First-degree relatives of patients with psychotic disorder have higher levels of polygenic risk (PRS) for schizophrenia and higher levels of intermediate phenotypes.

We conducted, using two different samples for discovery (n = 336 controls and 649 siblings of patients with psychotic disorder) and replication (n = 1208 controls and 1106 siblings), an analysis of association between PRS on the one hand and psychopathological and cognitive intermediate phenotypes of schizophrenia on the other in a sample at average genetic risk (healthy controls) and a sample at higher than average risk (healthy siblings of patients). Two subthreshold psychosis phenotypes, as well as a standardised measure of cognitive ability, based on a short version of the WAIS-III short form, were used. In addition, a measure of jumping to conclusion bias (replication sample only) was tested for association with PRS.

In both discovery and replication sample, evidence for an association between PRS and subthreshold psychosis phenotypes was observed in the relatives of patients, whereas in the controls no association was observed. Jumping to conclusion bias was similarly only associated with PRS in the sibling group. Cognitive ability was weakly negatively and non-significantly associated with PRS in both the sibling and the control group.

The degree of endophenotypic expression of schizophrenia polygenic risk depends on having a sibling with psychotic disorder, suggestive of underlying gene–environment interaction. Cognitive biases may better index genetic risk of disorder than traditional measures of neurocognition, which instead may reflect the population distribution of cognitive ability impacting the prognosis of psychotic disorder.

An ongoing challenge in understanding and treating personality disorders (PDs) is a significant heterogeneity in disorder expression, stemming from variability in underlying dynamic processes. These processes are commonly discussed in clinical settings, but are rarely empirically studied due to their personalized, temporal nature. The goal of the current study was to combine intensive longitudinal data collection with person-specific temporal network models to produce individualized symptom-level structures of personality pathology. These structures were then linked to traditional PD diagnoses and stress (to index daily functioning).

Using about 100 daily assessments of internalizing and externalizing domains underlying PDs (i.e. negative affect, detachment, impulsivity, hostility), a temporal network mapping approach (i.e. group iterative multiple model estimation) was used to create person-specific networks of the temporal relations among domains for 91 individuals (62.6% female) with a PD. Network characteristics were then associated with traditional PD symptomatology (controlling for mean domain levels) and with daily variation in clinically-relevant phenomena (i.e. stress).

Features of the person-specific networks predicted paranoid, borderline, narcissistic, and obsessive-PD symptom counts above average levels of the domains, in ways that align with clinical conceptualizations. They also predicted between-person variation in stress across days.

Relations among behavioral domains thought to underlie heterogeneity in PDs were indeed associated with traditional diagnostic constructs and with daily functioning (i.e. stress) in person-specific networks. Findings highlight the importance of leveraging data and models that capture person-specific, dynamic processes, and suggest that person-specific networks may have implications for precision medicine.

Although behavior therapy reduces tic severity, it is unknown whether it improves co-occurring psychiatric symptoms and functional outcomes for adults with Tourette's disorder (TD). This information is essential for effective treatment planning. This study examined the effects of behavior therapy on psychiatric symptoms and functional outcomes in older adolescents and adults with TD.

A total of 122 individuals with TD or a chronic tic disorder participated in a clinical trial comparing behavior therapy to psychoeducation and supportive therapy. At baseline, posttreatment, and follow-up visits, participants completed assessments of tic severity, co-occurring symptoms (inattention, impulsiveness, hyperactivity, anger, anxiety, depression, obsessions, and compulsions), and psychosocial functioning. We compared changes in tic severity, psychiatric symptoms, and functional outcomes using repeated measure and one-way analysis of variance.

At posttreatment, participants receiving behavior therapy reported greater reductions in obsessions compared to participants in supportive therapy ($\eta _p^2 $ = 0.04, p = 0.04). Across treatments, a positive treatment response on the Clinical Global Impression of Improvement scale was associated with a reduced disruption in family life ($\eta _p^2 $ = 0.05, p = 0.02) and improved functioning in a parental role ($\eta _p^2 $ = 0.37, p = 0.02). Participants who responded positively to eight sessions of behavior therapy had an improvement in tic severity ($\eta _p^2 $ = 0.75, p < 0.001), inattention ($\eta _p^2 $ = 0.48, p < 0.02), and functioning ($\eta _p^2 $ = 0.39–0.42, p < 0.03–0.04) at the 6-month follow-up.

Behavior therapy has a therapeutic benefit for co-occurring obsessive symptoms in the short-term, and reduces tic severity and disability in adults with TD over time. Additional treatments may be necessary to address co-occurring symptoms and improve functional outcomes.

Investigation of personality traits and pathology in large, generalizable clinical cohorts has been hindered by inconsistent assessment and failure to consider a range of personality disorders (PDs) simultaneously.

We applied natural language processing (NLP) of electronic health record notes to characterize a psychiatric inpatient cohort. A set of terms reflecting personality trait domains were derived, expanded, and then refined based on expert consensus. Latent Dirichlet allocation was used to score notes to estimate the extent to which any given note reflected PD topics. Regression models were used to examine the relationship of these estimates with sociodemographic features and length of stay.

Among 3623 patients with 4702 admissions, being male, non-white, having a low burden of medical comorbidity, being admitted through the emergency department, and having public insurance were independently associated with greater levels of disinhibition, detachment, and psychoticism. Being female, white, and having private insurance were independently associated with greater levels of negative affectivity. The presence of disinhibition, psychoticism, and negative affectivity were each significantly associated with a longer stay, while detachment was associated with a shorter stay.

Personality features can be systematically and scalably measured using NLP in the inpatient setting, and some of these features associate with length of stay. Developing treatment strategies for patients scoring high in certain personality dimensions may facilitate more efficient, targeted interventions, and may help reduce the impact of personality features on mental health service utilization.

Fatigue syndromes (FSs) affect large numbers of individuals, yet evidence from epidemiological studies on adverse outcomes, such as premature death, is limited.

Cohort study involving 385 general practices in England that contributed to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) with linked inpatient Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and Office for National Statistics (ONS) cause of death information. A total of 10 477 patients aged 15 years and above, diagnosed with a FS during 2000–2014, were individually matched with up to 20 comparator patients without a history of having a FS. Prevalence ratios (PRs) were estimated to compare the FS and comparison cohorts on clinical characteristics. Adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for subsequent adverse outcomes were estimated from stratified Cox regression models.

Among patients diagnosed with FSs, we found elevated baseline prevalence of: any psychiatric illness (PR 1.77; 95% CI 1.72–1.82), anxiety disorders (PR 1.92; 1.85–1.99), depression (PR 1.89; 1.83–1.96), psychotropic prescriptions (PR 1.68; 1.64–1.72) and comorbid physical illness (PR 1.28; 1.23–1.32). We found no significant differences in risks for: all-cause mortality (HR 0.99; 0.91–1.09), natural death (HR 0.99; 0.90–1.09), unnatural death (HR 1.00; 0.59–1.72) or suicide (HR 1.68; 0.78–3.63). We did, however, observe a significantly elevated non-fatal self-harm risk: HR 1.83; 1.56–2.15.

The absence of elevated premature mortality risk is reassuring. The raised prevalence of mental illness and increased non-fatal self-harm risk indicate a need for enhanced assessment and management of psychopathology associated with fatigue syndromes.

Patient satisfaction is a key indicator of inpatient care quality and is associated with clinical outcomes following admission. Different patient characteristics have been inconsistently linked with satisfaction. This study aims to overcome previous limitations by assessing which patient characteristics are associated with satisfaction within a large study of psychiatric inpatients conducted across five European countries.

All patients with a diagnosis of psychotic (F2), affective (F3) or anxiety/somataform (F4) disorder admitted to 57 psychiatric inpatient units in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK were included. Data were collected from medical records and face-to-face interviews, with patients approached within 2 days of admission. Satisfaction with inpatient care was measured on the Client Assessment of Treatment Scale.

Higher satisfaction scores were associated with being older, employed, living with others, having a close friend, less severe illness and a first admission. In contrast, higher education levels, comorbid personality disorder and involuntary admission were associated with lower levels of satisfaction. Although the same patient characteristics predicted satisfaction within the five countries, there were significant differences in overall satisfaction scores across countries. Compared to other countries, patients in the UK were significantly less satisfied with their inpatient care.

Having a better understanding of patient satisfaction may enable services to improve the quality of care provided as well as clinical outcomes for all patients. Across countries, the same patient characteristics predict satisfaction, suggesting that similar analytical frameworks can and should be used when assessing satisfaction both nationally and internationally.

Anxiety symptoms gradually emerge during childhood and adolescence. Individual differences in behavioral inhibition (BI), an early-childhood temperament, may shape developmental paths through which these symptoms arise. Cross-sectional research suggests that level of early-childhood BI moderates associations between later anxiety symptoms and threat-related amygdala–prefrontal cortex (PFC) circuitry function. However, no study has characterized these associations longitudinally. Here, we tested whether level of early-childhood BI predicts distinct evolving associations between amygdala–PFC function and anxiety symptoms across development.

Eighty-seven children previously assessed for BI level in early childhood provided data at ages 10 and/or 13 years, consisting of assessments of anxiety and an fMRI-based dot-probe task (including threat, happy, and neutral stimuli). Using linear-mixed-effects models, we investigated longitudinal changes in associations between anxiety symptoms and threat-related amygdala–PFC connectivity, as a function of early-childhood BI.

In children with a history of high early-childhood BI, anxiety symptoms became, with age, more negatively associated with right amygdala–left dorsolateral-PFC connectivity when attention was to be maintained on threat. In contrast, with age, low-BI children showed an increasingly positive anxiety–connectivity association during the same task condition. Behaviorally, at age 10, anxiety symptoms did not relate to fluctuations in attention bias (attention bias variability, ABV) in either group; by age 13, low-BI children showed a negative anxiety–ABV association, whereas high-BI children showed a positive anxiety–ABV association.

Early-childhood BI levels predict distinct neurodevelopmental pathways to pediatric anxiety symptoms. These pathways involve distinct relations among brain function, behavior, and anxiety symptoms, which may inform diagnosis and treatment.

Children reared in institutions experience profound deprivation that is associated with both heightened levels of psychopathology and deficits in executive functioning (EF). It is unclear whether deficits in EF among institutionally-reared children serve as a vulnerability factor that increases risk for later psychopathology. It is also unclear whether this putative association between EF and psychopathology is transdiagnostic (i.e. cuts across domains of psychopathology), or specific to a given syndrome. Thus, we examined whether global deficits in EF mediate the association between severe childhood neglect and general v. specific psychopathology in adolescence.

The sample consisted of 188 children from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a longitudinal study examining the brain and behavioral development of children reared in Romanian institutions and a comparison group of never-institutionalized children. EF was assessed at age 8, 12, and 16 using a well-validated measure of neuropsychological functioning. Psychopathology was measured as general (P) and specific internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) factors at age 12 and 16.

Institutionally-reared children had lower global EF and higher general psychopathology (P) at all ages compared to never-institutionalized children. Longitudinal path analysis revealed that the effect of institutionalization on P at age 16 operated indirectly through poorer EF from ages 8 to 12. No indirect effects involving EF were observed for INT or EXT at age 16.

We conclude that stable, global deficits in EF serve as a cognitive endophenotype that increases transdiagnostic vulnerability to psychopathology in adolescence among those who have experienced profound early neglect.

5-HT4 receptor stimulation has pro-cognitive and antidepressant-like effects in animal experimental studies; however, this pharmacological approach has not yet been tested in humans. Here we used the 5-HT4 receptor partial agonist prucalopride to assess the translatability of these effects and characterise, for the first time, the consequences of 5-HT4 receptor activation on human cognition and emotion.

Forty one healthy volunteers were randomised, double-blind, to a single dose of prucalopride (1 mg) or placebo in a parallel group design. They completed a battery of cognitive tests measuring learning and memory, emotional processing and reward sensitivity.

Prucalopride increased recall of words in a verbal learning task, increased the accuracy of recall and recognition of words in an incidental emotional memory task and increased the probability of choosing a symbol associated with a high likelihood of reward or absence of loss in a probabilistic instrumental learning task. Thus acute prucalopride produced pro-cognitive effects in healthy volunteers across three separate tasks.

These findings are a translation of the memory enhancing effects of 5-HT4 receptor agonism seen in animal studies, and lend weight to the idea that the 5-HT4 receptor could be an innovative target for the treatment of cognitive deficits associated with depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Contrary to the effects reported in animal models, prucalopride did not reveal an antidepressant profile in human measures of emotional processing.

In 2010, an important earthquake devastated Haiti and caused thousands of deaths. In a social context where women are particularly vulnerable, this cross-sectional study examined the associations between sexual assaults experienced by women before the earthquake, the earthquake exposure, the traumatic consequences, and their satisfaction of social support received.

A total of 660 women aged 18 to 86 completed questionnaires assessing exposure to the earthquake, sexual assault victimization, peritraumatic distress, Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and social support. A moderated moderation model was computed to examine associations between exposure to the earthquake, sexual assault, social support, and traumatic consequences.

Results showed that 31.06% of women were victims of sexual assault before the earthquake. They presented higher prevalence of peritraumatic distress, PTSD, and depression symptoms, compared to non-victims. The moderated-moderation model showed that sexual assault and exposure to the earthquake were positively associated with traumatic consequences (respectively, B = 0.560, p < 0.001; B = 0.196, p < 0.001), while social support was negatively associated with them (B = −0.095, p < 0.05). Results showed a triple interaction: women victim of sexual assault who were satisfied with received social support are less likely to develop traumatic consequences after being exposed to the earthquake(B = −0.141, p < 0.01).

By demonstrating the role of sexual assault in the development of mental health problems after the Haitian earthquake, this study shows the importance for clinicians to investigate interpersonal trauma experienced before or following natural disasters among survivors. Results also indicate the key role of family and communities to help survivors build resilience and coping strategies with their social support.

Psychosis spectrum disorder is a heterogeneous, multifactorial clinical phenotype, known to have a high heritability, only a minor portion of which can be explained by molecular measures of genetic variation. This study proposes that the identification of genetic variation underlying psychotic disorder may have suffered due to issues in the psychometric conceptualization of the phenotype. Here we aim to open a new line of research into the genetics of mental disorders by explicitly incorporating genes into symptom networks. Specifically, we investigate whether links between a polygenic risk score (PRS) for schizophrenia and measures of psychosis proneness can be identified in a network model.

We analyzed data from n = 2180 subjects (controls, patients diagnosed with a non-affective psychotic disorder, and the first-degree relatives of the patients). A network structure was computed to examine associations between the 42 symptoms of the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE) and the PRS for schizophrenia.

The resulting network shows that the PRS is directly connected to the spectrum of positive and depressive symptoms, with the items conspiracy and no future being more often located on predictive pathways from PRS to other symptoms.

To our knowledge, the current exploratory study provides a first application of the network framework to the field of behavior genetics research. This allows for a novel outlook on the investigation of the relations between genome-wide association study-based PRSs and symptoms of mental disorders, by focusing on the dependencies among variables.

Prior work has robustly suggested that social processes in the neighborhood (i.e. informal social control, social cohesion, norms) influence child conduct problems (CP) and related outcomes, but has yet to consider how these community-level influences interact with individual-level genetic risk for CP. The current study sought to do just this, evaluating neighborhood-level social processes as etiologic moderators of child CP for the first time.

We made use of two nested samples of child and adolescent twins within the Michigan State University Twin Registry (MSUTR): 5649 families who participated in in the Michigan Twins Project (MTP) and 1013 families who participated in the Twin Study of Behavioral and Emotional Development (TBED-C). The neighborhood social processes of informal social control, social cohesion, and norms were assessed using neighborhood sampling techniques, in which residents of each twin family's neighborhood reported on the social processes in their neighborhood. Standard biometric GxE analyses evaluated the extent to which they moderated the etiology of CP.

The ‘no moderation’ model provided the best fit to the data in nearly all cases, arguing against neighborhood social processes as etiologic moderators of youth CP.

The neighborhood social processes evaluated here do not appear to exert their effects on child CP via etiologic moderation. The documented links between neighborhood social processes and child CP are thus likely to reflect a different etiologic process. Possibilities include environmental main effects of neighborhood social processes on child CP, or genotype-environment correlations.

Reducing hospitalisation and length of stay (LOS) in hospital following first episode psychosis (FEP) is important, yet reliable measures of these outcomes and their moderators are lacking. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the proportion of FEP cases who were hospitalised after their first contact with services and the LOS in a hospital during follow-up.

Studies were identified from a systematic search across major electronic databases from inception to October 2017. Random effects meta-analyses and meta-regression analyses were conducted.

81 longitudinal studies encompassing data for 23 280 FEP patients with an average follow-up length of 7 years were included. 55% (95% CI 50.3–60.5%) of FEP cases were hospitalised at least once during follow-up with the pooled average LOS of 116.7 days (95% CI 95.1–138.3). Older age of illness onset and being in a stable relationship were associated with a lower proportion of people who were hospitalised. While the proportion of hospitalised patients has not decreased over time, LOS has, with the sharpest reduction in the latest time period. The proportion of patients hospitalised during follow-up was highest in Australia and New Zealand (78.4%) compared to Europe (58.1%) and North America (48.0%); and lowest in Asia (32.5%). Black ethnicity and longer duration of untreated psychosis were associated with longer LOS; while less severe psychotic symptoms at baseline were associated with shorter LOS.

One in two FEP cases required hospitalisation at least once during a 7-year follow-up with an average length of hospitalisation of 4 months during this period. LOS has declined over time, particularly in those countries in which it was previously longest.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are critical to developmental, diagnostic, and clinical models of antisocial behaviors (AB). However, assessments of CU traits within large-scale longitudinal and neurobiologically focused investigations remain remarkably sparse. We sought to develop a brief measure of CU traits using items from widely administered instruments that could be linked to neuroimaging, genetic, and environmental data within already existing datasets and future studies.

Data came from a large and diverse sample (n = 4525) of youth (ages~9–11) taking part in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Moderated nonlinear factor analysis was used to assess measurement invariance across sex, race, and age. We explored whether CU traits were distinct from other indicators of AB, investigated unique links with theoretically-relevant outcomes, and replicated findings in an independent sample.

The brief CU traits measure demonstrated strong psychometric properties and evidence of measurement invariance across sex, race, and age. On average, boys endorsed higher levels of CU traits than girls and CU traits were related to, yet distinguishable from other indicators of AB. The CU traits construct also exhibited expected associations with theoretically important outcomes. Study findings were also replicated across an independent sample of youth.

In a large, multi-site study, a brief measure of CU traits can be measured distinctly from other dimensions of AB. This measure provides the scientific community with a method to assess CU traits in the ABCD sample, as well as in other studies that may benefit from a brief assessment of CU.

Trans and gender diverse (TGD) young people worldwide experience high rates of poor mental health; however, these rates were unknown in Australia. In addition, how negative life events affect the mental health of TGD young people has been largely unexplored.

This paper reports on novel mental health findings of Trans Pathways, the largest study ever conducted in Australia with trans (transgender) and gender diverse young people (N = 859; aged 14–25 years). The study was an anonymous online cross-sectional survey undertaken in 2016. Logistic and linear regression models were used to test associations between mental health outcomes and negative life experiences.

TGD young people in Australia experience high levels of mental distress, including self-harming (79.7%), suicidal thoughts (82.4%), and attempting suicide (48.1%). Three in four participants had been diagnosed with depression and/or anxiety (74.6% and 72.2%, respectively). Many TGD young people had been exposed to negative experiences such as peer rejection (89.0%), precarious accommodation (22.0%), bullying (74.0%), and discrimination (68.9%). Most poor mental health outcomes were associated with negative experiences. The strongest associations were found for precarious accommodation and issues within educational settings. For example, participants with a prior suicide attempt were almost six times more likely to have experienced issues with accommodation, including homelessness.

The current results highlight the urgent need for better mental health care and provide insight into areas for targeted mental health interventions. These findings are pertinent for clinicians working with trans young people and wider society.

In youth, anxiety-depressive traits (ADT) and trait-aggression (TA) are important risk factors of exhibiting maladaptive behaviors in adulthood (i.e. violence and substance use). However, the developmental co-occurrence of these traits in youth remains unknown. We thus sought to investigate the developmental trajectories of ADT and TA within a data-driven approach. The aim was two-fold: (i) to examine the developmental trajectories of ADT and TA in youth from ages 10 to 16, and (ii) to investigate both childhood predictors and problematic outcomes of the identified joint trajectories.

The sample comprised 1354 children provided from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) Consortium. Group-based trajectory modeling was first employed to identify individual trajectory models of ADT and TA independently (from ages 10 to 16). Then, joint trajectory models were built on the found trajectories. Last, logistic regressions were used to evaluate the childhood characteristics and negative outcomes of the joint trajectory groups.

Our results showed five trajectory groups with varying levels of ADT and TA. A significant co-occurrence between ADT and TA was found in three of the trajectory groups. Notably, higher levels of childhood psychopathology and more severe/frequent childhood abuse were found in the groups with moderate to high ADT and high TA. The groups with higher ADT and high TA were also more likely to exhibit violence and substance use.

This study exposes the importance of assessing ADT and TA simultaneously and early in childhood to prevent and manage the risk of problematic behaviors in adolescence.

Studies of psychological interventions for the prevention of depression have found significant effects in the short-term, but the long-term efficacy has yet to be determined. This study evaluated the 8-year effect of a randomized controlled trial for indicated prevention of depression in female caregivers.

A total of 173 non-professional female caregivers with subclinical depressive symptoms not meeting criteria for a major depressive episode (MDE) were randomized to either a brief problem-solving intervention (n = 89) or usual-care control group (n = 84). Blinded evaluators conducted an assessment at the 8-year follow-up. The primary outcome was Depression Status, defined by diagnoses of MDE since the 1-year follow-up using the Structured Clinical Interview for the Disorders of the DSM-5. The secondary outcome was current Depressive Symptom Severity. Regression analyses were conducted to evaluate the effect of the intervention on the outcomes.

There were no significant differences in the Depression Status between the problem-solving (30.3%) and control groups (26.2%) (adjusted OR 1.25, 95% CI −0.58 to 2.69). Depressive Symptom Severity, however, was significantly lower in the problem-solving group compared to the control group at this follow-up, amounting to a small effect size of Cohen's d = 0.39 (adjusted B = −3.32, p = 0.018).

This is the first study to assess such a long-term follow-up of intervention of indicated prevention of depression. Results seem to indicate that the protective effect of the intervention became smaller over time during follow-up. Future research should replicate these results.

Identifying risk factors of individuals in a clinical-high-risk state for psychosis are vital to prevention and early intervention efforts. Among prodromal abnormalities, cognitive functioning has shown intermediate levels of impairment in CHR relative to first-episode psychosis and healthy controls, highlighting a potential role as a risk factor for transition to psychosis and other negative clinical outcomes. The current study used the AX-CPT, a brief 15-min computerized task, to determine whether cognitive control impairments in CHR at baseline could predict clinical status at 12-month follow-up.

Baseline AX-CPT data were obtained from 117 CHR individuals participating in two studies, the Early Detection, Intervention, and Prevention of Psychosis Program (EDIPPP) and the Understanding Early Psychosis Programs (EP) and used to predict clinical status at 12-month follow-up. At 12 months, 19 individuals converted to a first episode of psychosis (CHR-C), 52 remitted (CHR-R), and 46 had persistent sub-threshold symptoms (CHR-P). Binary logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression were used to test prediction models.

Baseline AX-CPT performance (d-prime context) was less impaired in CHR-R compared to CHR-P and CHR-C patient groups. AX-CPT predictive validity was robust (0.723) for discriminating converters v. non-converters, and even greater (0.771) when predicting CHR three subgroups.

These longitudinal outcome data indicate that cognitive control deficits as measured by AX-CPT d-prime context are a strong predictor of clinical outcome in CHR individuals. The AX-CPT is brief, easily implemented and cost-effective measure that may be valuable for large-scale prediction efforts.

The USA is currently enduring an opioid crisis. Identifying cost-effective, easy-to-implement behavioral measures that predict treatment outcomes in opioid misusers is a crucial scientific, therapeutic, and epidemiological goal.

The current study used a mixed cross-sectional and longitudinal design to test whether a behavioral choice task, previously validated in stimulant users, was associated with increased opioid misuse severity at baseline, and whether it predicted change in opioid misuse severity at follow-up. At baseline, data from 100 prescription opioid-treated chronic pain patients were analyzed; at follow-up, data were analyzed in 34 of these participants who were non-misusers at baseline. During the choice task, participants chose under probabilistic contingencies whether to view opioid-related images in comparison with affectively pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral images. Following previous procedures, we also assessed insight into choice behavior, operationalized as whether (yes/no) participants correctly self-reported the image category they chose most often.

At baseline, the higher choice for viewing opioid images in direct comparison with pleasant images was associated with opioid misuse and impaired insight into choice behavior; the combination of these produced especially elevated opioid-related choice behavior. In longitudinal analyses of individuals who were initially non-misusers, higher baseline opioid v. pleasant choice behavior predicted more opioid misuse behaviors at follow-up.

These results indicate that greater relative allocation of behavior toward opioid stimuli and away from stimuli depicting natural reinforcement is associated with concurrent opioid misuse and portends vulnerability toward future misuse. The choice task may provide important medical information to guide opioid-prescribing practices.

We aimed to spatially describe mental illness prevalence in England at small-area geographical level, as measured by prevalence of depression, severe mental illness (SMI) and antidepressant prescription volume in primary care records, and how much of their variation was explained by deprivation, social fragmentation and sociodemographic characteristics.

Information on prevalence of depression and SMI was obtained from the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) administrative dataset for 2015/16 and the national dispensing dataset for 2015/16. Linear regression models were fitted to examine ecological associations between deprivation, social fragmentation, other sociodemographic characteristics and mental illness prevalence.

Mental illness prevalence varied within and between regions, with clusters of high prevalence identified across England. Our models explained 33.4–68.2% of variability in prevalence, but substantial variability between regions remained after adjusting for covariates. People in socially cohesive and socially deprived areas were more likely to be diagnosed with depression, while people in more socially fragmented and more socially deprived areas were more likely to be diagnosed with SMI.

Our findings suggest that to tackle mental health inequalities, attention needs to be targeted at more socially deprived localities. The role of social fragmentation warrants further investigation, and it is possible that depression remains undiagnosed in more socially fragmented areas. The wealth of routinely collected data can provide robust evidence to aid optimal resource allocation. If comparable data are available in other countries, similar methods could be deployed to identify high prevalence clusters and target funding to areas of greater need.