Basic quality indicators for clinical care of patients with major depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.

Objective: To identify a set of indicators to monitor the quality of care for patients with major depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder.

Methods: A group of 10 experts selected the most automatically applicable indicators from a total of 98 identified in a previous study. Five online sessions and 5 discussion meetings were performed to select the indicators that met theoretical feasibility criteria automatically.

Does ICD-11 improve the epidemiological and nosological purposes of mental, behavioral and developmental disorders?

Editorial of vol 31(3).

Switching to ziprasidone in the clinical practice setting: an open-label study.

Objective: This observational study evaluates the long-term outcome of switching to ziprasidone in patients with schizophrenia in the clinical practice setting.

Methods: Patients (208) with schizophrenia who had been switched to ziprasidone monotherapy due to partial response or tolerability problems were followed for 1 year. Efficacy was assessed at baseline and months 1, 3, and 12 with Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Clinical Global Impression-severity (CGI-S), and CGI-improvement.

[Long term effectiveness of methadone maintenance treatments in persons with addiction to opiates].

There is no large prospective cohort studies using different therapeutic doses and standardized distal outcomes, however there is a fair amount of evidence on the effectiveness of methadone as a long-term treatment for the addiction to opiates. Strengths include less illegal drug use, decreased criminal activity and better general functioning. Also physical and mental health seems to be more preserved and recovered.

Delphi consensus on the physical health of patients with schizophrenia: evaluation of the recommendations of the Spanish Societies of Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry by a panel of experts.

Introduction: Available data from scientific literature show that patients with schizophrenia have higher rates of physical comorbidity and excess mortality due to other physical pathologies. The growing interest to investigate and improve the health of these patients has led a group of Spanish experts to publish in 2008 a "Consensus on physical health of patients with schizophrenia from the Spanish Societies of Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry" (2008 Consensus). These recommendations imply a significant change to the present model of medical attention.