Public Health

Comprehensive Summary

This study, presented by Bareis et al., leverages machine learning to identify primary behavioral-health phenotypes among adults with schizophrenia and to evaluate how those phenotypes relate to psychotropic medication use and clinical outcomes. Because 70% of people with schizophrenia in the U.S. receive healthcare through Medicaid, the authors analyzed Medicaid claims from 2010 (N = 249,006 adults aged 18–64) and applied Latent Dirichlet Allocation to ICD-9-CM diagnostic codes. After mapping psychotropic medications using FDA National Drug Codes, they identified five behavioral-health phenotypes: substance use (10.9%), mania–mixed mood (16.8%), depression (12.2%), conduct disorder–developmental delay (15.3%), and anxiety–paranoid (13.6%), along with a schizophrenia-only group (31.2%). Notably, 68.8% of participants had more than one co-occurring behavioral-health diagnosis. Medication patterns varied substantially by phenotype, with over 87% of the cohort receiving any psychotropic medication and ~46% receiving mood stabilizers, concentrated in the mania phenotype. Outcomes also differed: ~16% of the cohort had a psychiatric inpatient admission and ~21% had an ED visit within the following year. The authors conclude that phenotype membership correlates with distinct prescribing patterns and outcomes, underscoring the importance of stratified pharmaco-epidemiologic research.

Outcomes and Implications

Schizophrenia is a serious neuropsychiatric condition marked by a significant amount of clinical heterogeneity, meaning that evidence cannot be generalized to inform treatment decisions. Clinically, there was a strong association between phenotype membership and acute-care utilization, with certain subgroups of phenotypes facing the highest risks of psychiatric hospitalization and ED visits, therefore highlighting the need for more tailored treatment strategies and closer monitoring in high-risk populations. The results further argue for including approaches that address phenotypes into prescribing and care coordination. By providing a data-driven framework, this research provides a foundation for future research to build on in order to identify which medications are the most effective for specific phenotypes, thus informing more personalized and outcome-focused schizophrenia care.

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© 2025 AIIM. Created by AIIM IT Team