Exploring the relationship between auditory hallucinations, trauma and dissociation.

Background: It is clinically imperative to better understand the relationship between trauma, auditory hallucinations and dissociation. The personal narrative of trauma has enormous significance for each individual and is also important for the clinician, who must use this information to decide on a diagnosis and treatment approach.

Aims: To better understand whether dissociation contributes in a significant way to hallucinations in individuals with and without trauma histories.

Grey matter abnormalities in first-episode schizophrenia and affective psychosis.

Background: Grey matter and other structural brain abnormalities are consistently reported in first-onset schizophrenia, but less is known about the extent of neuroanatomical changes in first-onset affective psychosis.

Aims: To determine which brain abnormalities are specific to (a) schizophrenia and (b) affective psychosis.

Method: We obtained dual-echo (proton density/T2-weighted) magnetic resonance images and carried out voxel-based analysis on the images of 73 patients with first-episode psychosis (schizophrenia n=44, affective psychosis n=29) and 58 healthy controls.

The structural brain correlates of neurological soft signs in AESOP first-episode psychoses study.

Patients with schizophrenia and related psychoses have an excess of minor neurological abnormalities (neurological soft signs) of unclear neuropathological origin. These include poor motor coordination, sensory perceptual difficulties and difficulties in sequencing complex motor tasks. Neurological soft signs seem not to reflect primary tract or nuclear pathology.

Gender differences in premorbid adjustment of patients with first episode psychosis.

Gender differences in premorbid adjustment, clinical presentation, and longitudinal course have been considered increasingly in explanatory models of psychotic disorders, such as the schizophrenias. Indeed, findings of a male propensity to poor premorbid adjustment, negative and non-affective symptoms, and poor outcome relative to their female counterparts, has led to suggestions that males are more prone to an early-onset dementia praecox type of schizophrenic disorder. The current study investigated a sample of 38 male and 20 female patients presenting with their first episode of psychosis (broadly defined, but excluding obvious drug-induced disorders) from a defined catchment area population, which had been systematically ascertained without prejudice to diagnostic subtype or illness duration.