Schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders.

Since its earliest conceptualization, schizophrenia has been considered a disorder of "young men." Contemporary research suggests that there are sex differences in schizophrenia that are both transdiagnostic and representative of general sex/gender differences across the psychopathology spectrum. This chapter selectively summarizes representative sex/gender differences in clinical expression, epidemiology, risk factors, treatment, as well as course and outcome in schizophrenia.

Seasonality of cerebrospinal fluid monoamine metabolite concentrations and their associations with meteorological variables in humans.

Seasonal variations in neurotransmitter parameters have been previously reported in humans. However, these studies have involved small sample sizes and have not examined possible relationships with meteorological variables. We compared cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of the major monoamine neurotransmitter metabolites (5-HIAA, HVA, and MHPG) in 188 healthy controls (80 men, 108 women) in relationship to age, sex, BMI, and available meteorological variables.

Sex versus gender differences in schizophrenia: The case for normal personality differences.

Schizophrenia has generally been viewed as having a unique preschizophrenia personality or destructive to the personality post-onset. This view is reflected in the scarcity of studies of personality in schizophrenia with the exception of schizotypal personality considered by many as an endophenotype of schizophrenia. What is missing is the study of personality as independent of schizophrenia and as a potential source of schizophrenia heterogeneity.

Rethinking Thought Disorder.

It has been 30 years since Holzman introduced a special issue of the Schizophrenia Bulletin entitled “Thought Disorder in Schizophrenia.” He pointed out in his Editor’s Introduction that in contrast to the explosion of interest at that time in the biological aspects of schizophrenia, there were important areas of study that represented “..

Is perseveration uniquely characteristic of schizophrenia?

Evidence for the existence of categorically distinct disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression is mixed: neuropsychological impairments may be similar in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; schizophrenia and major depression show similar neuropsychological and frontal lobe disturbances; and overlap in biochemical anomalies among the disorders has also been reported. Interestingly, there are very few studies that directly compare all diagnoses. The present study compares cognitive perseveration in these three diagnostic groups using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) to examine performance across patients with schizophrenia (n=143), bipolar disorder (n=25) and major depression (n=21).