Shared and nonshared symptoms in youth-onset psychosis and ADHD.
OBJECTIVE
We compared ratings of behavior and attention problems between youth-onset psychosis and ADHD, two disorders in which attentional impairments play a key role, and examined the effect of psychostimulant use on age of onset in psychosis.


METHODS
Parent and teacher ratings of behavioral problems and ADHD symptoms were collected using the Achenbach CBCL, TRF, and SNAP-IV Teacher Rating Scales on 42 participants with psychosis, 36 with ADHD and 57 controls (ages 8-19).


CONCLUSIONS
Results suggested that academic, externalizing, and attention problems reflect symptoms shared between the disorders, whereas internalizing, social and thought problems reflect factors that differ between disorders. Furthermore, participants with psychosis who had been prescribed psychostimulants had a younger age of onset of psychotic symptoms than those who had not. This difference could reflect dissimilarities in symptom severity symptom between subgroups or potentially harmful effects of psychostimulants in individuals predisposed to develop psychosis.
Karatekin
Canan
C
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. karat004@umn.edu
White
Tonya
T
Bingham
Christopher
C
D000293:Adolescent; D017668:Age of Onset; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult