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Published on: November 21, 2013
An empirical method to identify patterns in the course of psychotic episodes of people with schizophrenia
Lorenzo Burti1, Mariangela Mazzi, Maarten Koeter
1Section of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, Department of Medicine and Public Health, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. lorenzo.burti@univr.it
Objective:
This paper illustrates the process of constructing, selecting and applying simple measures in order to empirically derive patterns of course of psychotic episodes in schizophrenia.
Method:
Data were collected with a composite instrument constructed for a multi-centre, follow-up randomized controlled trial of adherence therapy for people with schizophrenia. The instrument included a retrospective weekly assessment of psychotic/non-psychotic status, which was used to derive the measures, and the DSM-IV course specifiers.
Results:
The measures discriminated well between different course patterns and identified homogeneous clusters of subjects which correlated with the groups derived from the DSM-IV course specifiers.
Conclusions:
The new measures provide an empirical basis to identify specific patterns of course and to differentiate patients according to pre-defined criteria. They can be used in follow-up studies as measures of outcome, to investigate correlations between variables and to identify potential predictors of outcome.
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