PsyCIS
People suffering from psychosis experience an altered perception of reality – this can include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganised thoughts and speech. For the last 12 years, data has been collected on patients with psychosis in the West of Scotland, and is stored in the Psychosis Clinical Information System (PsyCIS). The PsyCIS dataset includes data on the physical and mental health, medications and sociodemographic characteristics of over 10,000 patients, including many with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
This dataset is a potentially important resource for research into the predictors of physical and mental health outcomes in patients with psychosis.
Data linkage
To develop our understanding of predictors of physical health in psychosis, the data in PsyCIS must be linked to other NHS Scotland health records. The PsyCIS cohort has already been successfully linked to Scottish Morbidity Records (SMRs) of hospital admissions, death certification records, the national Scottish diabetes register, and the national Scottish Prescribing Information System (PIS). This has enabled researchers to examine factors associated with prescribing in schizophrenia1, the association of social deprivation on early death in schizophrenia and bipolar2, and monitoring of diabetes in psychosis patients treated with clozapine3.
By linking the cohort to further health-related data and by collecting blood samples from patients, further important work on the predictors of health outcomes in psychosis could be conducted.
Aims
We aim to further develop PsyCIS as a world-leading resource for research into the determinants of poor physical and mental health in patients with severe mental illness.
We will approach this aim in four main ways:
1) Extend the data linkage of PsyCIS patients to a broader range of healthcare datasets.
This will include linkage to detailed data on, for example, heart failure, weight management, rheumatology, operations, and cancer screening.
2) We will develop a system for collecting web-based patient-reported outcome measures.
This data, alongside data from patients’ family members and clinicians, will provide more detailed information on lifestyle, mental and physical health outcomes, and potential risk factors.
3) We will use linkage to the national Scottish diabetes register (SCI-Diabetes) to assess the prevalence and predictors of diabetes and diabetes-related complications in psychosis patients
4) Extend the collection of routine blood samples from the PsyCIS cohort, for use in future genetic and pharmacogenomics research. Collection of such data will enable investigation of genetic contributions to severe mental illness and treatment response
References
- Martin DJ, Park J, Langan J, Connolly M, Smith DJ, Taylor M. Socioeconomic status and prescribing for schizophrenia: analysis of 3200 cases from the Glasgow Psychosis Clinical Information System (PsyCIS). Psychiatr Bull 2014. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.112.042143.
- Martin JL, McLean G, Park J, Martin DJ, Connolly M, Mercer SW, et al. Impact of socioeconomic deprivation on rate and cause of death in severe mental illness. BMC Psychiatry 2014. doi:10.1186/s12888-014-0261-4.
- Pearsall R, Gareze J, Park J, Walker A, Langan-Martin J, McLean G, et al. Routine data linkage to identify and monitor diabetes in clozapine-treated patients with schizophrenia. Schizophr. Res. 2016. doi:10.1016/j.schres.2016.08.025.