Publications by authors named "Gilles Bertschy"

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on global mental health. Health care students, both as young people and regarding their student condition, were a more at-risk population. During the first and the third waves, two national surveys already found high levels of psychological distress (21 to 83% of severe psychological distress).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Methylphenidate (MPH) is a common treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Concern has been raised regarding its cardiovascular safety, partly in relation with its micromolar affinity for the 5-HT receptor, whose activation may result in valvular heart disease (VHD).

Methods: To explore the association between the use of MPH and VHD reporting, we performed a disproportionality analysis within the WHO global safety database (VigiBase) using data, since inception until March 6th 2024, from: (i) the full database and (ii) different age groups (children/adolescents 6-17 years; adults 18-64 years).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on treatment-resistant depression (TRD) characterized by anergic-anhedonic symptoms, proposing a two-step therapy called the Dopaminergic Antidepressant Therapy Algorithm (DATA) combining monoamine oxidase inhibitors and dopamine D2 receptor agonists.
  • Out of 52 patients treated with DATA, 48 were analyzed, showing significant remission rates: 52% after the first step and 77% after the second, highlighting the effectiveness of this approach over a median follow-up of 4 months.
  • The findings suggest that TRD patients respond well to pro-dopaminergic treatments, but some variability in patient responses indicates a need for better understanding of dopamine-sensitive depression forms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In the present study, we propose a review and a synthesis of the work of our group about the phenomenology and the cognitive mechanisms of racing thoughts in bipolar disorder (BD) and ADHD. Contrary to the mainstream idea according to which racing thoughts are pathognomonic of BD, our work suggests that racing thoughts are enhanced in ADHD compared to hypomanic episodes of BD, whereas in euthymic episodes of BD self-reported racing thoughts are similar to the rates reported by healthy controls. Using verbal fluency tasks, we found many similarities between bipolar and ADHD subjects with one clear difference: lexical search strategy in hypomania is based on phonemic similarities rather than semantic-relatedness.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Racing thoughts have been found in several states of bipolar disorder (BD), but also in healthy populations with subclinical mood alterations. The evaluation of racing thoughts relies on subjective reports, and objective measures are sparse. The current study aims at finding an objective neuropsychological equivalent of racing thoughts in a mixed group of BD patients and healthy controls by using a bistable perception paradigm.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: COVID19 pandemic had a huge impact on global mental health. Health students, because of their age and status, are a more at-risk population. National survey during the first wave already found high levels of psychological distress.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Little is known regarding the mechanisms involved in the clinical improvement of patients with bipolar disorder (BD) after group psychoeducation. We aimed at investigating these mechanisms by focusing on their subjective experience. Thirteen patients with BD aged 35.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cognitive arousal is thought to play a key role in insomnia disorder. However, although patients frequently complain about racing thoughts appearing at bedtime, studies have considered 'cognitive arousal' as a synonym of rumination and worry, but not as racing thoughts per se. The latter have been mainly linked to hypomanic/manic episodes of bipolar disorder (BD).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is a lack of consensus on the diagnostic thresholds that could improve the detection accuracy of bipolar mixed episodes in clinical settings. Some studies have shown that voice features could be reliable biomarkers of manic and depressive episodes compared to euthymic states, but none thus far have investigated whether they could aid the distinction between mixed and non-mixed acute bipolar episodes. Here we investigated whether vocal features acquired via verbal fluency tasks could accurately classify mixed states in bipolar disorder using machine learning methods.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Emotional dysregulation (ED) in adult ADHD is frequent but definition and tools for its evaluation are not consensual. Our aim was to determine the core ADHD symptomatic domains via the Self-Reported Wender-Reimherr Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Scale (SR-WRAADDS) following its validation in a large clinical sample of adults with ADHD and controls.

Method: Three hundred sixty-nine adult patients with ADHD and 251 healthy participants completed the SR-WRAADDS and questionnaires about ADHD, depression, and ED.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The spatial functional chronnectome is an innovative mathematical model designed to capture dynamic features in the organization of brain function derived from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Measurements of dynamic functional connectivity have been developed from this model to quantify the brain dynamical self-reconfigurations at different spatial and temporal scales. This study examined whether two spatiotemporal dynamic functional connectivity quantifications were linked to late adolescence-onset major depressive disorder (AO-MDD), and scaled with depression and symptom severity measured with the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Adults with ADHD experience mental restlessness, akin to racing thoughts, but data on this symptom in ADHD remain scarce. Our study aims at investigating self-reported racing thoughts in adults with ADHD, and its relationship with affective dysregulation and insomnia. We were also interested in whether racing thoughts may aid differential diagnosis with bipolar disorder (BD).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The importance of clinical psychopharmacological knowledge for modern psychiatric care is both well-established and underdeveloped. Although psychiatric pharmacists are identified as experts in psychopharmacotherapy based on pharmacists' overall expertise in pharmacotherapy, in real-life health settings, such is not necessarily the case. As a matter of fact, (1) pharmacists' real expertise in pharmacotherapy is mainly seen as useful to patients (as part of therapeutic education), (2) pharmacists' practice methods are usually circumscribed to the framework of quality processes (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Authors compared plasma concentrations of citalopram (CIT) enantiomers and their metabolites in patients with depression administered either intravenously (IV) or as oral racemic CIT. Then, plasma concentrations were related to the metabolism of probes used for phenotyping patients with depression for CYP2C19 and CYP2D6 activity and cardiovascular functions.

Methods: Dextromethorphan-mephenytoin-phenotyped patients with depression were administered racemic CIT (days 1 and 2: 20 mg/d; days 3-10: 40 mg/d) either orally or as a slow-drop infusion for 10 days and were then orally administered the drug for another 32 days.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bistable stimuli can give rise to two different interpretations between which our perception will alternate. Recent results showed a strong coupling between eye movements and reports of perceptual alternations with motion stimuli, which provides useful tools to objectively assess perceptual alternations. However, motion might entrain eye movements, and here we check with a static picture, the Necker cube, whether eye movements and perceptual reports (manual responses) reveal similar or different alternation rates, and similar or different sensitivity to attention manipulations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bipolar disorder (BD) is characterized by speech abnormalities, reflected by symptoms such as pressure of speech in mania and poverty of speech in depression. Here we aimed at investigating speech abnormalities in different episodes of BD, including mixed episodes, via process-oriented measures of verbal fluency performance - i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Racing and crowded thoughts are frequently reported respectively in manic and mixed episodes of bipolar disorder (BD). However, questionnaires assessing this symptom are lacking. Here we aimed to investigate racing thoughts across different mood episodes of BD through a self-report questionnaire that we developed, the 34-item Racing and Crowded Thoughts Questionnaire (RCTQ).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is defined by the copresence of two core symptoms: alteration in social communication and repetitive behaviors and/or restricted interests. In ASD children and adults, irritability, self-injurious behavior (SIB), and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders- (ADHD-) like symptoms are regularly observed. In these situations, pharmacological treatments are sometimes used.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Racing thoughts involve a rapid and overwhelming production of thoughts, commonly linked to manic episodes, while 'crowded' thoughts are more related to mixed depression.
  • A study using the Racing and Crowded Thoughts Questionnaire (RCTQ) assessed 197 healthy participants to understand the nature of these thoughts, revealing three main factors: thought overactivation, burden of thought overactivation, and thought overexcitability.
  • The findings showed that these thought patterns are connected to mood fluctuations and have strong reliability and validity, indicating that racing thoughts can occur even in healthy individuals and are distinct from rumination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study reports on the complexity modulation of heartbeat dynamics in patients affected by bipolar disorder. In particular, a multiscale entropy analysis was applied to the R-R interval series, that were derived from electrocardiographic (ECG) signals for a group of nineteen subjects comprised of eight patients and eleven healthy control subjects. They were monitored using a textile-based sensorized t-shirt during the day and overnight for a total of 47 diurnal and 27 nocturnal recordings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bipolar Disorder (BD) is characterized by an alternation of mood states from depression to (hypo)mania. Mixed states, i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Recent research indicates that Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is affected in Bipolar Disorders (BD) patients. To determine whether such alterations are a mere expression of the current mood state or rather contain longitudinal information on BD course, we examined the potential influence of states adjacent in time upon HRV features measured in a target mood state.

Methods: Longitudinal evaluation of HRV was obtained in eight BD patients by using a wearable monitoring system developed within the PSYCHE project.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Opioids are good painkillers, but many patients treated with opioids as painkillers developed a secondary addiction. These patients need to stop misusing opioids, but the mild-to-severe clinical symptoms associated with opioid withdrawal risk increasing their existing pain. In such cases, ketamine, which is used by anaesthetists and pain physicians to reduce opioid medication, may be an effective agent for managing opioid withdrawal.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF