In the last decades, the early intervention on individuals at risk of developing mental disorders became one of the most important and emerging issue not only in psychiatry but also in the overall evidence-based medicine. Subjects who reported severe psychotic-like experiences may be considered five times more likely to manifest psychosis in the following four years when compared to the general population. We aimed to conduct a general screening with the scope to detect subjects at risk for psychotic-like experiences, depression and suicide. Also, we aimed to evaluate the possible correlation between the screening evaluations, gender and early traumatic experiences.

A total of 120 patients was screened using the TeenScreen Program, Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences, Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Hopelessness Scale, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire.

At the bivariate analyses, male subjects had significant lower total scores in several measures (p=0.001) than female. When multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate the association with gender and early traumatic experiences, we found that female subjects were 1.7 times more likely to be older (p< 0.01) and 1.52 times more likely to report depressive symptoms compared to male. Also, subjects with higher total scores at the CTQ were several times more likely to be older than those with lower total scores.

Although the small sample size did not allow to generalize the present findings, the detection of some subgroups of subjects at higher clinical risk may play a critical role in terms of prevention and early interventions.