Publications by authors named "Yael Lewis"

Eating disorders (EDs) are severe psychiatric disorders which entail substantial morbidity and mortality. Early detection and treatment are fundamental in determining prognosis. Exposure to traumatic events and acute stress are prominent risk factors for the emergence of EDs, while treatment delay may cause medical and psychiatric complications and lead to chronic illness.

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Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has demonstrated benefits in adults with psychiatric disorders, but its clinical utility in children and young people (CYP) is unclear. This PRISMA systematic review used published and ongoing studies to examine the effects of rTMS on disorder-specific symptoms, mood and neurocognition in CYP with psychiatric disorders. We searched Medline via PubMed, Embase, PsychINFO via OVID, and Clinicaltrials.

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Eating disorders (EDs) are serious mental health conditions characterised by impaired eating behaviours and nutrition as well as disturbed body image, entailing considerable mortality and morbidity. Psychopharmacological medication is an important component in the treatment of EDs. In this review, we performed a historic analysis of pharmacotherapeutic research in EDs based on the scientific studies included in the recently published World Federation of Societies for Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) guidelines for ED treatment.

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Little is known about the therapeutic alliance (TA) formed with different professionals in multidisciplinary eating disorder (ED) treatment, particularly in the context of online treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to conduct a pilot study during the COVID-19 pandemic examining characteristics of patients' TA with their dieticians and psychotherapists, associations between patients' and therapists' views of the TA, and relationships between psychological characteristics and TAs. Sixty-three patients with EDs and their treating psychotherapists and dieticians were surveyed during the COVID-19 pandemic using the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI-S).

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Objectives: This 2023 update of the WFSBP guidelines for the pharmacological treatment of eating disorders (EDs) reflects the latest diagnostic and psychopharmacological progress and the improved WFSBP recommendations for the assessment of the level of evidence (LoE) and the grade of recommendation (GoR).

Methods: The WFSBP Task Force EDs reviewed the relevant literature and provided a timely grading of the LoE and the GoR.

Results: In anorexia nervosa (AN), only a limited recommendation (LoE: A; GoR: 2) for olanzapine can be given, because the available evidence is restricted to weight gain, and its effect on psychopathology is less clear.

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Physiological and psychological distress may accelerate cellular aging, manifested by shortening of telomere length (TL). The present study focused on TL shortening in anorexia nervosa (AN), an illness combining physiological and psychological distress. For that purpose, we measured TL in 44 female adolescents with AN at admission to inpatient treatment, in a subset of 18 patients also at discharge, and in 22 controls.

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Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has demonstrated benefits in adults with various psychiatric disorders, but its clinical utility in children and young people (CYP) remains unclear. This PRISMA systematic review used published and ongoing studies to examine the effects of tDCS on disorder-specific symptoms, mood and neurocognition in CYP with psychiatric disorders. We searched Medline via PubMed, Embase, PsychINFO via OVID, and Clinicaltrials.

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Dropout from psychiatric treatment and psychotherapy is common among asylum-seekers, even though they are at increased risk of emotional distress and psychiatric disorders. We aimed to define the associations between demographic and clinical variables and dropout among asylum-seekers in Israel. In this retrospective chart review we initially examined 271 files from Gesher (Bridge, in Hebrew), a government psychiatric clinic for asylum-seekers.

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Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, the number of patients with eating disorders (EDs) seeking treatment increased significantly. The present study sought to evaluate whether, during the pandemic (2020-21), patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) would show more ED-related, comorbid, and COVID-19-related symptoms in comparison to a naturalistic control group, and whether differences would be found between adult and adolescent patients with AN. We also examined attitudes to telemedicine use during the pandemic in patients receiving long-distance interventions.

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Nutritional counseling is a central part of eating disorder (ED) treatment. However, the nature of this treatment has not yet been described from women's perspectives. We conducted two studies exploring views of women regarding their ED nutritional counseling.

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Background: Healthy individuals show subtle orienting bias, a phenomenon known as pseudoneglect, reflected in a tendency to direct greater attention toward one hemispace. Accumulating evidence indicates that this bias is an individual trait, and attention is preferentially directed contralaterally to the hemisphere with higher dopamine signaling. Administration of methylphenidate (MPH), a dopamine transporter inhibitor, was shown to normalize aberrant spatial attention bias in psychiatric and neurological patients, suggesting that the reduced orienting bias following administration of MPH reflects an asymmetric effect of the drug, increasing extracellular dopamine in the hemisphere with lower dopamine signaling.

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Background: Most psychiatric disorders have their onset in childhood or adolescence, and if not fully treated have the potential for causing life-long psycho-social and physical sequelae. Effective psychotherapeutic and medication treatments exist, but a significant proportion of children and young people do not make a full recovery. Thus, novel, safe, brain-based alternatives or adjuncts to conventional treatments are needed.

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Background: Studies investigating patients' perspectives towards an abrupt transition from face-to-face to online treatment in eating disorders (EDs) are scarce. The current study aimed to (1) conduct a preliminary assessment of patients' perspectives regarding this transition, and (2) explore potential demographic, clinical, and treatment-related factors associated with these perspectives.

Methods: Sixty-three patients with EDs whose treatment was moved to an online format, were surveyed during the COVID-19 lockdown (April-May 2020).

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Objective: This study assessed longer-term outcomes from a randomised controlled feasibility trial of 20 sessions of real versus sham high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in adults with severe, enduring anorexia nervosa (SE-AN).

Methods: Thirty participants who completed the original study protocol were invited to take part in an open follow-up (18-months post-randomisation), assessing body mass index (BMI), eating disorder (ED) symptoms and other psychopathology.

Results: Twenty-four participants (12 each originally allocated to real/sham) completed the 18-month follow-up.

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Objective: Strong relationships exist between obsessive-compulsive (OC) disorder and eating disorders (EDs). The aim of the study was to investigate whether OC symptoms would be expressed differently in different ED types.

Method: Ninety-four female adolescent inpatients with restricting anorexia nervosa (AN-R), 67 with binge/purge AN (AN-B/P), and 48 with bulimia nervosa (BN) were assessed on admission and discharge using the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Yale-Brown-Cornell Eating Disorders Scale (YBC-EDS), Eating Attitude Test-26 (EAT-26), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).

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Impaired decision making in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been reported in several studies. Although methylphenidate (MPH) is known to ameliorate impaired decision making in patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it has not yet been examined in patients with BPD. We therefore assessed the efficacy of a single dose of MPH on cognitive functions and decision making in patients with BPD.

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The Deployment Risk and Resilience Inventory (DRRI) is a widely used questionnaire assessing deployment-related risk and resilience factors among war veterans. Its successor, the DRRI-2, has only been validated and used among veterans deployed for overseas military missions, but because many countries still enforce compulsory military service, validating it among nonclinical samples of healthy discharged soldiers following mandatory service is also a necessity. In the current study, a sample of 101 discharged Israeli soldiers (39 males, 62 females; mean time since discharge 13.

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In recent years the use of psychostimulants for cognitive enhancement in healthy individuals with no psychiatric disorders has been on the rise. However, it is still unclear whether psychostimulants improve certain cognitive functions at the cost of others, and how these psychostimulants interact with individual personality differences. In the current study, we investigated whether the effect of one common stimulant, methylphenidate (MPH), on creativity is associated with novelty seeking.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how Methylphenidate influences state-anxiety in healthy individuals, utilizing a cross-over design with 36 participants who received either the medication or a placebo.
  • - Overall, Methylphenidate did not show a significant effect on state-anxiety for the group, but individuals with higher initial anxiety reported a notable reduction in anxiety levels after taking the medication.
  • - A strong negative correlation was found between initial anxiety levels and the change in state-anxiety, indicating the medication's effects may depend on the individual's anxiety state rather than attention levels.
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