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Brain health in ethnically minority youth at risk for psychosis

Neuropsychopharmacology volume 48, pages 1701–1702 (2023)Cite this article

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Identifying risk and resilience factors that increase the likelihood of developing psychosis and severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, remains a primary aim for psychiatric researchers. The etiology of schizophrenia has perplexed researchers for decades and the exact cause of the disorder remains unknown. The two-hit hypothesis is a widely adopted framework used to try and better understand how schizophrenia develops. This theory suggests that a genetic susceptibility (first hit) may prime an individual to become more susceptible to subsequent environmental insults (second hit), which may ultimately lead to the onset of the full clinical syndrome [1].

Although genetic susceptibility is often given a lot of attention with respect to one’s risk of developing psychosis, environmental factors play a prominent role in this process. Accumulating research suggests that psychosis is associated with a host of environmental adversities such as growing up in urbanized areas, poverty, developmental trauma, neglect, cannabis use, and minority group position [2]. Exposure to these adversities may trigger excessive activation of the body’s stress response system (e.g., hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), which may lead to enduring changes in brain morphometry such as atrophy of dendrites and suppression of neurogenesis [3]. Accordingly, early life stressors may alter the normal trajectory of cortical development and thus atypical brain morphometry may predate the onset of psychosis.

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Funding

Funding

RAR and LP both received a salary award from the Fonds de recherche du Quebec-Sante ́ (FRQS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Douglas Mental Health University Institute, 6875 Bd LaSalle, Verdun, QC, Canada

    Rachel A. Rabin & Lena Palaniyappan

  2. Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, 845 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Rachel A. Rabin & Lena Palaniyappan

  3. Robarts Research Institute, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, London, ON, Canada

    Lena Palaniyappan

Authors
  1. Rachel A. Rabin
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  2. Lena Palaniyappan
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Contributions

RAR and LP contributed to writing and editing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rachel A. Rabin.

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Competing interests

LP reports personal fees for serving as chief editor from the Canadian Medical Association Journals, speaker/consultant fee from Janssen Canada and Otsuka Canada, SPMM Course Limited, UK, Canadian Psychiatric Association; book royalties from Oxford University Press; investigator-initiated educational grants from Janssen Canada, Sunovion and Otsuka Canada outside the submitted work. RAR has nothing to disclose.

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Rabin, R.A., Palaniyappan, L. Brain health in ethnically minority youth at risk for psychosis. Neuropsychopharmacol. 48, 1701–1702 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01719-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01719-9

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