Psychological Intervention for Persons in the Early Initial Prodromal State

Inclusion Criteria: 1. General criteria * Age between 17 and 36 years * male or female, in- or outpatients * written informed consent, for patients below 18 years also signed by their parents 2. Special criteria (presented within the last three months prior to the study) 1. Self-experienced neuropsychological deficits (basic symptoms) * Thought interferences * Compulsory like perseverance of thoughts * Thought pressure * Thought blockages * Disturbances of receptive language, either heard or read * Decreased ability to discriminate between ideas and perception, fantasy and true memories * Unstable ideas of reference (subject-centrism) * Derealisation * Visual perceptual disturbances (blurred vision, transitory blindness, partial seeing, hypersensitivity of light, etc..) * Acoustic perceptual disturbances (hypersensitivity to sounds or noise (hypersensitivity to sounds or noise, acoasms, etc.) AND/OR 2. Reduction in the Global Assessment of Functioning Score (DSM IV) of at least 30 points (within the past year) and at least one of the following risk factors: * First-degree relative with a lifetime-diagnosis of schizophrenia or * a schizophrenia spectrum disorder * Pre-or perinatal complications Exclusion Criteria: * Attenuated or transient positive symptomes * Present or past diagnosis of a schizophrenic, schizophreniform, schizoaffective, delusional or bipolar according to DSM IV * Present or past diagnosis a brief psychotic disorder according to DSM IV with a duration of more than one week or within the last 4 weeks regardless of its duration * Diagnosis of delirium, dementia, amnestic or other cognitive disorder, mental retardation psychiatric disorder due to a somatic factor or related to the consumption of psychotropic substances according DSM IV * Alcohol- or drug abuse within the last three months prior to inclusion according to DSM IV * Deases of the central nervous system (inflammatory, traumatic, epilepsy etc.)