Psychosis is one of the most disabling psychiatric disorders. Pediatric traumatic brain injury (pTBI) has been cited as a developmental risk factor for psychosis, however this association has never been assessed meta-analytically.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between pTBI and subsequent psychotic disorders/symptoms was performed. The study was pre-registered (CRD42022360772) adopting a random-effects model to estimate meta-analytic odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) using the Paule–Mandel estimator. Subgroup (study location, study design, psychotic disorder v. subthreshold symptoms, assessment type, and adult v. adolescent onset) and meta-regression (quality of evidence) analyses were also performed. The robustness of findings was assessed through sensitivity analyses. The meta-analysis is available online as a computational notebook with an open dataset.

We identified 10 relevant studies and eight were included in the meta-analysis. Based on a pooled sample size of 479686, the pooled OR for the association between pTBI and psychosis outcomes was 1.80 (95% CI 1.11–2.95). There were no subgroup effects and no outliers. Both psychotic disorder and subthreshold symptoms were associated with pTBI. The overall association remained robust after removal of low-quality studies, however the OR reduced to 1.43 (95% CI 1.04–1.98). A leave-one-out sensitivity analysis showed the association was robust to removal of all but one study which changed the estimate to marginally non-significant.

We report cautious meta-analytic evidence for a positive association between pTBI and future psychosis. New evidence will be key in determining long-term reliability of this finding.

Both stroke and psychosis are independently associated with high levels of disability. However, psychosis in the context of stroke has been under-researched. To date, there are no general population studies on their joint prevalence and association.

To estimate the joint prevalence of stroke and psychosis and their statistical association using nationally representative psychiatric epidemiology studies from two high-income countries (the UK and the USA) and two middle-income countries (Chile and Colombia) and, subsequently, in a combined-countries data-set.

Prevalences were calculated with 95% confidence intervals. Statistical associations between stroke and psychosis and between stroke and psychotic symptoms were tested using regression models. Overall estimates were calculated using an individual participant level meta-analysis on the combined-countries data-set. The analysis is available online as a computational notebook.

The overall prevalence of probable psychosis in stroke was 3.81% (95% CI 2.34–5.82) and that of stroke in probable psychosis was 3.15% (95% CI 1.94–4.83). The odds ratio of the adjusted association between stroke and probable psychosis was 3.32 (95% CI 2.05–5.38). On the individual symptom level, paranoia, hallucinated voices and thought passivity delusion were associated with stroke in the unadjusted and adjusted analyses.

Rates of association between psychosis and stroke suggest there is likely to be a high clinical need group who are under-researched and may be poorly served by existing services.