[Argentine consensus on the diagnosis and therapeutics of treatment resistant schizophrenia].

Approximately 30% of people with schizophrenia fail to respond to first-line antipsychotic treatment which impacts the burden of the disease. Treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS) denotes patients with failure to respond to at least two adequate trials of different antipsychotics. Clozapine is a unique drug approved for treating treatment-resistant schizophrenia, however 1/3 of patients fail to respond to clozapine.

[Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). Political framework and content].

The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is an initiative of the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States of America, which based on research purposes consists of a new way of classifying mental disorders. His raison d'être is based on the conclusion that the knowledge progress of neurosciences does not seem to confirm the validity of the conventional psychiatric diagnoses. Furthermore, researching based on such diagnoses would weaken the progress in Psychiatry.

[Mental health as seen from a psychiatric standpoint].

This paper proposes a psychiatric perspective on mental health given by many years of experience and confrontation with many clinical forms in which the lost of mental health is expressed. This lost brings by effects on those who suffer it as well as on their relatives. The mental health law of Argentina 26657 is analyzed from this particular standpoint.

Sensitivity and specificity of the mood disorder questionnaire and the bipolar spectrum diagnostic scale in Argentinean patients with mood disorders.

Objective: To assess the sensitivity and specificity of two self-report instruments for detection of bipolarity in a sample of Argentinean patients.

Method: Spanish versions of the MDQ and the BSDS were administered over four months at 11 sites in Argentina. Diagnoses were made using DSM-IV criteria and the MINI.

[Revision of systematic treatment enhancement program for bipolar disorder (STEP-BD)].

The STEP-BD is a public initiative, created to generate data, obtained in pragmatic or real life research environments, from the bipolar disorder. The primary objectives are: to investigate the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions in bipolar disorder, the impact on the disease course of these interventions in the 'real life' and to raise the knowledge about the disease. This program included in six years, n = 4361 patients.

[Permanent psychiatric effects in former addicts to marijuana or stimulants].

It's an evidence based data that the abuse of drugs produces toxic psychiatric effects, in the acute and sub acute phases of the intoxication and also in the recent abstinence. It is more conflicting the data about if they can produce or unmask vulnerabilities to long term psychiatric disorders; or to affect its course and phenomenology; or to influence the response to the therapeutic resources used to treat them, beyond the period of abstinence. The objective is to update the knowledge available on the ability of the marijuana and the stimulants to produce long term psychiatric disorders, or to unmask vulnerabilities to them.

Bipolar disorders and affective temperaments: a national family study testing the "endophenotype" and "subaffective" theses using the TEMPS-A Buenos Aires.

Background: The purpose of this study is to examine the prevalence of affective temperaments between clinically unaffected relatives of bipolar patients and secondarily to investigate the impact of these "subaffective" forms on their quality of life (QoL).

Methods: The study was performed in seven sites across Argentina. We administered the scales TEMPS-A and Quality of Life Index to a sample of 114 non-ill first degree relatives of bipolar disorder patients ("cases") and 115 comparison subjects without family history of affective illness ("controls").

[Argentine consensus on the treatment of bipolar disorders].

The consensus guidelines of argentine experts in the treatment of bipolar disorders are the result of three days of work of the 10 main local experts under the organization of the Argentine Association of Biological Psychiatry (AAPB). It was adopted a mixed criterion for its preparation: all the recent data of the evidence medicine based published until now were discussed and were balanced with the knowledge acquired from clinical experience of the local experts on the bipolar field. It presents general recommendations and suggested therapeutic sequences for the phase of maintenance, the manic/hypomanic or mixed episode and the depressive episode.

[Psychic change in schizophrenic patients produced group therapy].

The objective of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of group therapy to produce psychic change in patients with schizophrenia and other related psychosis. The experience took place in a Public Psychiatric Hospital. It involved 96 patients with this condition who entered different groups from 1998 up to the present.

[Pharmacologic treatment of the psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia].

Psychotic symptoms, among others, are present in Schizophrenia. The most severe developments during the moments of exacerbation, are meliorated after this period, although they do not absolutely disappear in the majority of the cases. Anti psychotic drugs are key in the treatment.