The Clinical Staging Model in Psychosis: A Cross-Disciplinary Critical Appraisal Informed by Oncology

Categorical models of mental illness have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, but there is no uniformly accepted alternative. One option that has gained attention in psychiatry is clinical staging, which frequently refers to staging models in other areas of healthcare, most prominently that of oncology/cancer. Yet, such comparisons are often inadvertently broad and leave unanswered questions about the applicability of cancer staging models to mental health. To address this gap, we convene expertise in oncology and psychiatry to better understand features of the clinical staging model in theory and practice as applied to cancer, and its potential translation to psychosis as an example of a mental illness. We compare and contrast features of the staging model in the context of illness development in cancer, consider how these features might port over to psychosis, and finally, the ways in which staging might need to be adapted if it is to have validity and clinical utility for psychosis.