[From fighting to preventing disease. Is such a paradigm possible for schizophrenic disorders?]

Research on early detection and early treatment of schizophrenia is not only based on findings of studies of course, outcome and therapy, but is the most obvious consequence of the nowadays dominating conceptualisation of schizophrenia. In the last decades, results of birth cohort studies as well as of genetic and psychometric "high-risk" research, of epidemiological studies and of studies of the clinical course have given starting points for the development of early detection and early intervention programmes. Such programmes will be applicable most likely at the begin of the psychotic first manifestation, but it seems possible that they can be extended to the prodromal phase or the premorbide phase. Therefore, it is important to build up early detection networks based on regional early detection centres interacting between each other via an international network. The main aim of these centres--once sensitive screening instruments are existent--should be the identification of not yet psychotic at-risk persons in the general population and, after the application of specific prediction instruments, their preventive treatment.