Aims: The aim of the current study was to create a typology of patients with first-episode psychosis based on sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, service use and outcomes using cluster analysis.
Methods: Data from all respondents who were accepted into the Early Psychosis Intervention Programme (EPIP), Singapore from 2007 to 2011 were analysed. A two-step clustering method was carried out to classify the patients into distinct clusters.
Results: Two clusters were identified. Cluster 1 comprised largely of younger people with mean age of 25.5 (6.0) years at treatment contact, who were predominantly male (55.3%), single (98.3%) and living with parents (86.3%). Cluster 1 had a higher proportion of people diagnosed with the schizophrenia spectrum disorder (71.4%) and with a positive family history of psychiatric illness. Patients in cluster 2 were generally older with a mean age of 33.6 (4.7) years and the majority were women (74.2%). Cluster 1 had people with higher Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) scores at baseline as compared with cluster 2. After a 1-year follow up, their scores were still poorer than their counterparts in cluster 2, especially for PANSS negative score. The functioning level of people in cluster 1 showed less improvement than the people in cluster 2 after a year of treatment.
Conclusions: There is a compelling need to develop new therapies and intensively treat young people presenting with psychosis as this group tends to have poorer outcomes even after 1 year of treatment.
Keywords: cluster analysis; first-episode psychosis; functioning; negative symptoms; typology.
© 2014 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.