Do childhood psychotic experiences improve the prediction of adolescent psychopathology? A longitudinal population‐based study

AIMS (a) To investigate the utility of childhood PE as a predictor of adolescent psychopathology while accounting for three known risk factors: childhood mental disorder; traumatic experiences and poor childhood functioning, and (b) to investigate the additive effects of including childhood PE in predictive clinical model of adolescent psychopathology. METHOD The study sample comprised of 86 Irish youths who completed two waves of the "Adolescent Brain Development" study (baseline age: 11.7 and follow-up age: 15.7). At baseline, participants completed a clinical interview assessing for PE, mental disorders, traumatic experiences and global functioning in childhood. The internalizing and externalizing problems sub-scales from the Youth Self Report questionnaire were used as follow-up outcomes variables in adolescence. RESULTS Logistic regression analyses revealed that childhood PE was the only predictor significantly associated with both internalizing (univariate OR: 7.58, CI: 2.59-22.15; multivariate OR: 5.43, CI: 1.53-19.29) and externalizing (univariate OR: 11.76, CI: 3.70-37.41; multivariate OR: 30.39, CI: 5.28-174.80) problems in adolescence. All predictive models with PE significantly predicted adolescent outcomes (area under the curve range: 0.70-0.81; all P