Psychosis-like experiences [PLEs] among adolescents in Bradford, England: evidence from the Born in Bradford Age of Wonder study

<ns3:p>Many psychiatric disorders have a peak onset in adolescence and early adulthood. Psychosis-like experiences [PLEs] may precede psychosis or psychopathology, as well as co-occur with other mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. We describe quantitative data in the 2023/2024 round of Born in Bradford: Age of Wonder, a longitudinal survey of secondary school pupils in Bradford using adolescent self-reported experiences from the Psychosis-Like Symptom Interview. A total of 2,431 pupils at 25 mainstream secondary schools participated. The median age was 14.8 (IQR 14.6–15.1); 45.8% were Pakistani; 32.6% were White British, with the remainder of other ethnicities; 60.1% lived in the most deprived quintile regions using national deprivation metrics. The prevalence of each PLE subtype across the whole sample reported ranged from 3.6% – 15.4%, with 24.1% of the sample reporting any PLE subtype. The most common PLE subtype across the sample and all ethnicities was ‘believing television or radio messages were being sent’ to the adolescent, with the proportion of females reporting this experience (19.6%) nearly double that of males (10.6%). There was a higher proportion of most PLE subtypes in females as compared to males, although there was a higher proportion of males ‘feeling as if they were intended for something special’ (5.0%) than females (2.7%). The largest ethnic differences were about ‘feeling television or radio messages were being sent’ to the adolescent, with 20.0% of White British adolescents reporting this, 15.9% of Other ethnicity adolescents, and 11.7% of Pakistani British adolescents. In general, a lower proportion of White British adolescents reported feelings of paranoia such as ‘thoughts being read’, ‘being spied upon’, or ‘feeling under someone else’s control’, as compared to Pakistani British and Other ethnicities. Self-report of PLEs was generally common, reflecting existing literature.</ns3:p>