In this decade in the Italian context, there has been a significant increase of the immigration phenomenon. Consistent data indicated higher risk of psychotic experiences among migrants. Poor work investigated clinical variables associated with stronger subthreshold psychotic experiences among this population of adolescents. Aberrant salience, the biased assignment of significance to otherwise innocuous stimuli, and alexithymia, the difficulty identifying/describing feelings are believed to have a role in the onset and maintenance of psychotic symptoms. No study evaluated whether they could moderate the relation between migrant status and psychotic experiences among in adolescence.

The current study investigated whether salience and alexithymia predicted more intense subthreshold psychotic experiences and moderated the effect of migrant status among migrant and native Italian adolescents.

Seventy-three adolescents born in other countries than Italy and 75 native Italian adolescents (mean age = 17.57, SD = 2.08, 47.30% females) completed the aberrant salience inventory, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 and the screening for psychotic experiences.

Migrant adolescents had higher levels of subthreshold psychotic experiences (F = 10.65, P < 0.01), alexithymia (F = 8.93, P < 0.01) and salience (F = 4.38, P < 0.05) than native Italian adolescents. A main effect of aberrant salience and alexithymia on subthreshold psychotic experiences emerged. An interaction effect between migrant status and alexithymia was found: migrant adolescents with stronger alexithymia had more intense subthreshold psychotic experiences.

Public health policies should consider migrant adolescents as a group at risk for stronger subthreshold psychotic experiences. Prevention programs could take into account alexithymia as a target of intervention for this population of adolescents.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.