Risk factors for coercion length at psychiatric hospitals in Israel: Relationship with staff.

Background: Coercive interventions continue to be applied frequently in psychiatric care when patients are at imminent risk of harming themselves and/or others.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the relationship between the length of coercion and a variety of factors, including the sociodemographic background of patients, their diagnoses and the characteristics of hospital staff.

Methods: This is a one-year cross-sectional retrospective study, including records of 298 patients who underwent restraint and/or seclusion interventions in male acute, closed wards in two psychiatric hospitals in Israel.

Treatment of Clozapine-Associated Sialorrhea: The Role of Benzamide Derivatives.

Purpose: Hypersalivation is one of the most prevalent and distressing adverse effects associated with clozapine treatment. Currently, there is no standard therapeutic approach toward how to overcome it. Clinicians use various medications for managing this adverse effect.

Successful Use of Escitalopram for the Treatment of Visual Hallucinations in Patients With Parkinson Disease.

Introduction: Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) frequently experience visual hallucinations (VH). Visual hallucinations are most often viewed as an adverse effect of antiparkinsonian treatment. Possible treatments for this disturbance include a reduction of antiparkinsonian medications, adding atypical antipsychotics, or cholinesterase inhibitors.

Curcumin as an add-on to antidepressive treatment: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, pilot clinical study.

Objectives: Depression is a widespread mental disorder in which nearly half of the affected people have recurrent symptoms. Drug combinations may produce cumulative adverse effects, especially in elderly and physically ill patients. It was demonstrated that curcumin possesses antidepressive activity in various animal models of depression, and a combination of curcumin with some antidepressants potentiates the antidepressive effect of these agents.

Amisulpride versus moclobemide in treatment of clozapine-induced hypersalivation.

Objectives: Previous publications demonstrated substitute benzamides as effective agents in treatment of clozapine-induced sialorrhea (CIS). The aim of this study was to compare efficacy of amisulpride and moclobemide (both from the substitute benzamide group) in controlling, or at least minimizing, CIS.

Methods: The study was designed as a 6-week, two-center, fixed-dose, comparison study of 400 mg/day of amisulpride versus 300 mg/day of moclobemide as an adjunctive treatment in 53 schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder patients (diagnosed according to DSM-IV) suffering from CIS.