Children and adolescents at high clinical risk of psychosis are a particularly vulnerable population. In these cases, subclinical psychotic symptoms may appear, which are less intense or of a shorter duration than those observed in psychotic disorders. Although sex differences have been identified in young adults as psychosis develops, studies in children and adolescents are scarce. This is significant, since these stages are critical for brain development and sex-related factors could have differential effects.
In this study, the research team analysed the role of gender in both the manifestation of these subclinical symptoms and in their subsequent clinical evolution. The research showed that as adolescent girls at risk of psychosis age, their subclinical psychotic symptoms are less likely to go into remission compared to boys of the same age. This trend could be linked to the higher prevalence of subclinical psychotic experiences in female adolescents.
According to Inmaculada Baeza, a researcher in the IDIBAPS group Child and adolescent psychiatry and psychology and the head of the G04 group of mental health department of CIBER (CIBERSAM), ‘these results underscore the importance of considering the gender perspective when assessing and managing a high clinical risk of psychosis in order to develop more personalised and effective treatment strategies’.
The study includes a sample of 221 children and adolescents with subclinical psychotic symptoms compared to a control group of 159 age-matched healthy subjects. Though there were no differences in the rates of transition to psychosis between both sexes, the findings show that the symptoms of older adolescent girls were less likely to go into remission.
