Psychotic-like symptoms in adolescents of the general population

Abstract

Psychotic-like experiences in non-clinical samples have been described. These experiences may evolve towards different outcomes in the long term ranging from social impairments to schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The emergence of occasional psychotic experiences or psychotic-like symptoms in the general population opens possibilities for understanding the mechanisms and risk factors for schizotypy and schizophrenic spectrum disorders. The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of positive, negative and depressive psychotic-like symptoms in a sample of 777 adolescents of the general population, using a self-report scale. Results confirmed the presence of psychotic-like symptoms in the sample analyzed. All three dimensions of symptoms were significantly intercorrelated. An increase in depressive symptoms also increased positive and negative dimension scores. Gender differences were found in the depressive dimension scores.