Patients suffering from schizophrenia are at high risk for admission and treatment in locked units. This study investigated gender differences in the pharmacological emergency treatment of schizophrenia patients over a 21-year observation period. The current retrospective study was conducted at the Division of Psychiatry I of the Medical University Innsbruck.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPersonality traits have been linked with both brain structure and function. However, the exact relationship between personality traits and other behavioural measures with neurometabolites, measured with proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, is not clear. Here we investigated the association between behavioural measures (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImproving the subjective outcome of patients is an important target in the treatment of schizophrenia. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to examine the association of factors deemed relevant in this context, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe emerging adulthood represents a vulnerable and critical turning point for the beginning of mental illnesses and is therefore of particular interest for the study of risk and resilience. The present survey investigated the impact of sex on the associations between resilience and the perception of social support and stress in students. The Resilience Scale was used to assess resilience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with impairments in facial emotion and emotional prosody perception during both mood episodes and periods of remission. To expand on previous research, the current study investigated cross-modal emotion perception, that is, matching of facial emotion and emotional prosody in remitted BD patients.
Methods: Fifty-nine outpatients with BD and 45 healthy volunteers were included into a cross-sectional study.
Background: Non-adherence to medication remains a major challenge in the long-term management of patients with schizophrenia. Next to lack of insight into the illness, adverse effects of antipsychotic drugs, cognitive deficits, poor therapeutic alliance, reduced quality of life, missing social support, and negative attitudes toward medication are predictors of non-adherence. This study examined potential correlations between attitudes toward antipsychotic drug therapy, subjective well-being, and symptom change in patients with chronic schizophrenia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEur Neuropsychopharmacol
April 2016
Previous studies on the relationship between plasma levels of new-generation antipsychotics (NGAs) and clinical response did not account for inter- and intra-individual variability in drug levels. Therefore, the present study calculated the ratio of observed versus expected NGA plasma levels and investigated its relationship with changes in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Data of patients starting monotherapy with a NGA were collected 2, 4, 8, and 12 weeks after initiation of treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Bipolar disorder is associated with impairments in emotion processing that are present during both mood episodes and periods of remission. In this context, most previous studies have investigated facial emotion recognition abilities. In contrast, the current study focused on the perception of prosodic and semantic affect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Nonadherence to medication is still a major problem in the treatment of schizophrenia. The current longitudinal study investigated whether the patients' attitudes toward treatment correlated with the ratio of observed vs expected plasma levels of antipsychotic drugs as an objective measurement of adherence.
Methods: Data of patients starting monotherapy with a new-generation antipsychotic were collected 2, 4, and 12 weeks after the initiation of treatment.
Affect perception has frequently been shown to be impaired in patients suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (BD), but it remains unclear whether these impairments exist during symptomatic remission and whether the two disorders differ from each other in this regard. Most previous studies have investigated facial affect recognition, but not the ability to decode mental states from emotional tone of voice, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals suffering from schizophrenia are frequently considered to be dangerous. The current longitudinal chart review was carried out to investigate the diagnostic mix of patients who were admitted to the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Medical University Innsbruck due to risk of harm to others. The sample consisted of all adult inpatients admitted to psychiatric acute care units in the years 1992, 1997, 2002, and 2007.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBoth schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) have consistently been associated with deficits in facial affect recognition (FAR). These impairments have been related to various aspects of social competence and functioning and are relatively stable over time. However, individuals in remission may outperform patients experiencing an acute phase of the disorders.
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