‘OUTLOOK’ – The initial phase of the project

The 1st phase of the PsyGrid Project

The proposed study aims to ascertain a large, representative cohort of people with first episode psychosis presenting to mental health services in eight research hubs of the UK MHRN. The current project is to collect data at baseline and 6 and 12 month follow up in order to identify which (i) demographic factors predict variations in rates and severity of presenting psychosis, and (ii) which demographic and clinical variables at baseline contribute to the observed variance in medium term clinical outcomes: for new cases of schizophrenia, 20% will recover completely, 15% will never recover and the remainder will have fluctuating course of persistent symptoms and acute episodes. Data will be entered onto a secure web based database.

The principal objective of OUTLOOK:

The research objective is to collect clinical data at interview from a large, multicentre sample of people presenting to mental health services with symptoms of first episode psychosis. These data will be analysed (i) to explore how rates and severity of first episode cases relate to local demographic factors; (ii) to relate baseline variables to clinical outcomes at six and twelve months' follow up.

The secondary objective of OUTLOOK:

The secondary objective is to elicit from participants their attitudes and concerns regarding a future proposal to enter their data, suitably anonymised, at a future date into a secure web−based database for further analyses.