Persistent and distressing psychotic-like experiences using adolescent brain cognitive development℠ study data

Abstract

Childhood psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) are associated with a range of impairments; a subset of children experiencing PLEs will develop psychiatric disorders, including psychotic disorders. A potential distinguishing factor between benign PLEs versus PLEs that are clinically relevant is whether PLEs are distressing and/or persistent. The current study used three waves of Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ (ABCD) study PLEs assessments to examine the extent to which persistent and/or distressing PLEs were associated with relevant baseline risk factors (e.g., cognition) and functioning/mental health service utilization domains. Four groups varying in PLE persistence and distress endorsement were created based on all available data in ABCD Release 3.0, with group membership not contingent on complete data: persistent distressing PLEs (n = 272), transient distressing PLEs (n = 298), persistent non-distressing PLEs (n = 221), and transient non-distressing PLEs (n = 536) groups. Using hierarchical linear models, results indicated youth with distressing PLEs, whether transient or persistent, showed delayed developmental milestones (β = 0.074, 95%CI:0.013,0.134) and altered structural MRI metrics (β = -0.0525, 95%CI:-0.100,-0.005). Importantly, distress interacted with PLEs persistence for the domains of functioning/mental health service utilization (β = 0.079, 95%CI:0.016,0.141), other reported psychopathology (β = 0.101, 95%CI:0.030,0.170), cognition (β = -0.052, 95%CI:0.-0.099,-0.002), and environmental adversity (β = 0.045, 95%CI:0.003,0.0.86; although no family history effects), with the interaction characterized by greatest impairment in the persistent distressing PLEs group. These results have implications for disentangling the importance of distress and persistence for PLEs with regards to impairments, including functional, pathophysiological, and environmental outcomes. These novel longitudinal data underscore that it is often only in the context of distress that persistent PLEs were related to impairments.

Figure 1.

Overview of the groups, domains, and individuals components included in analyses. Abbreviations: PLEs=psychotic-like experiences; PQ-BC=Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief Child version; CON=cingulo-opercular; CPAR=cingulo-parietal; DMN=default mode; ICV=intracranial volume; ACE=adverse childhood events.

Figure 2.

Depictions of mean score estimates and confidence intervals for each of the four groups (i.e., persistent distressing PLEs, transient distressing PLEs, persistent non-distressing PLEs, transient non-distressing PLEs) for each of the PCA-generated domains. The center of the figure depicts whether each PCA-generated domain showed a main effect of distress, main effect of persistence, and interaction effect. Abbreviations: RSFC=resting state functional connectivity.