Jean Addington, Ph.D., FCAHS, FRSC

Dr. Jean Addington is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Dr. Addington holds the Novartis Chair for Schizophrenia Research at the University of Calgary. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) as well as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS).

Dr. Addington has worked as a researcher, clinician and educator focusing on psychosis and schizophrenia for over 25 years. Dr. Addington was instrumental in founding the Early Psychosis Program in Calgary, Alberta and directed that program until 2002. She helped establish the Prevention through Risk Identification, Management and Prevention (PRIME) clinics in Calgary and in Toronto, both community-based services dedicated to the early identification and treatment of individuals aged 12 to 30 who are at risk of developing psychosis.

Dr. Addington's work focuses on finding predictors and mechanisms of the transition to serious mental illness in particular psychosis. Working with young adults and adolescents as young as 13, her research also focuses on developing psychosocial interventions to treat these at-risk youth. She has been a principal investigator in all three phases of the NIMH funded North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study (NAPLS-1, NAPLS-2, NAPLS-3) from 2005 to 2020.

There are several ongoing projects within Dr. Addington's At-Risk for Mental Illness Research Clinic.

ProNET: Psychosis Risk Outcome Network is a large international study. ProNET aims to understand the outcome of individuals who are at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Although the CHR criteria offer an important public health target and opportunity to prevent psychotic disorders, substantial heterogeneity exists in CHR both at ascertainment and in outcome that limits treatment development. ProNET will recruit 1040 CHR youth and follow them with clinical and biomarker assessments that includes symptom assessments, traumatic events, substance use, social functioning, cognitive functioning, evoked potentials, genomics, cortisol, and brain imaging in order to dissect the heterogeneity of CHR and develop tools for outcome definition and patient stratification.

UPLIFT is a randomized clinical trial for CHR comparing the efficacy of an 18-week family intervention called Family Focused Therapy with a 3-session brief family educational program followed by monthly individual support sessions.

The Stepped Care Project is a psychosocial treatment project assessing different individual, group, and family interventions for youth at risk of developing psychosis.

The Canadian Psychiatric Risk and Outcome Study (PROCAN) is a longitudinal study of both clinical predictors and biomarkers of developing a mental illness in youth at risk.