Effects of an eating club for people with a psychotic disorder on personal recovery: Results of a randomized controlled trial.

Background And Objectives: Many people with a psychotic disorder are coping with severe psychosocial limitations related to their illness. The current randomized controlled trial (RCT) investigates the effects of an eating club intervention (HospitalitY (HY)) aimed to improve personal and societal recovery.

Methods: In 15 biweekly sessions participants received individual home-based skill training and guided peer support sessions in groups of three participants from a trained nurse.

Facilitating Recovery of Daily Functioning in People With a Severe Mental Illness Who Need Longer-Term Intensive Psychiatric Services: Results From a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial on Cognitive Adaptation Training Delivered by Nurses.

Background: Feasible and effective interventions to improve daily functioning in people with a severe mental illness (SMI), such as schizophrenia, in need of longer-term rehabilitation are scarce.

Aims: We assessed the effectiveness of Cognitive Adaptation Training (CAT), a compensatory intervention to improve daily functioning, modified into a nursing intervention.

Method: In this cluster randomized controlled trial, 12 nursing teams were randomized to CAT in addition to treatment as usual (CAT; n = 42) or TAU (n = 47).

Peer support and skills training through an eating club for people with psychotic disorders: A feasibility study.

Objective: The HospitalitY (HY) intervention is a novel recovery oriented intervention for people with psychotic disorders in which peer support and home-based skill training are combined in an eating club. A feasibility study was conducted to inform a subsequent randomised trial.

Methods: This study evaluated three eating clubs consisting of nine participants and three nurses.

The development and evaluation of a computerized decision aid for the treatment of psychotic disorders.

Background: Routinely monitoring of symptoms and medical needs can improve the diagnostics and treatment of medical problems, including psychiatric. However, several studies show that few clinicians use Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) in their daily work. We describe the development and first evaluation of a ROM based computerized clinical decision aid, Treatment-E-Assist (TREAT) for the treatment of psychotic disorders.

Aggression Regulation in Day Treatment of Eating Disorders: Two-Centre RCT of a Brief Body and Movement-Oriented Intervention.

Objective: The objective is to evaluate a body and movement-oriented intervention on aggression regulation, specifically aimed towards reducing anger internalization in patients with an eating disorder.

Method: Patients were randomized to treatment-as-usual (TAU) plus the intervention (n = 38) or to TAU only (n = 32). The intervention was delivered by a psychomotor therapist.

Do routine outcome monitoring results translate to clinical practice? A cross-sectional study in patients with a psychotic disorder.

Background: The use of Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) in mental health care has increased widely during the past decade. Little is known, however, on the implementation and applicability of ROM outcome in daily clinical practice. In the Netherlands, an extensive ROM-protocol for patients with psychotic disorders has been implemented over the last years (ROM-Phamous).

Effect of Aggression Regulation on Eating Disorder Pathology: RCT of a Brief Body and Movement Oriented Intervention.

Objective: The objective of the study is to evaluate the effect of a brief body and movement oriented intervention on aggression regulation and eating disorder pathology for individuals with eating disorders.

Method: In a first randomized controlled trial, 40 women were allocated to either the aggression regulation intervention plus supportive contact or a control condition of supportive contact only. The intervention was delivered by a psychomotor therapist.

Cognitive alexithymia is associated with the degree of risk for psychosis.

Alexithymia is a personality construct denoting emotion processing problems. It has been suggested to encompass two dimensions: a cognitive and affective dimension. The cognitive dimension is characterized by difficulties in identifying, verbalizing and analyzing emotions, while the affective dimension reflects the level of emotional arousal and imagination.

Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of cognitive adaptation training as a nursing intervention in long-term residential patients with severe mental illness: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Despite the well-known importance of cognitive deficits for everyday functioning in patients with severe mental illness (SMI), evidence-based interventions directed at these problems are especially scarce for SMI patients in long-term clinical facilities. Cognitive adaptation Training (CAT) is a compensatory approach that aims at creating new routines in patients' living environments through the use of environmental supports. Previous studies on CAT showed that CAT is effective in improving everyday functioning in outpatients with schizophrenia.

Grey matter, an endophenotype for schizophrenia? A voxel-based morphometry study in siblings of patients with schizophrenia.

Background: Grey matter, both volume and concentration, has been proposed as an endophenotype for schizophrenia given a number of reports of grey matter abnormalities in relatives of patients with schizophrenia. However, previous studies on grey matter abnormalities in relatives have produced inconsistent results. The aim of the present study was to examine grey matter differences between controls and siblings of patients with schizophrenia and to examine whether the age, genetic loading or subclinical psychotic symptoms of selected individuals could explain the previously reported inconsistencies.

Differential stigmatizing attitudes of healthcare professionals towards psychiatry and patients with mental health problems: something to worry about? A pilot study.

Purpose: This study compares stigmatizing attitudes of different healthcare professionals towards psychiatry and patients with mental health problems.

Methods: The Mental Illness Clinicians Attitude (MICA) questionnaire is used to assess stigmatizing attitudes in three groups: general practitioners (GPs, n = 55), mental healthcare professionals (MHCs, n = 67) and forensic psychiatric professionals (FPs, n = 53).

Results: A modest positive attitude towards psychiatry was found in the three groups (n = 176).

Neural correlates of emotion regulation in patients with schizophrenia and non-affected siblings.

Background: Patients with schizophrenia often experience problems regulating their emotions. Non-affected relatives show similar difficulties, although to a lesser extent, and the neural basis of such difficulties remains to be elucidated. In the current paper we investigated whether schizophrenia patients, non-affected siblings and healthy controls (HC) exhibit differences in brain activation during emotion regulation.

Alexithymia influences brain activation during emotion perception but not regulation.

Alexithymia is a psychological construct that can be divided into a cognitive and affective dimension. The cognitive dimension is characterized by difficulties in identifying, verbalizing and analysing feelings. The affective dimension comprises reduced levels of emotional experience and imagination.

Dissociable morphometric profiles of the affective and cognitive dimensions of alexithymia.

Alexithymia ("no words for feelings") is a psychological construct that can be divided in a cognitive and affective dimension. The cognitive dimension reflects the ability to identify, verbalize and analyze feelings, whereas the affective dimension reflects the degree to which individuals get aroused by emotional stimuli and their ability to fantasize. These two alexithymia dimensions may differentially put individuals at risk to develop psychopathology.

Normal brain activation in schizophrenia patients during associative emotional learning.

Emotional deficits are among the core features of schizophrenia and both associative emotional learning and the related ability to verbalize emotions can be reduced. We investigated whether schizophrenia patients demonstrated impaired function of limbic and prefrontal areas during associative emotional learning. Patients and controls filled out an alexithymia questionnaire and performed an associative emotional learning task with positive, negative and neutral picture-word pairs during fMRI scanning.

When Broca goes uninformed: reduced information flow to Broca's area in schizophrenia patients with auditory hallucinations.

Auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are frequently associated with activation of the left superior temporal gyrus (including Wernicke's area), left inferior frontal gyrus (including Broca's area), and the right hemisphere homologs of both areas. It has been hypothesized that disconnectivity of both interhemispheric transfer and frontal and temporal areas may underlie hallucinations in schizophrenia. We investigated reduced information flow in this circuit for the first time using dynamic causal modeling, which allows for directional inference.

Reduced connectivity in the self-processing network of schizophrenia patients with poor insight.

Lack of insight (unawareness of illness) is a common and clinically relevant feature of schizophrenia. Reduced levels of self-referential processing have been proposed as a mechanism underlying poor insight. The default mode network (DMN) has been implicated as a key node in the circuit for self-referential processing.

Altered resting state connectivity of the default mode network in alexithymia.

Alexithymia is a trait characterized by a diminished capacity to describe and distinguish emotions and to fantasize; it is associated with reduced introspection and problems in emotion processing. The default mode network (DMN) is a network of brain areas that is normally active during rest and involved in emotion processing and self-referential mental activity, including introspection. We hypothesized that connectivity of the DMN might be altered in alexithymia.

Variation of the gene coding for DARPP-32 (PPP1R1B) and brain connectivity during associative emotional learning.

Associative emotional learning, which is important for the social emotional functioning of individuals and is often impaired in psychiatric illnesses, is in part mediated by dopamine and glutamate pathways in the brain. The protein DARPP-32 is involved in the regulation of dopaminergic and glutaminergic signaling. Consequently, it has been suggested that the haplotypic variants of the gene PPP1R1B that encodes DARPP-32 are associated with working memory and emotion processing.

Bidirectional information flow in frontoamygdalar circuits in humans: a dynamic causal modeling study of emotional associative learning.

Everyday language is replete with descriptions of emotional events that people have experienced and wish to share with others. Such descriptions presumably rely on pairings of affective words and visual information (such as events and pictures) that have been learnt throughout one's development. To study this kind of affective language learning in the brain, we used functional neuroimaging during associative learning of emotional words and pictures.

COMT Val158Met polymorphism, verbalizing of emotion and activation of affective brain systems.

Genetic variation in the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism has been shown to influence performance on cognitive and emotional tasks. Specifically, it has been suggested that the Met allele might be less advantageous than the Val allele with respect to emotional processing. This study addresses the question whether the presence of the Met allele is directly related to both lower emotional verbalizing proficiency and differences in brain activation during emotional processing.

Dealing with feelings: characterization of trait alexithymia on emotion regulation strategies and cognitive-emotional processing.

Background: Alexithymia, or "no words for feelings", is a personality trait which is associated with difficulties in emotion recognition and regulation. It is unknown whether this deficit is due primarily to regulation, perception, or mentalizing of emotions. In order to shed light on the core deficit, we tested our subjects on a wide range of emotional tasks.

Sex differences in neural activation to facial expressions denoting contempt and disgust.

The facial expression of contempt has been regarded to communicate feelings of moral superiority. Contempt is an emotion that is closely related to disgust, but in contrast to disgust, contempt is inherently interpersonal and hierarchical. The aim of this study was twofold.

Brain imaging, genetics and emotion.

This paper reviews the published evidence on genetically driven variation in neurotransmitter function and brain circuits involved in emotion. Several studies point to a role of the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism in amygdala activation during emotion perception. We also discuss other polymorphisms (e.

Empathy for positive and negative emotions in the gustatory cortex.

Anterior insula and adjacent frontal operculum (hereafter referred to as IFO) are active during exposure to tastants/odorants (particularly disgusting ones), and during the viewing of disgusted facial expressions. Together with lesion data, the IFO has thus been proposed to be crucial in processing disgust-related stimuli. Here, we examined IFO involvement in the processing of other people's gustatory emotions more generally by exposing participants to food-related disgusted, pleased and neutral facial expressions during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).