Publications by authors named "Perlis R"
Objective: Vaccination is protective against severe COVID-19 disease, yet whether vaccination reduces COVID-19-associated inflammation in pregnancy has not been established. The objective of this study is to characterize maternal and cord cytokine profiles of acute SARS-CoV-2 "breakthrough" infection (BTI) after vaccination, compared with unvaccinated infection and uninfected controls.
Study Design: 66 pregnant individuals enrolled in the MGH COVID-19 biorepository (March 2020-April 2022) were included.
Importance: Efforts to understand the complex association between social media use and mental health have focused on depression, with little investigation of other forms of negative affect, such as irritability and anxiety.
Objective: To characterize the association between self-reported use of individual social media platforms and irritability among US adults.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This survey study analyzed data from 2 waves of the COVID States Project, a nonprobability web-based survey conducted between November 2, 2023, and January 8, 2024, and applied multiple linear regression models to estimate associations with irritability.
Opportunities and Risks of Large Language Models in Psychiatry.
NPP Digit Psychiatry Neurosci
May 2024
The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into mental healthcare and research heralds a potentially transformative shift, one offering enhanced access to care, efficient data collection, and innovative therapeutic tools. This paper reviews the development, function, and burgeoning use of LLMs in psychiatry, highlighting their potential to enhance mental healthcare through improved diagnostic accuracy, personalized care, and streamlined administrative processes. It is also acknowledged that LLMs introduce challenges related to computational demands, potential for misinterpretation, and ethical concerns, necessitating the development of pragmatic frameworks to ensure their safe deployment.
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- - Pregnancy may worsen the severity of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory infections, but the reasons behind this increased risk are not well understood.
- - A study involving 226 women, including 152 pregnant and 74 non-pregnant, showed that pregnant women experience significant changes in T cell responses and immune functions after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
- - The study found increased levels of interleukin-27 in pregnant women, which is linked to T cell exhaustion, suggesting that unique immune responses during pregnancy could make them more vulnerable to viral infections.
Objective: To develop a prediction model for adverse neonatal outcomes using electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) interpretation data and other relevant clinical information known at the start of the second stage of labor.
Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of individuals who labored and delivered at two academic medical centers between July 2016 and June 2020. Individuals were included if they had a singleton gestation at term (more than 37 weeks of gestation), a vertex-presenting, nonanomalous fetus, and planned vaginal delivery and reached the start of the second stage of labor.
Genome-wide studies are yielding a growing catalog of common and rare variants that confer risk for psychopathology. However, despite representing unprecedented progress, emerging data also indicate that the full promise of psychiatric genetics-including understanding pathophysiology and improving personalized care-will not be fully realized by targeting traditional dichotomous diagnostic categories. The current article provides reflections on themes that emerged from a 2021 National Institute of Mental Health-sponsored conference convened to address strategies for the evolving field of psychiatric genetics.
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- Many adults in the US still have health problems after having COVID-19, which is called post COVID-19 condition (PCC).
- Research looked at how often these people visit doctors and what makes it hard for them to get medical help.
- It found that people with PCC go to urgent care and hospitals more than other adults, and they also face more financial and nonfinancial problems when trying to get care.
Post-COVID-19 cognitive deficits are common, persistent, and disabling. Evidence on effective treatments is limited. The goal of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a digital intervention to reduce cognitive and functional deficits in adults with persistent post-COVID-19 cognitive dysfunction.
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- Identifying new infections during a pandemic is essential for effective public health responses, but it poses significant challenges.
- This study aimed to evaluate how nonprobability online surveys could track COVID-19 infections over time, even when traditional testing was not available.
- Conducted across the U.S. from June 2020 to January 2023, the surveys gathered data from over 300,000 participants and revealed a strong correlation between survey results and officially reported COVID-19 cases.
Background: While the NIMH Research Domain Criteria framework stresses understanding how neuropsychiatric phenotypes vary across populations, little is known outside of small clinical cohorts about conspiratorial thoughts as an aspect of cognition.
Methods: We conducted a 50-state non-probability internet survey conducted in 6 waves between October 6, 2022 and January 29, 2024, with respondents age 18 and older. Respondents completed the American Conspiratorial Thinking Scale (ACTS) and the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).
Article Synopsis
- A recent study investigated the relationship between prescription amphetamines and the risk of developing psychosis or mania, finding that amphetamine use has increased in the U.S. over the past years.
- The research used case-control methods, comparing hospitalized patients with psychosis against those hospitalized for other psychiatric issues, and identified a significant link between higher doses of amphetamines and increased odds of these serious mental health outcomes.
- The findings highlight the need for cautious prescribing practices, particularly for high doses of amphetamines, along with ongoing monitoring for signs of psychosis or mania in patients.
Article Synopsis
- This study investigated how common irritability is among U.S. adults and its relationship with major depressive and anxiety symptoms through an online survey involving over 42,000 participants.
- Results showed that women, younger individuals, those with lower education levels, and lower household incomes reported higher irritability scores.
- The findings also revealed a concerning link between increased irritability and suicidal thoughts, highlighting the need for further exploration of irritability's effects on mental health outside of immediate mood disorders.
Article Synopsis
- The study explores the effectiveness of Maya, a mobile app providing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety in young adults aged 18 to 25, addressing the common issue of anxiety disorders among this demographic.
- Participants engaged in a 6-week program and were divided into three groups, each receiving different text message incentives to encourage involvement, while their anxiety levels were measured using the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale.
- Results showed a significant reduction in anxiety symptoms after the intervention, with participants maintaining improvement even 12 weeks post-treatment, highlighting the potential of digital mental health tools for this age group.
Importance: Trust in physicians and hospitals has been associated with achieving public health goals, but the increasing politicization of public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic may have adversely affected such trust.
Objective: To characterize changes in US adults' trust in physicians and hospitals over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and the association between this trust and health-related behaviors.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This survey study uses data from 24 waves of a nonprobability internet survey conducted between April 1, 2020, and January 31, 2024, among 443 455 unique respondents aged 18 years or older residing in the US, with state-level representative quotas for race and ethnicity, age, and gender.
Importance: Spin is a common form of biased reporting that misrepresents study results in publications as more positive than an objective assessment would indicate, but its prevalence in psychiatric journals is unknown.
Objective: To apply a large language model to characterize the extent to which original reports of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions in psychiatric journals reflect spin.
Design: We identified abstracts from studies published between 2013 and 2023 in 3 high-impact psychiatric journals describing randomized trials or meta-analyses of interventions.