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Background: Increasing attention to the early stages of psychosis and the identification of symptomatic prodromal states have led to the development of a growing number of screening tools. The 16‐item version of the Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ‐16) is a worldwide used self‐administered tool for this purpose. However, to date, fundamental psychometric properties of PQ‐16 were not thoroughly investigated. This study aimed to examine the structural validity, measurement invariance, reliability and other psychometrical properties of the Italian version of the PQ‐16 (iPQ‐16) in help‐seeking individuals and in the general population. Methods: The iPQ‐16 was administered to 449 young outpatients attending six community mental health services and to 318 control participants enrolled in educational environment. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs), measurement invariance (MI) between the help‐seeking group and the general population sample, convergent validity, test–retest reliability, internal consistency, and prevalence analyses were performed. Lastly, the validity of the adopted PQ‐16 cut‐offs through Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves plotted against CAARMS diagnoses was also tested. Results: CFAs confirmed the single‐factor structure for the iPQ‐16 and scalar MI was reached. The iPQ‐16 showed high internal consistency, test–retest reliability, convergent validity, and acceptable diagnostic accuracy. ROC analysis suggested a score of ≥4 as best cut‐off. Conclusions: The iPQ‐16 represents a valid and reliable questionnaire for the assessment of high mental risk in both Italian outpatients and general student population. It has good psychometric properties and is easy to implement as UHR screening for clinical as well as research purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SARS‐CoV2 infection is a systemic disease that may involve multiple organs, including the central nervous system (CNS). Aims of our study are to describe prevalence and clinical features of neurological manifestations, mortality and hospital discharge in subjects hospitalized with COVID‐19. All individuals admitted for to our hospital COVID‐19 were retrospectively included. Patients were classified according to the symptoms at hospital entry in (1) isolated respiratory, (2) combined respiratory and neurologic, (3) isolated neurologic and (4) stroke manifestations. Descriptive statistics and nonparametric tests to compare the groups were calculated. Kaplan Meier probability curves and multivariable Cox regression models for survival and hospital discharge were applied. The analysis included 901 patients: 42.6% showed a severe or critical disease with an overall mortality of 21.2%. At least one neurological symptom or disease was observed in 30.2% of subjects ranging from dysgeusia/anosmia (9.1%) to postinfective diseases (0.8%). Patients with respiratory symptoms experienced a more severe disease and a higher in‐hospital mortality compared to those who showed only neurologic symptoms. Kaplan Meier estimates displayed a statistically significant different survival among groups (p = 0.003): subjects with stroke had the worst. After adjusting for risk factors such as age, sex and comorbidity, individuals with isolated neurologic manifestations exhibited a better survival (aHR 0.398, 95% CI [0.206, 0.769], p = 0.006). Neurologic manifestations in COVID‐19 are common but heterogeneous and mortality in subjects with isolated neurologic manifestations seems lower than in those with respiratory symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]