"Prevention is better than cure", so they say. And in most branches of medicine, preventing diseases, or detecting early signs and treating them pre-emptively before the symptoms appear, is an important art.
Not in psychiatry. At least not yet. But the prospect of predicting the onset of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia, and of "early intervention" to try to prevent them, is a hot topic at the moment.
Schizophrenia and similar illnesses usually begin with a period of months or years, generally during adolescence, during which subtle symptoms gradually appear. This is called the "prodrome" or "at risk mental state". The full-blown disorder then hits later. If we could detect the prodromal phase and successfully treat it, we could save people from developing the illness. That's the plan anyway.
But many kids have "prodromal symptoms" during adolescence and never go on to get ill, so treating everyone with mild symptoms of ...
