Environmental Risk Factors for Childhood Psychotic-Like Experiences in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Dataset

Long-term outcomes for individuals with a schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) are generally poor, making it critical to identify risk factors for the illness and its antecedents (i.e., psychotic-like experiences; PLE). Research on environmental risk factors for SSDs have identified a wide-ranging set of individual- and area-level variables. However, few studies have evaluated whether these same variables impact risk for PLE, and whether they do so during critical periods of neural and social development (i.e., late childhood/early adolescence). Thus, here, we evaluate whether risk factors associated with SSDs, also impact risk for PLE and associated distress in a developmental sample. We used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study to assess the relation between 14 environmental risk factors for SSDs on childhood PLE outcomes. The risk factors—demonstrating robust relations to SSD in other work—occurred across pre, peri, and postnatal environments, are biological and social in nature, and occur at the individual-level and area-level. We analyzed data from over 8,000 participants with linear mixed-effects models, evaluating the replicability and robustness of the findings. Results indicate that family conflict, bullying, and area deprivation are the strongest risk factors for PLE and their associated distress. These factors account for variance in PLE outcome above and beyond demographics and parental history of psychosis. Together, these results show some convergence with risk factors for SSD, and provide novel evidence that prolonged exposure to adverse individual- and area-level social experiences are associated with the antecedents of SSD.