Lithium Use and Non-use for Pregnant and Postpartum Women with Bipolar Disorder.

Purpose Of Review: Despite being recognized as a first-line treatment for bipolar disorder, there is still inconsistent use of lithium in perinatal populations. This article will review data regarding lithium use during the peripartum and provide management recommendations for general psychiatric clinicians.

Recent Findings: In contrast to prior data, recent studies indicate that lithium use in pregnancy is associated with either no increased malformations risk or a small increase in risk for cardiac malformations including Ebstein's anomaly.

Frequent Comorbidity and Predictors of Social Anxiety in Persons With Schizophrenia: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Objective: To determine if symptoms of social anxiety are distinct from negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

Method: Fifty-three patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (diagnosed per DSM-IV criteria) and 37 healthy controls were examined with the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) for social anxiety disorder and for the severity of social anxiety. The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Chapman scales for physical and social anhedonia were also administered.

Stressor controllability modulates fear extinction in humans.

Traumatic events are proposed to play a role in the development of anxiety disorders, however not all individuals exposed to extreme stress experience a pathological increase in fear. Recent studies in animal models suggest that the degree to which one is able to control an aversive experience is a critical factor determining its behavioral consequences. In this study, we examined whether stressor controllability modulates subsequent conditioned fear expression in humans.

Negative symptoms, past and present: a historical perspective and moving to DSM-5.

The diagnosis of schizophrenia includes "positive" and "negative" symptoms. These titles were developed to respectively reflect if the symptoms are additions to normal experiences, such as delusions and hallucinations, or if they refer to the absence or the loss of normal emotional function or behavior. This paper describes the history of the negative symptom concept, from its origins up to the considerations for the DSM-5, including the steps that produced the current conceptualizations.