Introduction: Our purpose was to validate the discriminative of the CAARMS in an Psychiatric outpatient clinic for emerging psychological disorders (PREPP Program).
Methods: The original version of the Comprehensive Assessment for At Risk Mental State was translated and back translated and submitted to the original authors. Then, we first compare three groups of subjects (patients referred as prodomal, n = 27, with first episode, n = 22 and a normal controls group n = 15). In a second step, 18−25 years old patients referring with emerging psychological disorders were consecutively explored and enrolled in a prospective study.
Results: We compared 'inclusion groups' to groups issued from the CAARMS. CAARMS readily distinguished the three contrasted group of subjected. 100% of controls and 75 of first episode patients were correctly classified and total scores were significantly different across the groups. In a second step, we explore 80 patients reffered as for a emerging psychological disorders (PREPP Program) were explored and compared regarding to CAARMS criteria for sociodemographic, cognitive and clinical characterisitics and substance abuse. There was no significant difference between the groups at inclusion for sociodemographic variables, including cannabis exposure; though regular use of cannabis was higher in patients reaching the "psychosis" threshold (P: 66%) compared to at risk (AR: 53%) and not at high risk subject (NAR: 33%). Psychopathological severy also differ in the three groups. Outcome is currenty under analysis.
Discussion: This paper reports for the first time on the validation of a French version of CAARMS and confirm its discriminative value.