitive, functioning, and symptom measures. Finally, clinical utility analyses were conducted to understand relationships between psychosis risk and common comorbidities. STUDY RESULTS: EFA revealed that the SSSC had 3 interpretable factors with the appropriate fit (rmsr = 0.018, TLI = 0.921): Conviction (in-the-moment conviction, retrospective insight), Distress-Impairment (distress, social/role functioning), and Frequency/Duration (frequency, duration). Conviction was minimally valid, Distress-Impairment had excellent validity, and Frequency/Duration was not related to any of the candidate validators. Conviction significantly predicted elevated psychosis risk. Distress-Impairment was related to common comorbid symptoms. Notably, the factors associated more strongly with clinical features than the traditional SIPS scores. CONCLUSIONS: The SSSC offers a supplemental approach to single-severity ratings, providing useful clinical insight, mechanistic understanding, and the potential for better capturing heterogeneity in this population.

Resting-State Networks Associated with Behavioral and Self-Reported Measures of Persecutory Ideation in Psychosis.

Persecutory ideations are self-referential delusions of being the target of malevolence despite a lack of evidence. Wisner et al. (2021) found that reduced connectivity between the left frontoparietal (lFP) network and parts of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) correlated with increased persecutory behaviors among psychotic patients performing in an economic social decision-making task that can measure the anticipation of a partner's spiteful behavior. If this pattern could be observed in the resting state, it would suggest a functional-structural prior predisposing individuals to persecutory ideation. Forty-four patients in the early course of a psychotic disorder provided data for resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging across nine brain networks that included the FP network and a similar OFC region. As predicted, we found a significant and negative correlation between the lFP-OFC at rest and the level of suspicious mistrust on the decision-making task using a within-group correlational design. Additionally, self-reported persecutory ideation correlated significantly with the connectivity between the right frontoparietal (rFP) network and the OFC. We extended the previous finding of reduced connectivity between the lFP network and the OFC in psychosis patients to the resting state, and observed a possible hemispheric difference, such that greater rFP-OFC connectivity predicted elevated self-reported persecutory ideation, suggesting potential differences between the lFP and rFP roles in persecutory social interactions.

Reliability and Replicability of Implicit and Explicit Reinforcement Learning Paradigms in People With Psychotic Disorders.

BACKGROUND: Motivational deficits in people with psychosis may be a result of impairments in reinforcement learning (RL). Therefore, behavioral paradigms that can accurately measure these impairments and their change over time are essential. METHODS: We examined the reliability and replicability of 2 RL paradigms (1 implicit and 1 explicit, each with positive and negative reinforcement components) given at 2 time points to healthy controls (n = 75), and people with bipolar disorder (n = 62), schizoaffective disorder (n = 60), and schizophrenia (n = 68). RESULTS: Internal consistency was acceptable (mean α = 0.78 ± 0.15), but test-retest reliability was fair to low (mean intraclass correlation = 0.33 ± 0.25) for both implicit and explicit RL. There were no clear effects of practice for these tasks. Largely, performance on these tasks shows intact implicit and impaired explicit RL in psychosis. Symptom presentation did not relate to performance in any robust way. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings replicate previous literature showing spared implicit RL and impaired explicit reinforcement in psychosis. This suggests typical basal ganglia dopamine release, but atypical recruitment of the orbitofrontal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. However, we found that these tasks have only fair to low test-retest reliability and thus may not be useful for assessing change over time in clinical trials.

Attacking Heterogeneity in Schizophrenia by Deriving Clinical Subgroups From Widely Available Symptom Data.

Previous research has identified (1) a "deficit" subtype of schizophrenia characterized by enduring negative symptoms and diminished emotionality and (2) a "distress" subtype associated with high emotionality-including anxiety, depression, and stress sensitivity. Individuals in deficit and distress categories differ sharply in development, clinical course and behavior, and show distinct biological markers, perhaps signaling different etiologies. We tested whether deficit and distress subtypes would emerge from a simple but novel data-driven subgrouping analysis, based on Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) negative and distress symptom dimensions, and whether subgrouping was informative regarding other facets of behavior and brain function. PANSS data, and other assessments, were available for 549 people with schizophrenia diagnoses. Negative and distress symptom composite scores were used as indicators in 2-step cluster analyses, which divided the sample into low symptom (n = 301), distress (n = 121), and deficit (n = 127) subgroups. Relative to the low-symptom group, the deficit and distress subgroups had comparably higher total PANSS symptoms (Ps < .001) and were similarly functionally impaired (eg, global functioning [GAF] Ps < .001), but showed markedly different patterns on symptom, cognitive and personality variables, among others. Initial analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from a 182-participant subset of the full sample also suggested distinct patterns of neural recruitment during working memory. The field seeks more neuroscience-based systems for classifying psychiatric conditions, but these are inescapably behavioral disorders. More effective parsing of clinical and behavioral traits could identify homogeneous target groups for further neural system and molecular studies, helping to integrate clinical and neuroscience approaches.

From Sexual Desire Discrepancies to Desirable Sex: Creating the Optimal Connection.

Beginning in 2005, our team conducted a series of studies on optimal sexual experiences. We have applied our findings to develop a group therapy intervention for couples presenting with low sexual desire/frequency and sexual desire discrepancy. The goal was to improve the quality of erotic intimacy by focusing on such elements as being fully embodied during sex, increasing authenticity, trustworthiness, and vulnerability. Twenty-eight heterosexual individuals (14 couples) were seen in 16 hours of couples group therapy. Each completed the New Sexual Satisfaction Scale in pretests, posttests and six-month follow-ups. Significant differences in satisfaction (p <.001) were found in overall sample means from pretests to posttests and follow-ups. Significant differences were also found in 10 of 20 items, plus in two of three added items, including satisfaction with intensity of sexual arousal, variety, frequency, partner's initiation, and emotional opening up. Although this is a small sample, the results indicate that this intervention is effective. We interpret these findings in terms of creating just enough safety to enable couples to take erotic risks and thereby create desirable sexual intimacy.