Science Daily reported that the development of psychosis has been suggested as the result of a combination of acute life stressors and trait-like vulnerability to psychosis. Helsinski University Central Hospital has developed an early intervention team based on the idea of multi-professional, need-adapted, community-, family- and network-oriented, stress-reducing, overall functioning supporting and low-threshold care.

This team, known as Jorvi Early psychosis Recognition and Intervention (JERI) meets with adolescents who have demonstrated unclear mental health problems. Adolescents are met with in their natural surroundings in order to recognize potential risk cases and to reduce the stress level by family and network intervention.

During the interventions, the mean scores rose statistically significantly on overall functioning and scores on quality of life, depression, anxiety and pre-psychotic symptoms decreased significantly. As a result, these team interventions showed an improvement in the overall functioning and mental health of adolescents at risk of developing first-episode psychosis.

“JERI- intervention seems to improve level of overall functioning and support mental health in adolescents at risk of developing first-episode psychosis, even though further study with larger number of subjects, with a proper control group and with a longer follow-up time is needed”, said Dr. Niklas Granö, the leader of the research, in Science Daily.

The findings of this study suggestion that intervention can make a difference for teens that are more susceptible to developing first-episode psychosis. Other research into the area could help point to additional triggers that can be eliminated in order to improve the overall outcome for teens.