RESEARCH ARTICLE
Quick Identification of the Risk of Psychosis: The Italian Version of the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief
Antonio Preti1, 2, 3, *, Andrea Raballo4, Georgios D. Kotzalidis5, Rosanna Scanu2, Tamara Muratore2, Mersia Gabbrielli2, Debora Tronci2, Carmelo Masala2, Donatella Rita Petretto2, Mauro G. Carta1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 14
First Page: 120
Last Page: 131
Publisher ID: CPEMH-14-120
DOI: 10.2174/1745017901814010154
Article History:
Received Date: 16/02/2018Revision Received Date: 18/04/2018
Acceptance Date: 23/04/2018
Electronic publication date: 23/05/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Diagnosing people during the prodromal phase of an incipient psychosis can improve the chance of better outcome. In busy clinical settings, the ideal tool is a brief, easy-to-complete self-report questionnaire.
Objective:
To test the psychometric properties of the Italian version of one of the most used screening tools for the identification of the risk of psychosis, the Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief (PQ-B).
Methods:
Cross-sectional design. A convenience sample of college students was enrolled via snowball procedure (n=243; men: 45%). After understanding and signing the consent form, the participants received a booklet containing the following questionnaires: the 21-item Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief (PQ-B); the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and the 74-item Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to assess the capacity of the PQ-B to identify individuals at risk of psychosis as independently defined based on the combination of GHQ-12 and SPQ thresholds.
Results:
The Italian version of the PQ-B revealed good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and adequate convergent and divergent validity. The Youden method retrieved a cut-off = 7 for the PQ-B frequency score and a cut-off = 22 for the PQ-B distress score. Both PQ-B scores had a perfect (99%) negative predictive value.
Conclusion:
The PQ-B is a promising screening tool in two-stage protocols. The major advantage of the PQ-B is to exclude cases that are unlikely to be at risk of psychosis.
