Can Psychosis Be Prevented by Treating Adolescent Anxiety?

In nonpsychotic adolescents at high genetic risk for schizophrenia (based on family history), researchers have documented greater anxiety levels than in their non–high-risk peers. Might anxiety treatment in high-risk teenagers forestall psychosis onset? To begin to answer this question, investigators used an animal model of schizophrenia, in which prenatal administration of the compound methyl azoxymethanol acetate (MAM) produces an increase, later in adolescence, in the number of firing dopamine neurons in the hippocampus. This hyperdopaminergic state is similar to what occurs in schizophrenia.

Both MAM-treated rats and vehicle-treated controls were tested for anxiety behaviors and neuronal firing during peripuberty, both before and after r…