Psychotic-Like Experiences (PLEs) are prevalent in the general population and may be a marker of risk for psychosis, yet little is known about the everyday functioning of individuals with PLEs. The purpose of this study was to compare everyday functioning of people with and without PLEs. Participants were 108 college students enrolled in an introductory psychology course who were selected for participation in the study because they scored in the top and bottom 10% of a screening test for PLEs. Informants were emailed questionnaires and asked to report on the participants' functioning in three domains: interpersonal functioning, disorganized behavior, and cognitive-perceptual functioning. Informants also reported on participants' attention and memory problems. Results showed that, consistent with prior research, individuals high in PLEs were from lower SES families and reported more depression, anxiety, and substance use. Moreover, informants for participants high in PLEs reported more unusual/disorganized behavior than informants for participants low in PLEs. No differences were observed between individuals high versus low in PLEs for informant-reported interpersonal functioning and attention and memory problems, however. Findings suggest that noticeable difficulties among individuals with PLEs are limited to disorganized behavior. More research is needed to determine the functional consequences of disorganized behavior among individuals with PLEs.

The primary goal of this study was to investigate whether youth from an affluent community showed elevated rates of substance use and associated problems in young adulthood relative to national norms. The secondary goal was to determine if parents’ “containment,” or stringent disciplinary action, of adolescent substance use as measured in Grade 12 could help predict substance use in senior year of college, over and above other parenting factors. The final goal was to assess trends of substance use over time for stability based on categories of participants’ overall levels of use in Grade 12, (low, medium, high). Results indicated that substance use remained elevated into young adulthood, relative to national norms, consistent with extant research involving upper middle class youth. In regression analyses, high parents’ containment was associated with low substance use in senior year of college; however, the inclusion of Grade12 use as a covariate reduced this association with containment such that it was no longer statistically significant. Such results suggest a mediated effect, with Grade 12 substance use mediating the effects of Grade 12 Containment on college senior year substance use. Finally, upper middle class youth were found to remain in their relative substance use group (low, medium, high) as determined at Grade 12 through all four years of college. Taken together, these results emphasized the importance of high school substance use behaviors as a notable risk factor for problematic substance use over time.

Objective: Previous longitudinal studies suggest that depression and anxiety are associated with risk for cardiovascular disease. The aim of the present study was to test whether an association between depression/anxiety symptoms and retinal vessel caliber, an indicator of subclinical cardiovascular risk, is apparent as early as adolescence and young adulthood.

Methods: Participants were 865 adolescents and young adults who participated in the Brisbane Longitudinal Twin Study and the Twin Eye Study in Tasmania. Participants completed assessments of depression/anxiety and somatic symptoms when they were M=16.5 years, and they underwent retinal imaging M=2.5 years later (range=2 years before to 7 years after the depression/anxiety assessment). Retinal vessel caliber was assessed using computer software. Results: Depression/anxiety symptoms were associated with wider retinal arteriolar caliber in this sample of adolescents and young adults (β=0.09, p=.016), even after adjusting for other cardiovascular risks (β=0.08, p=.025). Multiple regression analyses revealed that affective symptoms of depression/anxiety were associated with retinal vessel caliber independently of somatic symptoms.

Conclusions: Depression/anxiety symptoms are associated with measurable signs in the retinal microvasculature in early life, suggesting that pathological microvascular mechanisms linking depression/anxiety and cardiovascular disease may be operative from a young age.