A randomized controlled trial of an internet-based posttreatment care for patients with eating disorders.

Background: Despite effective treatment approaches, relapses are frequent in eating disorders. Posttreatment care is essential to enhance continuous recovery and prevent deterioration. This study evaluated the effects of an Internet-based intervention following routine care.

[Eating disorders on the internet: an experimental study on the effects of pro-eating disorders websites and self-help websites].

Pro-eating disorders (ED) websites are assumed to have a negative impact on internet users because these sites promote ED as a lifestyle, and present an extreme thin ideal as well as extreme weight loss measures. We tested the impact of reading pro-ED contents in a sample of 421 women. The participants were randomly assigned to one of 3 conditions in which they were exposed to either a pro-ED blog, a self-help blog, or a neutral control blog.

Attentional bias in depressive patients and the moderating effect of concurrent anxiety.

Background: Most previous studies finding positive results in the emotional Stroop test did not control for concurrent anxiety symptoms. This study investigated depressive patients without comorbid anxiety disorders in order to clarify existing inconsistent findings. Furthermore, we examined the relationship between anxiety level and the emotional Stroop effect in patients and healthy subjects.

Quality of marital relationship and depression: results of a 10-year prospective follow-up study.

Background: Although the long-term course of depression has been intensively examined, there are only few studies on the long-term development of depressed patients' spousal relationships. The aim of the study was to assess the quality and stability of depressed patients' spousal relationships in the long-term course of depression and to identify predictors of relationship outcome.

Methods: In the study, 50 inpatients with Major Depression were followed-up one, two and ten years after discharge from hospital and compared to a healthy control group matched by age and sex.

Intra-individual variability in high-functioning patients with schizophrenia.

Intra-individual variability of reaction times (IIV) can be employed as a measure of the stability of information processing, which has been proposed to be fundamentally disturbed in schizophrenia. However, the theoretical and clinical significance of IIV is not clear, in part because it has previously been investigated in subject groups with generalized cognitive impairment. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to assess IIV in high-functioning patients with schizophrenia and relatively preserved cognitive performance.

Initial orienting to emotional faces in female adolescents with borderline personality disorder.

Background: Previous research has implicated a general hypervigilance for negative emotional words in adults with borderline personality disorder (BPD) as compared to healthy controls. The purpose of this study was to assess initial orienting to negative and positive emotional faces in female adolescents with BPD.

Method: Adolescent patients with BPD (n = 30), adolescent patients with other psychiatric diagnoses (n = 29) and adolescent healthy comparison subjects (n = 29) were tested with the visual dot probe task to examine attentional orienting to emotional and neutral faces.

Attentional bias in later stages of emotional information processing in female adolescents with borderline personality disorder.

Background: Bias in emotional information processing has been described in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This study investigates whether adolescent patients with a diagnosis of BPD demonstrate abnormalities in attentional maintenance in viewing emotional faces.

Sampling And Methods: Thirty female adolescents with a diagnosis of BPD, 29 female adolescents with mixed psychiatric diagnoses, and 30 healthy participants were tested with the visual dot probe task.

Slow cortical potentials in human aversive trace conditioning.

The aim of the present study was to better understand the cortical structures and neuronal processes involved in aversive differential trace conditioning in healthy subjects. According to previous findings in literature, we tested whether the stimulus preceding negativity (SPN) in an emotional trace-conditioning paradigm shows a frontocentral maximum reflecting affective anticipation, e.g.

Expressed emotion, perceived criticism and 10-year outcome of depression.

Outcome studies of patients suffering from depression indicate a high relapse rate and a tendency towards chronicity. A family atmosphere characterised by expressed emotion (EE) and perceived criticism (PC) was reported to be a robust predictor of outcome in affective disorders. The aim of the study was to analyze the association between EE, PC and long-term outcome of depression.

[Perception of emotional facial expressions in female adolescents with borderline personality disorder].

Objectives: Investigation of the perception of emotional and neutral facial expressions in female adolescents with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Methods: Emotional and neutral facial expressions from the set of Ekman and Friesen were presented to 30 adolescent patients with a diagnosis of BPD, to 29 adolescent patients with other psychiatric diagnoses, and to a control group of 30 healthy subjects. All participants in the study were female.

Marital interaction in depression: a comparison of structural analysis of social behavior and the Kategoriensystem für Partnerschaftliche Interaktion.

Background: A number of studies have shown that marital interaction plays an important role regarding etiology, maintenance, and course of depression. The Kategoriensystem fur Partnerschaftliche Interaktion (KPI; 'Coding System for Marital/Family Interaction') and the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) are both widely used to describe and quantify the interactional behavior of patients and their relatives. To evaluate the validity of extrapolating research findings from one system to another, especially in the field of depressive disorders, the two coding systems were compared in an empirical analysis.

IREL - A psychometric instrument for measuring life themes.

Background: Although biographical narratives and work involving the meaning of biographical episodes is a central focus in any psychotherapy, there remains a lack of psychometric instruments for measuring the autobiographical construction as such. We will be presenting a theoretical model of an autobiographical construction of life themes and the Interview of Retrospective Exploration of Life themes (IREL) will be used as the basis of a psychometric instrument. The IREL takes about 90-120 min.

Stroop performance in depressive patients: a preliminary report.

Background: The Stroop interference test requires executive control functions, in particular inhibition of a learned routine (in this case word reading). Depressive patients show deficits on tests of executive function. However, the impact of confounding variables like type of depression and anxiety level is not yet elucidated for depressive patients.

[The exploration of the depressive personality disorder].

Lately the concept of the depressive personality disorder has been regarded more often again in the context of chronic and subthreshold forms of depression. The purpose of the present study was the psychometric evaluation of a German version of the "Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory" (DPDI), which is a questionnaire for the exploration of the depressive personality disorder. A total of 138 depressive patients and controls were included in the study.

Dimensions of the Typus melancholicus personality type.

The Typus melancholicus personality type (TMP) is characterised by orderliness, conscientiousness and interpersonal dependence. Several standardised instruments have been developed for the assessment of the Typus melancholicus personality. To date there has been no systematic comparison of these instruments and in particular it has been unclear whether TMP represents a single trait or a personality trait constellation.

Prefrontal-cingulate activation during executive control: which comes first?

The Stroop test requires executive control functions, in particular inhibition of a learned routine (in this case, word reading). The spatiotemporal analysis of brain activation during Stroop task execution was performed in 16 healthy subjects using high-density event-related potentials (ERPs) and dipole source modeling (BESA software). Scalp ERP analysis revealed the neurophysiological substrate of the interference effect: first, a greater negativity in the incongruent as compared to the congruent and neutral conditions was found between 350 and 450 ms poststimulus over left frontocentral scalp regions.

Typus melancholicus personality type and the five-factor model of personality.

Personality traits are significant factors in the development and course of depression. Apart from the classical five-factor model of personality, other personality constellations, such as Tellenbach's Typus melancholicus, have been described in association with depressive disorder. Several instruments have been developed to assess the Typus melancholicus personality (TMP).

Expressed emotion in relatives of first-episode and chronic patients with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder-a comparison.

Relatives of first-episode and chronic schizophrenic and depressed patients were examined with respect to their expressed emotion (EE) status. The two aims of the study were to (1) investigate whether relatives of first-episode patients differed from family members of chronic patients, and (2) whether EE indices of relatives of schizophrenic patients were comparable to those of depressed subjects. Twenty patients of each diagnostic group (DSM-III-R and DSM-IV) were included, i.