Background
psychotic symptoms, ideation, depression, anxiety
DISORDER, SECONDARY
Prevention is key to public mental health just as it is key to public health generally [In comparison to intervention research, prevention is likely to be a more effective approach for treatment, due to the difficulties in recovery from a disorder [To date few studies have focused specifically on interventions for subclinical psychotic symptoms [Given the lack of knowledge regarding the efficacy of preventing PEs using school based interventions, we opted to conduct a secondary data analysis on a pre-existing school based randomized control trial (RCT) examining a suicide ideation & behaviour intervention. The aim of our study is to investigate the potential effectiveness of three school-based interventions for preventing PEs over a one-year period. We examined prevention in two ways (1) Reduction, at a whole group level were there less PEs? & (2) Prevention, were there fewer incident PEs? Our secondary aim was to examine whether there was a change in depression and anxiety scores following these interventions in those who reported PEs at baseline.