Project SEYLE (Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe) provides improvements in psychotic symptoms in young people

SEYLE is a randomized controlled trial of three interventions compared to a control group designed to promote mental health and prevent suicidal behavior among school-aged youth in Europe. The project ended in 2012 and since then around 50 articles have been published.

in it Recently published article reported that the intervention, which involved screening school youth with psychotic symptoms and referring them to psychiatric care, reduced psychotic symptoms compared to the control group. More specifically, it was a combined school-based screening for mental illness and mental illness with subsequent referral to healthcare (the intervention was termed “PROFISCREEN“).

The study also aimed to examine whether the ProfScreen intervention contributed to greater improvements in the reporting of anxiety and depression scores among youth with psychotic symptoms compared to youth without psychotic symptoms. This is important to investigate as a recently published interventional study found that those with psychotic symptoms recovered from anxiety and depression more slowly than those without psychotic symptoms. The SEYLE study showed that young adults with psychotic symptoms reported significantly greater improvement compared to their classmates without psychotic symptoms. Young men who reported psychotic symptoms also reported higher symptoms of depression and anxiety at baseline, compared to those who did not report psychotic symptoms. These results from the SEYLE project suggest that studies aimed at preventing psychotic symptoms may also be useful for improving psychological well-being in young people.

The SEYLE project has been implemented in 11 European countries. However, only one country, Ireland, included a question about psychotic symptoms in its survey form. Thus, the results presented in this article are based on data from Ireland only. More research is needed to confirm the findings of the SEYLE Study in Ireland, that school-based screening interventions with referral to healthcare are effective in reducing psychotic symptoms in young people.