LAUSR

Clinical staging models offer a useful framework for understanding illness trajectories, where individuals are located on a continuum of illness progression from stage 0 (at‐risk but asymptomatic) to stage 4 (end‐stage disease). Importantly, clinical staging allows investigation of risk factors for illness progression with the potential to target trans‐diagnostic mechanisms at an early stage, especially in help‐seeking youth who often present with sub‐threshold syndromes. While depressive symptoms, rumination and sleep‐wake disturbances may worsen syndrome outcomes, the role of these related phenomena has yet to be examined as risk factors for trans‐diagnostic illness progression in at‐risk youth.