via Speed up Sit Still:
Patrick McGorry’s ‘Ultra High Risk of Psychosis’ training DVD fails the common sense test
Is Nick Sick? by Professor Jon Jureidini
“Patrick McGorry’s CAARMS training video on how to diagnose ‘Attenuated Psychosis’ demonstrates how not to carry out a psychiatric interview and interact with young people.”Describing Nick as being at ultra-high risk of psychosis (UHR) does fail the common-sense test. Even more concerning is that Nick is labelled as having Attenuated Psychosis – in ordinary language, he is already mildly mad.
Professor McGorry justifies diagnosing young people like Nick as being at ‘ultra high risk’ because within the next 12 months they are ‘between two and four hundred times’ more likely to become psychotic than ‘the general population’.
But we must respect the ordinary everyday language meaning of ultra high risk. If I am labelled as being at ultra-high risk of something, I assume that I will probably be affected. I do not interpret that label as meaning I am simply much more at risk than my peers.
Even Professor McGorry acknowledges that nearly two-thirds of the people identified as being at ultra high risk of developing psychosis, don’t become psychotic. Independent evidence shows the conversion rate is as low as 8%. With between 64% and 92% false positives, the true ‘ultra high’ risk is the risk of being incorrectly labelled.
The pay-off for testing for UHR is simply not sufficient to justify the cost. One cost is that Nick is now being taught to see himself as sick. Who knows if this might not even increase this vulnerable young man’s risk of ultimately being diagnosed with full-blown psychosis? And as Martin Whitely points out, it stigmatises him.
But more important to me than stigmatisation is the fact that the UHR label is an unexplanation; it ignores what is going on in Nick’s life. Unexplaining is different from saying ‘I don’t know’ (something we doctors would do well to say more often). Unexplanations distract from the difficult but rewarding task of working with a young person towards finding an explanation for their stress.
Nick makes it pretty easy for the listener. He tells us about being bullied into a trade that he doesn’t want to be in, and he invites the interviewer to explore his relationship with his father. The interviewer doesn’t notice, or chooses to ignore this invitation, instead sticking to a stereotyped list of questions that generate the sterile unexplanation of UHR.
It might be argued that the interviewer would come back to this later. However, in my experience, young people prefer us to show an interest in their difficult and intimate predicaments when they first get the courage to put them into words.
I am grateful to Martin Whitely for putting the CAARMS training video into the public domain because it provides a potential teaching tool for medical students in how not to carry out a psychiatric interview and interact with young people.
1. Orygen Youth Health Centre, 2009, “Comprehensive Assessment of At Risk Mental State Training DVD“, The PACE Clinic, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne.
2. McGorry P. Right of Reply – Patrick McGorry on Early Intervention for Psychosis. December 11, 2010. http://speedupsitstill.com/reply-patrick-mcgorry-early-intervention-psychosis#more-1075
3. Professor McGorry wrote “the false positive rate [for UHR] may exceed 50-60%” McGorry P.D. ‘Is early intervention in the major psychiatric disorders justified? Yes’, BMJ 2008;337:a695 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695 (accessed 3 August 2010) Professor McGorry’s close colleague Alison Yung identified the conversion rate from UHR to first episode psychosis was 36% in an article in the Medical Journal of Australia titled Is it appropriate to treat people at high-risk of psychosis before first onset — Yes Available at https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2012/196/9/it-appropriate-treat-people-high-risk-psychosis-first-onset-yes
4. Professor David Castle, Medical Journal of Australia, 21 May 2012, Is it appropriate to treat people at high-risk of psychosis before first onset — No Available at https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2012/196/9/it-appropriate-treat-people-high-risk-psychosis-first-onset-no
