Background: Impairment in aspects of communication is a core diagnostic feature of schizophrenia and other psychotic spectrum disorders. These communication difficulties inhibit participation in a range of daily activities and affect relationships and quality of life. There has been little research focussed on communication outcomes in relation to cognitive remediation therapy within this population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To describe (i) the clinical characteristics of individuals referred to the Tertiary Referral Service for Psychosis (TRSP) and (ii) the recommendations TRSP made for future treatment across psychopharmacological and other intervention domains.
Method: Retrospective audit of clinical data collected during the assessment process of individuals who accessed TRSP between 02/06/2020 and 31/12/2022. Categories of recommendations made following collaborative care planning comprised psychopharmacological, neuropsychological, psychological, psychosocial, physical health, substance misuse and other domains.
Objective: Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) is an effective intervention in managing the significant cognitive deficits experienced by those living with psychosis. Given its strong evidence base CRT is recommended in Australian and international guidelines for rehabilitation of people with psychosis, however, access to CRT remains limited. In this commentary, we describe recent efforts to implement CRT programs within NSW mental health services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Parent Memory Questionnaire (PMQ) and Child Memory Questionnaire (Child MQ) assess children's memory functioning in daily activities. Their psychometric properties are largely unknown. Hence, this study aimed to establish the psychometric properties of the PMQ and Child MQ.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImagining future events is thought to rely on recombination and integration of past episodic memory traces into future events. Future and past events contain episodic and nonepisodic details. Children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) were found to have impaired recall of past episodic (but not semantic) event details.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Autobiographical memory (AM) is a complex function that involves re-experiencing of past personal events (episodic memory) scaffolded by personal facts (semantic memory). While AM is supported by a brain network and cognitive skills that are vulnerable to disruption by child traumatic brain injury (TBI), AM has not been examined in this patient population.
Design: Cross-sectional study.
Accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) is characterized by adequate recall after short, but not long delays. ALF is not detected by standardized neuropsychological memory tests. Currently, the prevailing conceptualization of ALF is of a temporal lobe seizure-related phenomenon.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The longitudinal rate and profile of cognitive decline in persons with stable, treated, and virally suppressed HIV infection is not established. To address this question, the current study quantifies the rate of cognitive decline in a cohort of virally suppressed HIV+ persons using clinically relevant definitions of decline, and determine cognitive trajectories taking into account historical and baseline HAND status.
Methods: Ninety-six HIV+ (clinically stable and virally undetectable) and 44 demographically comparable HIV- participants underwent standard neuropsychological testing at baseline and 18-months follow-up.
Episodic thinking involves the ability to re-create past and to construct future personal events, which contain event-specific (episodic) and general (semantic) details. The richness of episodic thought for past events improves as children move into adolescence. The current study aims to examine changes in episodic future thinking and to establish the cognitive underpinning of these changes.
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