EARLY DIAGNOSIS AND INTERVENTION IN PSYCHOSIS: PERSPECTIVE FROM TURKEY

Schizophrenia is still one of the costliest problems of mankind on both personal and societal levels. Since schizophrenia has been defined there had been hopes to arrest the disorder in early phases. In last 20 years there had been a growing interest in early diagnosis and intervention area, a corresponding rise in reported studies and some encouraging results. There are some issues demanding serious attention like non-applicability of studies to general population, exclusion of negative and depressive symptoms from contemporary high risk definitions and treating groups with a significant proportion not expected to have clinical disorder. After current psychiatric services and early diagnosis and intervention efforts in Turkey are described the authors conclude that contributions to the field from Turkey with limited resources but high levels of accessibility and attainability of medical treatment, young population, high rates of intro-national migration between very different life circumstances, ethnic groups, different family and social relation patterns can be of use worldwide.