Awareness of illness and subjective experience of cognitive complaints in patients with bipolar I and bipolar II disorder.

Objective: The authors' goal was to investigate the awareness of illness and subjective cognitive complaints of patients with either bipolar I disorder or bipolar II disorder during a phase of clinical stabilization.

Method: They used a structured clinical interview, the Frankfurt Complaints Questionnaire, to determine subjective cognitive complaints, and the Scale of Unawareness of Mental Disorder to assess 57 consecutively enrolled patients with bipolar I or bipolar II disorder.

Results: Patients with bipolar II disorder had significantly less insight and a higher level of subjective complaints of stimulus overload than patients with bipolar I disorder.

Multiple anxiety disorder comorbidity in patients with mood spectrum disorders with psychotic features.

Objective: The authors investigated frequencies and clinical correlates of multiple associations of panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and social phobia in patients with severe mood disorders.

Method: Subjects were 77 consecutively hospitalized adults with psychotic symptoms and with a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, major depression, or schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. Principal diagnosis and comorbidity were assessed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R-Patient Version.

Occurrence and clinical correlates of psychiatric comorbidity in patients with psychotic disorders.

Background: The aim of this study was to explore patterns and clinical correlates of psychiatric comorbidity in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and mood spectrum disorders with psychotic features.

Method: Ninety-six consecutively hospitalized patients with current psychotic symptoms were recruited and included in this study. Index episode psychotic diagnosis and psychiatric comorbidity were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R-Patient Version (SCID-P).

Identification of psychiatric distress by primary care physicians.

The aims of the present study were to evaluate the extent to which primary care physicians' (PCPs) identification of psychiatric distress is related to a number of nonpsychopathological factors, such as patient sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, and to assess the impact of depression on PCP identification of psychiatric distress, controlling for patient sociodemographic and health-related characteristics. Two patient samples were chosen to explore these issues: 1) patients not fulfilling any ICD-10-defined or subthreshold psychiatric diagnosis and, 2) patients with an ICD-10 diagnosis of current depression. Patients attending 46 primary care clinics during an index period were screened by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12 and selected for a second stage interview according to GHQ score.

Prevalence of anxiety disorders comorbidity in bipolar depression, unipolar depression and dysthymia.

Eighty-seven patients with current episode of depression were assessed by the SCID-P and subdivided in bipolar depressives (N = 24), unipolar depressives (n = 38) and dysthymics (n = 25). Anxiety disorders comorbidity in these three groups was investigated by means of the SCID-P. Panic disorder comorbidity was found in 36.

Efficacy of drug treatment in obsessive-compulsive disorder. A meta-analytic review.

Background: A review of the efficacy of antidepressant drug treatment in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), using a meta-analytic approach.

Method: Randomised double-blind clinical trials of antidepressant drugs, carried out among patients with OCD and published in peer-reviewed journals between 1975 and May 1994, were selected together with three studies currently in press. Forty-seven trials were located by searching the Medline and Excerpta Medica-Psychiatry data bases, scanning psychiatric and psychopharmacological journals, consulting recent published reviews and bibliographies, contacting pharmaceutical companies and through cross-references.

Social problems as factors affecting medical consultation: a comparison between general practice attenders and community probands with emotional distress.

Comparison between general practice attenders and community subjects with emotional distress (as measured by GHQ-12) showed that women from a general practice sample reported more social problems than those from the community. In both men and women, problems with their spouse or partner were far more likely among general practice attenders than among community probands. Furthermore, women who consulted the general practitioners could count less often on the availability of friend confidants and had more well-defined physical disorder than their community counterparts.

Common mental disorders and disability across cultures. Results from the WHO Collaborative Study on Psychological Problems in General Health Care.

Objective: To examine the impact of common mental illness on functional disability and the cross-cultural consistency of this relationship while controlling for physical illness. A secondary objective was to determine the level of disability associated with specific psychiatric disorders.

Design: A cross-sectional sample selected by two-stage sampling.

Phenomenology of panic disorder and major depression in a family study.

Family data were used to examine the phenomenology of MDD and panic disorder in relatives with respect to (a) proband diagnoses of PD and MDD, and (b) the occurrence of the disorders comorbidly vs. singly irrespective of family history. PD and MDD do not differ phenomenologically by proband diagnosis.

[In vivo dosimetry and radiographic confirmation in radiotherapy of Hodgkin's lymphoma].

In September 1991 a protocol for quality control of large shaped irradiation fields was started in our department. In vivo dosimetry with semiconductor detectors was used to measure the absorbed dose and patient positioning was checked with portal films weekly. First, we set a computed dosimetric system yielding dosimetric values in real time and allowing their easy storage.

Immunohistochemical localisation of monoclonal antibody R 24-recognized ganglioside Glac2 in early chick embryos.

The spatio-temporal cellular expression and biosynthesis of ganglioside Glac2 was investigated in early chick embryogenesis. For demonstration of embryonic Glac2-biosynthesis, chick embryos of stage 0 and of stages 4-5 were incubated in vitro in the presence of radioactive sugar precursors. It was found that chick embryos synthesize Glac2 as early as at the blastula stage as well as at the gastrula stage, both within the area pellucida and the area opaca.