Engagement in a virtual group-based walking intervention for persons with schizophrenia: a qualitative study.

Background: Exercise is beneficial for persons with schizophrenia; however, high dropout rates limit the impact of interventions. Virtual exercise programs have the potential to improve engagement; however, few intervention studies of virtual programs have been conducted in this population.

Methods: This study examined qualitative data from 15 adults with schizophrenia who participated in a pilot randomized controlled trial of Virtual PACE-Life, a live, video-delivered group walking intervention guided by self-determination theory.

Early cognitive development and psychopathology in children at familial high risk for schizophrenia.

Unlabelled: Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with deficits in cognitive development and childhood psychopathology. Previous studies have focused on older children and the few studies of early childhood have yielded inconsistent findings. We studied cognitive development and psychopathology in children at familial high risk (FHR) of schizophrenia and matched controls from 1 to 6 years and hypothesized that FHR children would show consistent deficits across cognitive and behavioral measures in early childhood.

Racial Disparities in Clozapine Prescription Patterns Among Patients With Schizophrenia.

Objective: Previous research has suggested that demographic factors affect the likelihood of a patient with schizophrenia receiving a clozapine prescription. The authors aimed to determine the impact of race, social determinants of health, gender, rurality, and care patterns on clozapine prescription rates.

Methods: This cross-sectional observational study used structured electronic health records data from 3,160 adult patients diagnosed as having schizophrenia between October 1, 2015, and November 30, 2021, in a multifacility health system.

The effect of intranasal oxytocin on neurocognition in people with schizophrenia: A randomized controlled trial.

Schizophrenia is characterized by persistent cognitive deficits that significantly impact functional outcomes. Despite the current available treatments, these deficits remain inadequately addressed, highlighting the need to explore the effect of more novel treatments on cognition. The current study examined the effect of intranasal oxytocin on cognitive functioning in people with schizophrenia by utilizing data from a 12-week, randomized controlled trial.

Virtual Group-based Walking Intervention for Persons with Schizophrenia: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Persons with schizophrenia have reduced cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), a predictor of all-cause mortality. Exercise is effective for improving CRF; however, motivational challenges affecting those with schizophrenia impact exercise engagement and maintenance. Virtual Physical Activity Can Enhance Life (Virtual PACE-Life), a multicomponent walking intervention guided by self-determination theory (SDT), was developed to target CRF in this population while addressing motivational difficulties.

Racial disparities and predictors of functioning in schizophrenia.

Black Americans are diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders at more than twice the rate of White individuals and experience significantly worse outcomes following diagnosis. Little research has examined specific factors that may contribute to worse functional outcomes among Black Americans diagnosed with schizophrenia. One approach to understanding why racial disparities emerge is to examine established predictors of functioning in this population: neurocognition, social cognition, and symptom severity.

Alpha transcranial alternating current stimulation reduces depressive symptoms in people with schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations: a double-blind, randomized pilot clinical trial.

People with schizophrenia exhibit reduced alpha oscillations and frontotemporal coordination of brain activity. Alpha oscillations are associated with top-down inhibition. Reduced alpha oscillations may fail to censor spurious endogenous activity, leading to auditory hallucinations.

Targeting Physical Health in Schizophrenia: Results from the Physical Activity Can Enhance Life (PACE-Life) 24-Week Open Trial.

Poor health and low cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) contribute substantially to the shortened lifespan of individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs). Increasing physical activity has demonstrated value; however, there are limited interventions that are accessible and adequately address motivational challenges. This paper reports on an open trial of Physical Activity Can Enhance Life (PACE-Life), a motivational theory-based manualized multicomponent walking intervention.

Systematic Quality Improvement and Metabolic Monitoring for Individuals Taking Antipsychotic Drugs.

Objective: The authors sought to increase the rate of cardiometabolic monitoring for patients receiving antipsychotic drugs in an academic outpatient psychiatric clinic serving people with serious mental illness.

Methods: Using a prospective quasi-experimental, interrupted time-series design with data from the electronic health record (EHR), the authors determined metabolic monitoring rates before, during, and after implementation of prespecified quality improvement (QI) measures between August 2016 and July 2017. QI measures included a combination of provider, patient, and staff education; systematic barrier reduction; and an EHR-based reminder system.

Physical Activity Can Enhance Life (PACE-Life): results from a 10-week walking intervention for individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Background: Premature mortality in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) is largely due to high rates of chronic health conditions. Although exercise has been shown to improve health in this population, scalable and accessible interventions are limited.

Aim: To examine the impact of Physical Activity Can Enhance Life (PACE-Life), a novel walking intervention, on physical activity, and on secondary outcomes of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), physical health, autonomous motivation, social support, and quality of life.

Lifetime employment in schizophrenia: correlates of developing long term unemployment after being employed before.

Background: Challenges in employment are highly prevalent among people with schizophrenia regardless of their employment history. Although supportive employment can be effective, few participants sustain meaningful competitive employment. Our goal was to identify the correlates of developing sustained unemployment.

Neighborhood socioeconomic status and racial disparities in schizophrenia: An exploration of domains of functioning.

Black Americans are disproportionately diagnosed with schizophrenia and experience worse objective functional outcomes (e.g., hospitalizations) than their White counterparts.

Community Mental Health Care Delivery During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Practical Strategies for Improving Care for People with Serious Mental Illness.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a formidable challenge to care continuity for community mental health clients with serious mental illness and for providers who have had to quickly pivot the modes of delivering critical services. Despite these challenges, many of the changes implemented during the pandemic can and should be maintained. These include offering a spectrum of options for remote and in-person care, greater integration of behavioral and physical healthcare, prevention of viral exposure, increased collaborative decision-making related to long-acting injectable and clozapine use, modifying safety plans and psychiatric advance directives to include new technologies and broader support systems, leveraging natural supports, and integration of digital health interventions.

Psychometric properties of the Observable Social Cognition Rating Scale (OSCARS): Self-report and informant-rated social cognitive abilities in schizophrenia.

Individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) consistently show deficits in social cognition (SC) which is associated with real world outcomes. Psychosocial treatments have demonstrated reliable improvements in SC abilities, highlighting the need for accurate identification of SC deficits for efficient and individualized treatment planning. To this end, the Observable Social Cognition Rating Scale (OSCARS) is an 8-item scale with both self and informant versions.

Improving Cognition via Exercise (ICE): Study Protocol for a Multi-Site, Parallel-Group, Single-Blind, Randomized Clinical Trial Examining the Efficacy of Aerobic Exercise to Improve Neurocognition, Daily Functioning, and Biomarkers of Cognitive Change in Individuals with Schizophrenia.

Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) display cognitive deficits that have been identified as major determinants of poor functioning and disability, representing a serious public health concern and an important target for interventions. At present, available treatments offer only minimal to moderate benefits to ameliorate cognitive deficits. Thus, there remains an urgent need to identify novel interventions to improve cognition in people with SZ.

The characteristics of cognitive neuroscience tests in a schizophrenia cognition clinical trial: Psychometric properties and correlations with standard measures.

In comparison to batteries of standard neuropsychological tests, cognitive neuroscience tests may offer a more specific assessment of discrete neurobiological processes that may be aberrant in schizophrenia. However, more information regarding psychometric properties and correlations with standard neuropsychological tests and functional measures is warranted to establish their validity as treatment outcome measures. The N-back and AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) are two promising cognitive neuroscience tests designed to measure specific components of working memory and contextual processing respectively.

Confidence, performance, and accuracy of self-assessment of social cognition: A comparison of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls.

Impairments in self-assessment in schizophrenia have been shown to have functional and clinical implications. Prior studies have suggested that overconfidence can be associated with poorer cognitive performance in people with schizophrenia, and that reduced awareness of performance may be associated with disability. However, overconfidence is common in healthy individuals as well.

Neurophysiological substrates of configural face perception in schizotypy.

Face perception is a highly developed function of the human visual system. Previous studies of event-related potentials (ERPs) have identified a face-selective ERP component (negative peak at about 170 ms after stimulus onset, N170) in healthy participants. In contrast, patients with schizophrenia exhibit reduced amplitude of the N170, which may represent a pathological deficit in the neurophysiology of face perception.

Depression predicts self assessment of social function in both patients with schizophrenia and healthy people.

Background: Impairments in social functioning are central to Schizophrenia (SCZ). Patients with SCZ have challenges in the ability to evaluate their functioning. A correlate of self-assessments in SCZ is depression, wherein negligible depression predicts overestimation.

Correlates of loneliness among persons with psychotic disorders.

Introduction: Persons diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) often experience pervasive feelings of loneliness, which are considered a significant barrier to treatment and recovery.

Aim: As impaired social cognition may contribute to increased loneliness and less skillful social interactions, this study examines the relationships between loneliness and measures of social cognition and functional outcome from the Social Cognition Psychometric Evaluation (SCOPE) study.

Methods: This study evaluated the relationship between loneliness, social cognitive ability, and social functioning in the context of a large-scale psychometric investigation.

Long-term safety and efficacy of deutetrabenazine for the treatment of tardive dyskinesia.

Objective: To evaluate the long-term safety and efficacy of deutetrabenazine in patients with tardive dyskinesia (TD).

Method: Patients with TD who completed the 12 week, phase 3, placebo-controlled trials were eligible to enter this open-label, single-arm study. The open-label study consisted of a 6 week dose-escalation phase and a long-term maintenance phase (clinic visits at Weeks 4, 6 and 15, and every 13 weeks until Week 106).

White matter development in infants at risk for schizophrenia.

Background: Schizophrenia is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder with a pathophysiology that likely begins long before the onset of clinical symptoms. White matter abnormalities have been observed in schizophrenia and we hypothesized that the first 2 years of life is a period in which white matter abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk may emerge.

Methods: 38 infants at high risk for schizophrenia and 202 healthy controls underwent diffusion tensor MRIs after birth and at 1 and 2 years of age.