World leading psychiatrist writes - Australia's reckless experiment in Early Intervention - a prevention that will do more harm than good. The article refers to a blog by Dr Allen Francis, former Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University.  He attacks Australia's blind acceptance of Professor Patrick McGorry's model of early intervention that comes from the very heart of heart of psychiatric profession and cannot be ignored.

"McGorry’s goal is certainly great. But its current achievement is simply impossible and Australia’s plans are patently premature. Early intervention to prevent psychosis requires first that there be an accurate tool to identify who will later become psychotic and who will not. Unfortunately, no such accurate tool exists. The false positive rate in selecting prepsychosis is at least about 60-70% in the very best of hands and may be as high as 90% in general practice. That’s right, folks, nine misidentified non patients for one accurately identified truly prepsychotic patient. Those are totally unacceptable odds."

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