Psychosis symptom trajectories across childhood and adolescence in three longitudinal studies: An integrative data analysis with mixture modeling.

Musci, R. J., Kush, J. M., Masyn, K. E., Esmaeili, M. A., Susukida, R., Goulter, N., McMahon, R. J., Eddy, M., Ialongo, N. S., Tolan, P., & Wilcox, H. C. (under review). Psychosis symptom trajectories across childhood and adolescence in three longitudinal studies: An integrative data analysis with mixture modeling.    

Abstract: Psychotic like experiences (PLEs) are common throughout childhood and the presence of these experiences is a significant risk factor for poor mental health later in development. Given the association of PLEs with a broad number of mental health diagnoses, these experiences serve as an important malleable target for early preventive interventions. However, much is not known about these experiences across childhood. While these experiences may be common, longitudinal measurement in non-clinical settings is not. Therefore, in order to explore longitudinal trajectories of PLEs in childhood, we harmonized three school-based randomized control trials with longitudinal follow-up to identify heterogeneity in trajectories of these experiences. In an integrative data analysis using growth mixture modeling, we identified three latent trajectory classes. One trajectory class was characterized by persistent PLEs, one was characterized by high initial probabilities but improving across the analytic period, and one was characterized by no reports of PLEs. Overall, those in the improving class were more likely to be male with higher levels of aggressive and disruptive behavior at baseline. This integrative data analysis demonstrates the complexity around pooling data across multiple studies to estimate longitudinal mixture models.

Keywords:
Aggressive Behavior, Disruptive Behavior, mental health,