GPs could potentially use a psychosis risk prediction tool (P-risk) developed by researchers to detect whether their patients are at risk of experiencing psychosis. The University of Bristol team developed P-risk to help GPs identify at-risk patients as early as possible.
Psychosis is a mental health condition that might involve seeing or hearing things that other people cannot see or hear (hallucinations) and having firmly held beliefs that others do not share (delusions). Outcomes for patients experiencing psychosis are often poor and get worse the longer the condition is left untreated.
Most people with psychosis in the UK enter specialist psychosis care via a referral from their GP. However, GPs can find it difficult to detect the condition’s early features and they currently don’t have access to risk prediction tools to help them screen patients.
Read the University of Bristol's press release
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The research was funded by the NIHR School for Primary Care Research (Grant Ref 416) and supported by Bristol and London’s National Institute for Health and Care Research Biomedical Research Centres.
Paper: External validation of a prognostic model to improve prediction of psychosis: a retrospective cohort study in primary care by Sarah A Sullivan, Richard Morris, Daphne Kounali, David Kessler, Willie Hamilton, Glyn Lewis, Philippa Liford and Irwin Nazareth. British Journal of General Practice, October 2024.