Proxy measures for the assessment of psychotic and affective symptoms in studies using electronic health records.

BACKGROUND: There is a lack of standardised psychometric data in electronic health record (EHR)-based research. Proxy measures of symptom severity based on patients' clinical records may be useful surrogates in mental health EHR research. AIMS: This study aimed to validate proxy tools for the short versions of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS-6), Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS-6) and Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS-6). METHOD: A cross-sectional, multicentre study was conducted in a sample of 116 patients with first-episode psychosis from 12 public hospitals in Spain. Concordance between PANSS-6, YMRS-6 and MADRS-6 scores and their respective proxies was evaluated based on information from EHR clinical notes, using a variety of statistical procedures, including multivariate tests to adjust for potential confounders. Bootstrapping techniques were used for internal validation, and an independent cohort from the Treatment and Early Intervention in Psychosis Program (TIPP-Lausanne, Switzerland) for external validation. RESULTS: The proxy versions correlated strongly with their respective standardised scales (partial correlations ranged from 0.75 to 0.84) and had good accuracy and discriminatory power in distinguishing between patients in and not in remission (percentage of patients correctly classified ranged from 83.9 to 91.4% and bootstrapped optimism-corrected area under the receiver operating characteristic curve ranged from 0.76 to 0.89), with high interrater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.81). The findings remained robust in the external validation data-set. CONCLUSIONS: The proxy instruments proposed for assessing psychotic and affective symptoms by reviewing EHR provide a feasible and reliable alternative to traditional structured psychometric procedures, and a promising methodology for real-world practice settings.

Subjective quality of life in recent onset of psychosis patients and its association with sociodemographic variables, psychotic symptoms and clinical personality traits.

AIM: There is lack of research on the study of clinical personality traits in recent onset of psychosis (ROP) patients. The aims of this research were to study the relations among psychosocial, personality and clinical characteristics in ROP patients and also the effect that significant variables had on the different domains of Quality of Life (QoL). METHODS: Data for these analyses were obtained from 81 ROP patients. The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Brief Scale were used to assess personality, symptoms and QoL. RESULTS: Correlations between the negative symptoms and the physical, psychological and social domains of QoL, and the disorganized symptoms and physical domain, were found. Furthermore, the physical, psychological and social relationship domains of QoL were lower in patients with schizoid traits and the psychological domain was lower in patients with depressive traits. In contrast, the psychological and social domains were higher in patients with histrionic traits, while the physical domain was higher for patients with narcissistic traits. Multiple linear regressions demonstrated that negative symptoms and narcissistic and depressive traits explained 16.9% of the physical domain. Narcissistic and depressive traits explained 15% of the psychological domain. Finally, the negative symptoms and histrionic traits explained 13.7% of the social domain. CONCLUSIONS: QoL seems to be better explained by negative psychotic symptoms and some clinical personality traits. Our results support the importance of integrated intervention approaches that consider personality.

Personality traits in recent-onset-of-psychosis patients compared to a control sample by gender.

Personality traits in recent onset of psychosis (ROP) patients are an under-researched area. Our aim was to examine clinical and clinically significant personality traits in ROP patients compared with a healthy control sample by gender. Data were obtained from 94 ROP patients and a control sample matched in gender and age. The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and a sociodemographic scale were used. T for independent samples, U-Mann-Whitney and Fisher tests were applied to make comparisons. All personality traits were significantly higher in ROP than control participants in the general sample, except histrionic, narcissistic, and compulsive traits which were higher in controls. Clinically significant schizoid, avoidant, dependent and antisocial personality traits were more common in the ROP than the control participants. However, histrionic clinically significant trait was more common in the control sample. In relation to the males and female samples, more significant differences were found in the male sample in comparison to their control counterparts than in the female sample. These results highlight the importance of the study of clinical personality traits in patients with ROP and the importance of viewing these differences in relation to gender because of the possible therapeutic implications.

Personality traits and psychotic symptoms in recent onset of psychosis patients.

OBJECTIVE: Personality in patients with psychosis, and particularly its relation to psychotic symptoms in recent onset of psychosis (ROP) patients, is understudied. The aims of this research were to study the relation between dimensional and categorical clinical personality traits and symptoms, as well as the effects that symptoms, sex and age have on clinically significant personality traits. METHODS: Data for these analyses were obtained from 94 ROP patients. The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale were used to assess personality and symptoms. Correlational Analysis, Mann-Whitney test, and, finally, logistic regression were carried out. RESULTS: The negative dimension was higher in patients with schizoid traits. The excited dimension was lower for those with avoidant and depressive traits. The anxiety and depression dimension was higher for patients with dependent traits. The positive dimension was lower for patients with histrionic and higher for patients with compulsive traits. Logistic regression demonstrated that gender and the positive and negative dimensions explained 35.9% of the variance of the schizoid trait. The excited dimension explained 9.1% of the variance of avoidant trait. The anxiety and depression dimension and age explained 31.3% of the dependent trait. Gender explained 11.6% of the histrionic trait, 14.5% of the narcissistic trait and 11.6% of the paranoid trait. Finally gender and positive dimension explained 16.1% of the compulsive trait. CONCLUSIONS: The study highlights the importance of studying personality in patients with psychosis as it broadens understating of the patients themselves and the symptoms suffered.