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Improved Early Psychosis Detection System Could Halve Risk in Young People

by Iswarya on Sep 14 2020 1:23 PM

Improved Early Psychosis Detection System Could Halve Risk in Young People
New data mining method developed can pick up early risk signs of emerging psychosis in many young people, which in turn would allow to offer them preventive psychological interventions that can halve their risk of developing full-blown psychosis. The findings of the study are presented at the ECNP virtual congress.
There are various possible causes of psychosis, including trauma, substance abuse, migration, social stress, etc. It represents a significant care burden, affecting nearly 20 million people and costing Europe about €94 billion in Europe every year.

Clinical experience has revealed that the best way to handle it is to stop it developing. Over the last 25 years, experts have extensively studied to lower the disorder's risk in young people. However, there is no systematic way to detect it, and they may have missed many at-risk people.

Research leader Professor Paolo Fusar-Poli, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, stated "Prevention is the most promising way of improving young people's mental health. This generation's mental health is especially under stress, mainly facing the ongoing COVID-19 worry, and we need to intervene instantly. The future for those at risk of psychosis is to intervene before the disorders strike".

New data mining methods developed using Natural Language Processing to search medical records for those at risk of psychosis. Many medical records are relatively unstructured, with mental health information being hidden in sections that do not allow systematic research. A novel data-mining system does a more complete record search of the people who have been referred to hospital (secondary care), looking for keywords like insomnia, cocaine, weight loss, guilt, etc. The study found that prevention can halve the risk of psychosis developing.

Prof. Fusar-Poli suggested that the detection of these young people is the first step towards prevention.

Source-Medindia


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