Polygenic Heterogeneity Across Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Subgroups Defined by a Comorbid Diagnosis.

Among patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 65-85% manifest another psychiatric disorder concomitantly or at some other time point during their life. OCD is highly heritable, as are many of its comorbidities. A possible genetic heterogeneity of OCD in relation to its comorbid conditions, however, has not yet been exhaustively explored.

Lighting as an aid for recovery in hospitalized psychiatric patients: a randomized controlled effectiveness trial.

Artificial indoor lighting can disturb sleep and increase depressive symptoms; both common complaints in psychiatric inpatients. In this trial we aimed to improve sleep in psychiatric inpatients using a circadian lighting environment. Investigator-blinded parallel-group randomised controlled effectiveness trial in an inpatient psychiatric ward with adjustable lighting.

Genome-wide Burden of Rare Short Deletions Is Enriched in Major Depressive Disorder in Four Cohorts.

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is moderately heritable, with a high prevalence and a presumed high heterogeneity. Copy number variants (CNVs) could contribute to the heritable component of risk, but the two previous genome-wide association studies of rare CNVs did not report significant findings.

Methods: In this meta-analysis of four cohorts (5780 patients and 6626 control subjects), we analyzed the association of MDD to 1) genome-wide burden of rare deletions and duplications, partitioned by length (<100 kb or >100 kb) and other characteristics, and 2) individual rare exonic CNVs and CNV regions.

Do patients with high-functioning autism have similar social cognitive deficits as patients with a chronic cause of schizophrenia?

Objective: There is substantial evidence that both patients with schizophrenia and patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have impaired social cognition including theory of mind (ToM) deficits. However, it remains unclear if both verbal (explicit) and non-verbal (implicit) ToM as well as social perception are similarly affected in both disorders.

Methods: Twenty-one patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 11 patients diagnosed with ASD were matched one-to-one to healthy controls based on gender, age, and educational level.

A Danish register-based study on involuntary treatment in anorexia nervosa.

Objective: Involuntary treatment is controversial and widely debated, but remains a significant component of treatment for severe anorexia nervosa. Given how little is known about this topic, we describe the frequency of various involuntary measures in a national cohort of all patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. In a subsample of patients, we explored predictors of the first involuntary measure recorded.

Themes of unfulfilled agency and communion in life stories of patients with schizophrenia.

We examined themes of agency and communion in life stories of individuals with schizophrenia. Twenty-four individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and 24 control participants matched on age, gender, and education described their life stories in a free format. The life stories were coded for the presence of agency and communion themes and whether or not the themes captured fulfillment of agency and communion needs.

Obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions: Association with comorbidity profiles and cognitive-behavioral therapy outcome in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Our aims were to examine: (1) classes of comorbid disorders in a sample of children and adolescents with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), (2) how these classes relate to obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions, and (3) the extent to which obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions predict Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) outcome. Participants (N = 269) were assessed with the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS-PL) and the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS). Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used to identify comorbidity classes.

Magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopic measurement of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in major depression before and after electroconvulsive therapy.

Objective: Prior studies suggest that a dysregulation of the inhibitory neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is involved in the pathophysiology of major depression. We aimed to elucidate changes in cortical GABA content in relation to depression and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).

Methods: In total, 11 patients with major depression or depressive episode of bipolar disorder (mean pre-ECT Ham-17 of 26) and 11 healthy subjects were recruited.

The importance of insight, avoidance behavior, not-just-right perception and personality traits in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): a naturalistic clinical study.

Purpose: The primary aim of the present explorative naturalistic study was to examine the association of poor insight, avoidance behavior, and not-just-right sensation with baseline parameters including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, baseline severity scores, comorbidity, and personality traits. A second aim was to examine how insight, avoidance and not-just-right sensation influence treatment outcome.

Materials And Methods: In total, 317 medical records from children and adolescents with OCD referred to a specialized OCD clinic in Denmark were recorded for baseline parameters and treatment outcome.

Combined habit reversal training and exposure response prevention in a group setting compared to individual training: a randomized controlled clinical trial.

Chronic tic disorders may have a huge influence on quality of life. Habit reversal training (HRT) and exposure response prevention (ERP) are effective treatments. In a blinded assessed, open trial, this study evaluates the effectiveness of a newly developed Scandinavian tic treating manual designed to treat adolescents with a chronic tic disorder, combining HRT and ERP.

Differential pain modulation in patients with peripheral neuropathic pain and fibromyalgia.

Background The definition of neuropathic pain has recently been changed by the International Association for the Study of Pain. This means that conditions such as fibromyalgia cannot, as sometimes discussed, be included in the neuropathic pain conditions. However, fibromyalgia and peripheral neuropathic pain share common clinical features such as spontaneous pain and hypersensitivity to external stimuli.

Urban mental health: challenges and perspectives.

Purpose Of Review: To provide an update on urban mental health and highlight the challenges that require urgent attention.

Recent Findings: The majority of the world's population live in towns and urbanization is expected to increase in all areas of the world. Challenges to mental health in urban areas include loneliness, violence, high crime rates, homelessness, noise and other pollutants, traffic accidents, drug abuse, and insufficiency of mental health services.

Diagnostic validity of early-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder in the Danish Psychiatric Central Register: findings from a cohort sample.

Objectives: Employing national registers for research purposes depends on a high diagnostic validity. The aim of the present study was to examine the diagnostic validity of recorded diagnoses of early-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the Danish Psychiatric Central Register (DPCR).

Design: Review of patient journals selected randomly through the DPCR.

Narrative identity in female patients with remitted bipolar disorder: a negative past and a foreshortened future.

The present study examined narrative identity and subjective well-being in outpatients with remitted bipolar disorder (BD) and a healthy control group. Fifteen female outpatients with remitted BD and 15 healthy control participants identified past and future chapters in their life stories, gave their age for the beginning and end of each chapter, rated emotional tone as well as positive and negative self-event connections associated with the chapters, and for future chapters rated the probability of the chapter. The BD patients reported less positive emotional tone and self-event connections for past chapters, but not for future chapters.

COMT Val158Met and MTHFR C677T moderate risk of schizophrenia in response to childhood adversity.

Objective: Mesolimbic dopamine sensitization has been hypothesized to be a mediating factor of childhood adversity (CA) on schizophrenia risk. Activity of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met increases mesolimbic dopamine signaling and may be further regulated by methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) C677T. This study investigates the three-way interaction between CA, COMT, and MTHFR.

Theory of mind deficits partly mediate impaired social decision-making in schizophrenia.

Background: Using paradigms from game theory, researchers have reported abnormal decision-making in social context in patients with schizophrenia. However, less is known about the underpinnings of the impairment. This study aimed to test whether theory of mind (ToM) deficits and/or neurocognitive dysfunctions mediate impaired social decision-making in patients with schizophrenia.

A decline in self-defining memories following a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Purpose: Receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia can be a profound life transition that often has a negative influence on the patient's sense of self. The present study is the first to examine how self-defining memories are temporally distributed around age at diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Method: 25 patients and 25 matched control participants identified 3 self-defining memories from their lives.

Use of patient-controlled psychiatric hospital admissions: patients' perspective.

Background: By patient-controlled admission (PCA), psychiatric patients with a PCA contract can initiate a brief admission without a health professional gatekeeper. However, research regarding use of PCA is scarce.

Aims: In this Danish multi-centre study, motives for and satisfaction with PCA were explored.

Use of patient-controlled psychiatric hospital admissions: mental health professionals' perspective.

Background: In a patient-controlled admission (PCA) programme, the decision about hospital admission is made solely by the patient, with no gatekeeper function allocated to the mental health professionals (MHPs). Current knowledge about how MHPs experience and evaluate PCA is sparse.

Aims: This Danish multi-centre study examined the MHP assessment of the PCA programme in daily clinical practice, and compared PCA evaluations made by MHPs and patients.

Treatment profiles in a Danish psychiatric university hospital department.

Background: Despite concerns about rising treatment of psychiatric patients with psychotropic medications and declining treatment with psychotherapy, actual treatment profiles of psychiatric patients are largely unknown.

Aims: To describe patterns in the treatment of patients in a large psychiatric university hospital department.

Methods: A descriptive mapping of treatment of in- and outpatients in a psychiatric department at Aarhus University Hospital Risskov, Denmark.

Pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder with tic symptoms: clinical presentation and treatment outcome.

Unlabelled: Some studies have shown that children and adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and co-morbid tics differ from those without co-morbid tics in terms of several demographic and clinical characteristics. However, not all studies have confirmed these differences. This study examined children and adolescents with OCD and with possible or definite tic specifiers according to the DSM-5 in order to see whether they differ from patients without any tic symptoms regarding clinical presentation and outcome of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Discriminating between first- and second-order cognition in first-episode paranoid schizophrenia.

Introduction: An impairment of visually perceiving backward masked stimuli is commonly observed in patients with schizophrenia, yet it is unclear whether this impairment is the result of a deficiency in first or higher order processing and for which subtypes of schizophrenia it is present.

Methods: Here, we compare identification (first order) and metacognitive (higher order) performance in a visual masking paradigm between a highly homogenous group of young first-episode patients diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (N = 11) to that of carefully matched healthy controls (N = 13).

Results: We find no difference across groups in first-order performance, but find a difference in metacognitive performance, particularly for stimuli with relatively high visibility.