Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a well-known risk factor of schizophrenia. Moreover, individuals with schizophrenia are likely to use maladaptive stress coping strategies. Although it has been reported that a history of ACEs might be associated with a pro-inflammatory phenotype in patients with schizophrenia, the interacting effect of coping styles on this association has not been tested so far.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of this study was to investigate whether Trail Making Test (TMT) performance is associated with the severity of psychopathological symptoms related to psychosis among young adults with elevated level of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), and whether this relationship is mediated by cognitive biases and socio-occupational functioning. A total of 187 subjects from a larger population of 6722 young adults participated in this 1-year follow-up study. The inclusion criteria were an elevated level of PLEs (the highest score of the Prodromal Questionnaire) and a lack of schizophrenia diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe aimed to investigate as to whether psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) predict the perceived intent to seek treatment. Our secondary aim was to explore which PLEs predict the perceived need to seek treatment using a network analysis. The study was based on a community sample of individuals with a negative history of psychiatric treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The European Psychiatric Association (EPA) is an organization that speaks on behalf of its individual members and members of National Psychiatric Associations (NPAs). The aim of this study to identify and investigate current contents of ethical codes and practices in the countries belonging to EPA.
Methods: The study is an expert survey sent out to 44 representatives of 30 NPAs covering the following topics: the existence of national bodies dealing with ethical issues in psychiatry, the availability of documents relevant to ethical issues, the types of ethical issues addressed at the national level, and the current and envisaged ethical debates.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
May 2023
Mindfulness is a multi-faceted construct that involves paying attention to thoughts and emotions without automatically reacting and being critical of them. Recent research has suggested that mindfulness might play an important role in reducing problematic alcohol use. Further, Readiness to Change (RTC) is related to motivation to change drinking behaviours.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCells
March 2023
Background: Seeing that there are no data about associations between serotonin gene polymorphism and tryptophan catabolite concentration during PEG-IFN-α2a treatment, the aim of the current study is to examine (a) the associations between polymorphisms within the HTR1A, TPH2, and 5-HTT genes and the severity of depression symptoms and (b) the relationships among rs6295, rs4570625, and 5-HTTLPR rs25531polymorphisms and indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) activity, as well as kynurenine (KYN), tryptophan (TRP), kynurenic acid (KA), and anthranilic acid (AA) concentrations.
Materials And Methods: The study followed a prospective, longitudinal, single-center cohort design. The severity of the depressive symptoms of 101 adult patients with chronic HCV infections was measured during PEG-IFN-α2a/RBV treatment.
Psychotic disorders often develop as the continuum of subclinical symptoms that include hallucination-like and delusion-like experiences, and are commonly referred to as psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). To date, a number of neurodevelopmental risk factors of psychosis have been detected, yet their mutual interplay remains unknown. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the additive association of childhood trauma history, reading disabilities and symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with psychosis proneness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSchizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder with genetic and environmental factors involved in its aetiology. Genetic liability contributing to the development of schizophrenia is a subject of extensive research activity, as reliable data regarding its aetiology would enable the improvement of its therapy and the development of new methods of treatment. A multitude of studies in this field focus on genetic variants, such as copy number variations (CNVs) or single-nucleotide variants (SNVs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImpaired hormonal regulation of appetite may contribute to higher cardiovascular risk in bipolar disorder (BD). We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies investigating peripheral blood levels of appetite-regulating hormones in BD and controls. A total of 32 studies were included.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnger and aggression have large impact on people's safety and the society at large. In order to provide an intervention to minimise aggressive behaviours, it is important to understand the neural and cognitive aspects of anger and aggression. In this systematic review, we investigate the cognitive and neural aspects of anger-related processes, including anger-related behaviours and anger reduction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrauma, as well as chronic stress that characterizes a modern fast-paced lifestyle, contributes to numerous psychopathologies and psychological problems. Psychiatric patients with traumas, as well as healthy individuals who experienced traumas in the past, are often characterized by diminished cognitive abilities. In our protocol, we used an animal model to explore the influence of chronic trauma on cognitive abilities and behavior in the group of 20 rats (Rattus norvegicus).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNumerous studies have reported that stressful life experiences increase the risk of psychosis and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). Common variations of the gene have been reported to impact the risk of psychosis by moderating the effects of environmental exposures. Moreover, anxious and avoidant attachment styles have been shown to increase both the level of perceived stress and the risk for psychosis development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComputational models of the basal ganglia (BG) provide a mechanistic account of different phenomena observed during reinforcement learning tasks performed by healthy individuals, as well as by patients with various nervous or mental disorders. The aim of the present work was to develop a BG model that could represent a good compromise between simplicity and completeness. Based on more complex (fine-grained neural network, FGNN) models, we developed a new (coarse-grained neural network, CGNN) model by replacing layers of neurons with single nodes that represent the collective behavior of a given layer while preserving the fundamental anatomical structures of BG.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA large body of research attributes learning deficits in schizophrenia (SZ) to the systems involved in value representation (prefrontal cortex, PFC) and reinforcement learning (basal ganglia, BG) as well as to the compromised connectivity of these regions. In this study, we employed learning tasks hypothesized to probe the function and interaction of the PFC and BG in patients with SZ-spectrum disorders in comparison to healthy control (HC) subjects. In the Instructed Probabilistic Selection task (IPST), participants received false instruction about one of the stimuli used in the course of probabilistic learning which creates confirmation bias, whereby the instructed stimulus is overvalued in comparison to its real experienced value.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSchizophrenia spectrum disorders (SZ) are characterized by impairments in probabilistic reinforcement learning (RL), which is associated with dopaminergic circuitry encompassing the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia. However, there are no studies examining dopaminergic genes with respect to probabilistic RL in SZ. Thus, the aim of our study was to examine the impact of dopaminergic genes on performance assessed by the Probabilistic Selection Task (PST) in patients with SZ in comparison to healthy control (HC) subjects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted scientific gatherings and conferences, opening up opportunities for virtual learning platforms. Realizing the potential of online academic exchanges, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) also developed virtual avenues and information systems for capacity building of mental health professionals across the world. Among its first such initiatives, the WPA organized a virtual Train the Trainers workshop, where 123 psychiatrists, psychiatric trainees, and educators from 45 countries participated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe hypothesis of the psychosis continuum enables to study the mechanisms of psychosis risk not only in clinical samples but in non-clinical as well. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate self-disturbances (SD), a risk factor that has attracted substantial interest over the last two decades, in combination with trauma, cognitive biases and personality, and to test whether SD are associated with subclinical positive symptoms (PS) over a 12-month follow-up period. Our study was conducted in a non-clinical sample of 139 Polish young adults (81 females, age M = 25.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The theoretical affinity between need for closure (NFC) construct and psychotic symptomatology, especially delusionality, has been tested in various studies and brought diverse results. This study tested this relationship on a large sample from the general population using an online survey.
Methods: "Preference for Predictability","Discomfort with Ambiguity" and "Decisiveness" from an abridged NFC scale (NFCS) were used to check for associations with the symptoms of delusion-like ideations and hallucination-like experiences measured with an abridged version of Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ-16).
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
December 2021
There is accumulating evidence that individuals with schizophrenia show altered levels of thyroid hormones. However, a qualitative and quantitative synthesis of findings in this field has not been performed so far. Therefore, we aimed to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies investigating the levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (fT4), total thyroxine (tT4), free triiodothyronine (fT3) and total triiodothyronine (tT3) in multiple-episode schizophrenia (MES) and first-episode psychosis (FEP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCommon variations of the gene are implicated in psychotic disorders, by modulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity to stress. It has been demonstrated that some of them might moderate the effects of childhood trauma on psychosis proneness. However, these associations have not been investigated with respect to traumatic life events (TLEs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough self-disturbances (SD) are considered to be a core psychopathological feature of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, there is still insufficient empirical data on the mechanisms underlying these anomalous self-experiences. The aim of the present study was to test a hypothesized model in which cognitive biases and exposure to traumatic life events are related to the frequency of SD which, in turn, contribute to the frequency of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). Our sample consisted of 193 Polish young adults from the general population (111 females; 18-35 years of age, M = 25.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSubclinical inflammation has been associated with psychosis; however, it remains unknown whether this phenomenon appears also in the premorbid phase. Therefore, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing peripheral blood levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and cytokines between individuals at risk of psychosis and controls. Moreover, we tested the hypothesis that the levels of these markers may be different in high-risk converters versus non-converters.
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