Effect of affective temperament on illness characteristics of subjects with bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.

Background: Affective temperaments represent the stable, biologically determined substrates of mood disorders. The relationship between affective temperaments and bipolar disorder (BD) or major depressive disorder (MDD) has been described. However, the strength of such relationship should be tested while considering other factors influencing the diagnosis of BD/MDD.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Postpartum Maternal Mental Health.

Objectives: There are reports of mental health worsening during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to assess whether this occurred in women who were pregnant at baseline (late 2019) and unaware of the pandemic, and who delivered after the implementation of COVID-19 restrictions and threat (March-April 2020). To compare the pandemic period with the pre-pandemic, we capitalized on a retrospective 2014-2015 perinatal sample which had had affective symptoms assessed.

Trait-Related Impulsivity, Affective Temperaments and Mood Disorders: Results from a Real-World Multicentric Study.

Trait-related impulsiveness is highly prevalent in patients with mood disorders, being associated with negative outcomes. The predictive role of affective temperaments on trait-related impulsivity is still understudied. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between impulsivity and affective temperaments in a sample of euthymic patients with mood disorders.

The Relevance of Insomnia in the Diagnosis of Perinatal Depression: Validation of the Italian Version of the Insomnia Symptom Questionnaire.

Background: Sleep disorders are common in perinatal women and may underlie or trigger anxiety and depression. We aimed to translate and validate and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Insomnia Symptom Questionnaire (ISQ), in a sample of women during late pregnancy and 6-months postpartum according to the DSM-5 criteria.

Methods: The ISQ was administered to 292 women prenatally along with other measures of sleep quality, depression, and anxiety, to examine its construct and convergent validity.

[Validation of the Italian version of the Koukopoulos Mixed Depression Rating Scale (KMDRS) in an Italian sample of subjects with mood disorders].

Background: The construct of mixed depression (MxD), namely the simultaneous presence of excitatory symptoms during a depressive episode, has gained increased interest in the recent years. The Koukopoulos Mixed Depression Rating Scale (KMDRS) has been recently validated for the diagnosis and assessment of MxD. The aim of this study was to validate the Italian version of the KMDRS.

The Ring of Fire: Childhood Trauma, Emotional Reactivity, and Mixed States in Mood Disorders.

Childhood trauma (CT) is strongly associated with bipolar disorder, possibly through emotional hyperreactivity (EH). Mixed symptoms/states (MSs) are associated with increased illness severity. The authors tested through a systematic review the association between CT and MSs.

Perinatal Mixed Affective State: Wherefore Art Thou?

Mixed states in patients with a perinatal mood episode is seldom encountered. Lack of appropriate assessment tools could be partly responsible for this observation. The authors conducted a selective review of studies dealing with the reporting of mixed symptoms in women during the perinatal period with the intention to quantify the phenomenon.

Memantine in the treatment and prophylaxis of bipolar type II mood disorder and co-morbid eating disorder: a case report.

We have recently reported that memantine has a clinically relevant antimanic and long-lasting mood-stabilizing effect in treatment- resistant bipolar disorders, both as augmenting agent and as a monotherapy. Moreover, we observed an acute antimanic and sustained mood-stabilizing effect also in "naïve" bipolar type I disorder. Here we report a case history of a young woman suffering from bipolar type II mood disorder, associated with a very severe eating disorder, showing an acute antimanic and a long-term prophylactic effect of memantine on bipolar disorder and comorbid eating disorder.

Memantine in the treatment and prophylaxis of bipolar II disorder and comorbid fibromyalgia: a case report.

We have recently reported that memantine has a clinically relevant antimanic and long-lasting mood-stabilizing effect in treatment-resistant bipolar disorders, both as augmenting agent and as monotherapy. We have also observed an acute antimanic and sustained mood-stabilizing effect in a small number of patients with bipolar I disorder who had had minimal previous pharmacotherapy. In this article, we report the case of a young woman suffering from bipolar II disorder with associated fibromyalgia, in whom memantine showed an acute antimanic and a long-term prophylactic effect on both bipolar disorder as well as the associated fibromyalgia syndrome.

Improvement of cognition in a patient with Cotard's delusions and frontotemporal atrophy receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depression.

A 69-year-old man presented with Cotard's delusions, insomnia, profound depression, amnesia, difficulty concentrating, and cognitive deficit after two different surgical interventions. Brain imaging showed frontotemporal-subcortical atrophy and lateral ventricular enlargement. He responded poorly to a combination of sertraline, amisulpride and mirtazapine, with modest benefit on insomnia, and developed hypotension.