摘要：

The sudden interest in initiating treatment before the onset of psychosis (i.e., during the prodromal stage of schizophrenia) has failed to integrate the earlier work on prediction generated by more traditional high-risk studies. Genetic high-risk research has most typically focused on the long-term, prospective study of children of parents with schizophrenia. In this paper, it will be argued that high-risk research can make at least two major contributions to prevention programs. First, previous findings can guide identification of risk factors and provide clues about causality, thus highlighting which pre-morbid deficits should be treatment targets. For example, as discussed here, data from the New York High Risk Project points to impaired attention as a highly promising candidate risk factor, with a possible causal association with later-emerging social deficits. Second, the high-risk approach can provide a framework for establishing the predictive validity of prodromal clinical ind

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