[Is there a primary prevention of schizophrenic psychiasis?]

At first, this article comprises the innovative programme of the international "Early Detection and Intervention" research and then shows results of the "Cologne/Bonn Early Recognition - CER" project on schizophrenia, the first longterm prospective study on patients in potentially initial prodromal stages prior to the first psychotic manifestation. At re-examination at an average of 9.6 years later, 79 of 160 patients had subsequently developed a schizophrenic psychosis according to DSM-IV criteria. Prediction values for the complete range of prodromal symptoms, for 5 subsyndromes and for individual symptoms were assessed. Best prediction values with a high positive predictive power (71 - 91 %) and a low rate of false-positive predictions (7.5 - 1.9 %) were achieved for 10 symptoms and symptom complexes mainly out of the group of thought, speech and perception disturbances. As only unsatisfactory prediction values for other prodromal symptom definitions were reported, e.g. the commonly used DSM-III-R definition, empirical evidence for the possibility of diagnosing schizophrenia as early as in the initial prodromal stage, has been found for the first time. In the following, this article considers essential initiatives for the development, performance and evaluation of a promising early intervention programme based on the results found. In Germany, within the project unit "Early Recognition and Intervention" of the competence network "Schizophrenia", such a programme has been initiated. Late prodromal stages are defined by attenuated or transient psychotic symptoms and early prodromal stages by the presence of at least one of the highly predictive prodromal symptoms from the CER-study or decline in psychic functions in combination with other risk factors. Intervention strategies are a multimodal psychological programme for the intervention in early prodromal stages and a combination of psychotherapy with atypical neuroleptic drugs in the late prodromal stages. If such strategies were able to suppress the progress to first psychotic episodes, this prevention could be classified as a primary prevention, not with regard to the prodromal symptoms but to frank/manifest schizophrenia.