Clinical staging in the pathophysiology of psychotic and affective disorders: facilitation of prognosis and treatment.

The prevailing utility, and indeed necessity, of clinical staging models applied in considerations of neuropsychiatric disease progressions is discussed from the perspectives of schizophrenia spectrum disorders and affective disorders, cannabis in schizopsychotic disorder, incidences of affect and psychosis, staging disorders in aging and the indices and prevalence of apathy. There would appear to be a strong current consensus that the pursuit of clinical staging of these and other brain disease states has contributed a systematic conceptual instrument to facilitate the better understanding, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment as derived from a multitude of genetic predispositions, symptoms and syndromes, early-onset and prodromal phases, recurrences and relapses, that have complicated the situation of the patient. Through a staging determination of the disorder, elements of diagnosis will describe the progression of symptoms/syndromes through pre-onset, prodromal, first-episode, recurrences and relapses, and treatment resistance thereby facilitating the eventual prognosis, intervention alternatives and treatment. This approach varies from observations of individuals at early stages of development (infancy, childhood, adolescece) to early middle age, in the case of diseases expressed through the aging processes. Essentially, the major contribution of the staging model may lie in the early identification, diagnosis, and treatments of disorders that afflict the brain and central nervous system.