Approximately 5 % of adolescents present psychotic symptoms which are not necessarily associated with a psychopathological alteration and that are known as subclinical psychotic-like experiences. Said symptoms have been found to be closely linked to the presence of affective psychopathology, such as high levels of anxiety, stress, dysphoria or depression in this population.

The main objective of this work was to compare the emotional and behavioral problems reported by adolescents with and without psychotic-like symptoms.

The sample was composed of 1,713 non-clinical adolescents with a mean age of 14.7 years (SD = 1.7), of which 832 (48.6 %) were males.

The results showed that the participants with psychotic-like symptoms reported a higher number of emotional and behavioral problems compared to the participants who did not inform of said experiences.

The findings converge with data from previous studies of patients with schizophrenia as well as in schizophrenia-prone individuals, offering support to the dimensional models of psychosis, and have clear implications with a view to establishing primary prevention strategies for these high-risk individuals.