This study will examine the association between early adverse life events and young adult psychopathology in young people who report psychotic-like experiences during adolescence. Data will be collected from up to 1,112 eighteen to twenty year olds from the Cork and Kerry regions of Ireland.
The study sample is an existing population-based cohort of young people who previously took part in the Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE) study. The SEYLE study was a pan-European study on mental health promotion interventions with 13-14 year old adolescents. As part of the study, data on adverse life events, psychotic-like experiences and other psychopathology were collected from the study sample.
This study will be undertaken in two phases. Phase 1 will involve an on-line survey which will be administered to the full study cohort. Phase 2 will involve conducting in-depth clinical interviews with young people who reported psychotic-like experiences during adolescence along with a group of matched controls. Longitudinal analyses will be made possible using data from the original SEYLE study.
This study will be one of a very small number of prospective longitudinal studies using non-clinical samples to examine the relationship between early adverse life events and psychotic-like symptoms in adolescents and young adults. Findings from this study will provide new insights into the association between types and timings of early adverse life events, psychotic-like experiences and other psychopathological outcomes in young adults. These findings will be used to inform developments in the fields of youth mental health, early psychosis detection and intervention and in the development of more refined models of the relationship between early life adversity, psychotic symptoms in adolescence and later psychopathological outcomes for young people.
