Both evidence and common sense suggest that the earlier the treatment
of schizophrenia begins, optimally even before the onset of psychosis, the
more rapid the immediate recovery and the better the overall outcome. Therefore,
the question of whether schizophrenia may be diagnosed during the prodromal
phase is of great theoretical and practical interest. Previous studies addressing
this question have found that prodromal symptoms have, at best, a modest accuracy
for predicting a diagnosis of schizophrenia.1,2
Therefore, the findings of Klosterkötter et al3
that prodromal symptoms, as gathered with the Bonn Scale for the Assessment
of Basic Symptoms (BSABS), "performed well in the early detection of schizophrenia"
and that a subset of symptoms has "particularly high prognostic accuracy"3(p158) convey important diagnostic and therapeutical
implications.