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Typology of people with first‐episode psychosis
Author(s) -
Subramaniam Mythily,
Zheng Huili,
Soh Pauline,
Poon Lye Yin,
Vaingankar Janhavi A.,
Chong Siow Ann,
Verma Swapna
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
early intervention in psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.087
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1751-7893
pISSN - 1751-7885
DOI - 10.1111/eip.12178
Subject(s) - typology , cluster (spacecraft) , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , psychosis , positive and negative syndrome scale , psychiatry , psychology , intervention (counseling) , clinical psychology , medicine , archaeology , computer science , history , programming language
Aims The aim of the current study was to create a typology of patients with first‐episode psychosis based on sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, service use and outcomes using cluster analysis. Methods Data from all respondents who were accepted into the Early Psychosis Intervention Programme ( EPIP ), Singapore from 2007 to 2011 were analysed. A two‐step clustering method was carried out to classify the patients into distinct clusters. Results Two clusters were identified. Cluster 1 comprised largely of younger people with mean age of 25.5 (6.0) years at treatment contact, who were predominantly male (55.3%), single (98.3%) and living with parents (86.3%). Cluster 1 had a higher proportion of people diagnosed with the schizophrenia spectrum disorder (71.4%) and with a positive family history of psychiatric illness. Patients in c luster 2 were generally older with a mean age of 33.6 (4.7) years and the majority were women (74.2%). Cluster 1 had people with higher Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale ( PANSS ) scores at baseline as compared with cluster 2. After a 1‐year follow up, their scores were still poorer than their counterparts in cluster 2, especially for PANSS negative score. The functioning level of people in cluster 1 showed less improvement than the people in cluster 2 after a year of treatment. Conclusions There is a compelling need to develop new therapies and intensively treat young people presenting with psychosis as this group tends to have poorer outcomes even after 1 year of treatment.