The Effects of Adding Art Therapy to Ongoing Antidepressant Treatment in Moderate-to-Severe Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Study.

This randomized controlled study aimed to investigate the effects of art psychotherapy on moderate-to-severe major depressive disorder (MDD). Forty-two MDD patients were recruited from a psychiatric outpatient clinic in Seoul, the Republic of Korea. Participants were allocated on a randomized, open-label basis to either an experimental group, wherein they were treated with art psychotherapy added to pharmacotherapy, or a control group, wherein they were treated with pharmacotherapy alone.

The Efficacy and Safety of Clonazepam in Patients with Anxiety Disorder Taking Newer Antidepressants: A Multicenter Naturalistic Study.

Objective: This study compared the efficacy and tolerability of clonazepam with other benzodiazepines in patients with anxiety disorders.

Methods: Inclusion criteria were as follows: age >20 years, diagnosis of anxiety disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition, text revision (DSM-IV-TR) criteria, taking only one type of antidepressant, and prescribed one of three oral benzodiazepines (alprazolam, clonazepam, or lorazepam). At baseline and week 6, clinical benefit was evaluated using the Clinical Global Impression-Severity Scale (CGI-S), Clinical Global Impression-Anxiety Scale (CGI-anxiety), and Clinical Global Impression-Sleep Scale (CGI-sleep).

Augmentation of aripiprazole for depressed patients with an inadequate response to antidepressant treatment: a 6-week prospective, open-label, multicenter study.

Objectives: Nonresponse or a partial response to 1 or more antidepressants is a common and significant problem in clinical practice. Adjunctive therapy with atypical antipsychotics is considered as 1 of the next treatment options for such inadequate responses. The present trial evaluated the efficacy and the safety of aripiprazole as an augmentation to ongoing antidepressant monotherapy for patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) who have previously exhibited an inadequate clinical response.

Clinical predictors of drug response in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate which clinical variables might influence the antiobsessional responses to proserotonergic drugs in a sample of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Methods: Two hundred forty-nine patients with DSM-IV OCD under-gone mean 13-month treatments with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. According to the treatment response, defined as a reductions of the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) total score ≥35%, patients were divided into two groups.

Nonverbal memory dysfunction in obsessive-compulsive disorder patients with checking compulsions.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a clinically heterogeneous disorder; nonetheless, most of the previous neuropsychological studies for assessing the involvement of memory dysfunction grouped together patients with different symptoms, thereby potentially accounting for the inconsistencies of results. The goals of this study were to compare the memory dysfunction of two main subtypes of OCD and to identify the type of memory dysfunction that is associated with the checking symptoms in OCD patients. The sample population comprised the cleaning-type OCD group (N=23), checking-type OCD group (N=24), and a control group of healthy volunteers (N=20).