School psychologists’ perceptions, training, and experience related to early onset schizophrenia

Early-onset schizophrenia is a debilitating disorder that has the propensity to impact a child’s educational functioning by diminishing cognitive, language and social abilities. Schizophrenia is included in the federal definition of an emotional disturbance. School psychologists are charged with recognizing the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia and making sure that the student’s condition is properly diagnosed. The following study investigated how often school psychologists encounter students with symptoms related to schizophrenia, to what degree school psychologists report receiving training in the assessment of schizophrenia, to what degree school psychologists believe that schizophrenia is a relevant topic in their field, what types of measures they use when they encounter such students, and how often school psychologists make community referrals due to concerns related to schizophrenia. The sample for this study consisted of 176 mental health professionals (School Psychologists, Licensed Psychologists or Licensed Psychological Associates) who worked with school-aged children. Results indicated that schizophrenia was encountered by 74.1% of the participants. The percentage of participants who indicated that schizophrenia was discussed during their coursework at least some of the time or more was large (72%), but 74% reported that the practice of assessing it was not modeled by their practicum supervisor. The measure most used by participants was the BASC-3 followed by the MMPI-A-RF, at 89.9% and 29.1%, respectively. A significant number of participants (75.6%) of participants also indicated that they believed schizophrenia was relevant to the field of school psychology; however, they perceived that the diagnosis of schizophrenia was confined to the practice of clinical psychology (83.9%). The majority (67.1%) also reported that schizophrenia only impacted adults. A regression analysis predicting referral rate from assessment use, perceptions of schizophrenia, and training revealed that only assessment use as a statistically significant predictor. The result remained statistically significant even after adjusting for number of schools and school size. Despite the limitations of a small sample, the use of new scales to assess variables related to school psychologists’ experience with schizophrenia, and the inability to infer causation from correlational designs, the present results offer the first insight into school psychologists’ perceptions and experiences working with children with schizophrenia. The study indicates that there are misconceptions regarding schizophrenia which may indicate the need for more training at the graduate level regarding schizophrenia as well as psychosis and how it presents itself in youth.