Reanalysis of SCOR and Anxiety Measures in the Israeli High-risk Study

Abstract

In an earlier study, skin conductance orienting response (SCOR) and anxiety measures obtained when the subjects of the Israeli High-Risk Study were 11 years old were analyzed, using adult diagnostic information, when the subjects were 26 years old. The present study considers similar data obtained from most of this sample when the subjects were 16 years old. As in the earlier analysis, those subjects who would receive a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis at 26 had higher anxiety ratings at age 16. Nondiagnosed index subjects also had significantly higher anxiety ratings than the nondiagnosed controls. The subjects who would receive affective spectrum diagnoses at age 26 had the most hyporesponsive SCORs, as predicted, while the subjects who would later be diagnosed in the schizophrenia spectrum had an unexpected hyperresponsive SCOR to the dishabituation tone in a habituation series. Further consideration of the long-term stability of SCORs seems necessary; they may be related to the developing psychopathological processes.

Prevalence of Comorbid Anxiety Disorders in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: A Literature Review

“…This is consistent with findings from the longitudinal Israeli High-Risk Study [101], showing that subjects who later developed schizophrenia had higher anxiety ratings at the age of 11 and 16 than those who did not. Goodwin et al [102] also found that early neuroticism may be a precursor to the onset of psychotic symptoms, consistent with findings of Lewis et al [43] and Gardner [30] (for males only).…”

“…There is some support for this operating in some patients, notably from longitudinal studies showing premorbid anxiety symptoms in children who go on the develop schizophrenia (e.g., the Israeli High Risk project [101], the Christchurch (New Zealand) cohort study of Goodwin et al [102], and the 1946 British Birth Cohort [103]). However, the temporality of association in the studies reviewed here is not consistent, and it is clear that in many cases the psychotic symptoms antedate the anxiety symptoms.…”

Electrodermal Activity

“…At about 26 years of age, 90 participants were reevaluated, 27 of whom (mostly from the high-risk group) were diagnosed as schizophrenic according to DSM-III. Results of the differences in SC-ORs between the groups and additional results from an investigation of the children at the age of 16 were reported by Kugelmass et al (1995). To-become schizophrenics had significantly higher anxiety ratings at age 16 than the nondiagnosed participants.…”

Pathogenesis of schizophrenia: a psychopathological perspective

“…Although this study cannot address the question of whether a greater risk accrues from anxiety (Garety et al , 2001; Turnbull & Bebbington, 2001) or depression (Birchwood & Iqbal, 1998), a key role for anxiety is in keeping with other results from the Edinburgh High Risk Study, in which the best predictors of illness from mothers’ accounts recorded on the Childhood Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach et al , 1991) were withdrawn and deviant behaviour, which includes anxiety and depression (Miller et al , 2002). Using different measures, participants in the Israeli high-risk study who subsequently progressed to a schizophrenic-spectrum diagnosis were found to have had higher pre-illness levels of anxiety assessed at age 16 years (Kugelmass et al , 1995). Thus, anxiety phenomena may be an inherent part of the pathophysiological process mediating the schizophrenic syndrome.…”