The multiaxial assessment and the DSM-III: a conceptual analysis.

With the release of the DSM-III, multiaxial assessment, which was a new concept, was introduced to daily clinical practice. This article will review the history and the development of the concept of multiaxial assessment and will focus on the its relationship to the DSM-III. In conclusion I will discuss different critiques of the concept.

The Rubber Hand Illusion paradigm as a sensory learning process in patients with schizophrenia.

Objective: The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) has previously been used to depict the hierarchy between visual, tactile and perceptual stimuli. Studies on schizophrenia inpatients (SZs) have found mixed results in the ability to first learn the illusion, and have yet to explain the learning process involved. This study's aim was two-fold: to examine the learning process of the RHI in SZs and healthy controls over time, and to better understand the relationship between psychotic symptoms and the RHI.

Dental Health and the Type of Antipsychotic Treatment in Inpatients with Schizophrenia.

Aim: This study examined the association between dental conditions in hospitalized patients with ICD-10 schizophrenia and type of antipsychotic treatment. Based on the literature suggesting that atypical antipsychotics are thought to be more tolerable than typical antipsychotics, we hypothesized that hospitalized patients with schizophrenia treated with atypicals would have better dental health than those treated with typicals alone or with a combination of both (combined group).

Methods: A representative sample of 348 patients (69% males), aged 51.

Colour influences perception of facial emotions but this effect is impaired in healthy ageing and schizophrenia.

Introduction: Social cognition is commonly assessed by identification of emotions in facial expressions. Presence of colour, a salient feature of stimuli, might influence emotional face perception.

Methods: We administered 2 tests of facial emotion recognition, the Emotion Recognition Test (ER40) using colour pictures and the Penn Emotional Acuity Test using monochromatic pictures, to 37 young healthy, 39 old healthy and 37 schizophrenic men.

Exposure of mental health nurses to violence associated with job stress, life satisfaction, staff resilience, and post-traumatic growth.

Workplace violence towards health workers in hospitals and in mental health units in particular is increasing. The aim of the present study was to explore the effects of exposure to violence, job stress, staff resilience, and post-traumatic growth (PTG) on the life satisfaction of mental health nurses. A descriptive, cross-sectional design was used.

Schizophrenia detection and classification by advanced analysis of EEG recordings using a single electrode approach.

Electroencephalographic (EEG) analysis has emerged as a powerful tool for brain state interpretation and diagnosis, but not for the diagnosis of mental disorders; this may be explained by its low spatial resolution or depth sensitivity. This paper concerns the diagnosis of schizophrenia using EEG, which currently suffers from several cardinal problems: it heavily depends on assumptions, conditions and prior knowledge regarding the patient. Additionally, the diagnostic experiments take hours, and the accuracy of the analysis is low or unreliable.

Improvement in verbal memory following SSRI augmentation of antipsychotic treatment is associated with changes in the expression of mRNA encoding for the GABA-A receptor and BDNF in PMC of schizophrenic patients.

Verbal memory impairment in schizophrenia is associated with abnormalities in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-ergic and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) systems. Recent evidence from animal and clinical studies that adding fluvoxamine to antipsychotics alters the expression of transcripts encoding for the GABA-A receptor and BDNF led us to postulate that fluvoxamine augmentation may improve memory in schizophrenia. To test this, we examined the effect of add-on fluvoxamine on verbal memory and other cognitive functions and related it to the expression of mRNA coding for the GABA-A receptor and BDNF in peripheral mononuclear cells (PMC) of schizophrenic patients.

Similar verbal memory impairments in schizophrenia and healthy aging. Implications for understanding of neural mechanisms.

Memory is impaired in schizophrenia patients but it is not clear whether this is specific to the illness and whether different types of memory (verbal and nonverbal) or memories in different cognitive domains (executive, object recognition) are similarly affected. To study relationships between memory impairments and schizophrenia we compared memory functions in 77 schizophrenia patients, 58 elderly healthy individuals and 41 young healthy individuals. Tests included verbal associative and logical memory and memory in executive and object recognition domains.

Voting rights for psychiatric patients: compromise of the integrity of elections, or empowerment and integration into the community?

Background: Participation of the mentally-ill in elections promotes integration into the community. In many countries, individuals with compromised mental incompetence who have legal guardians are denied the right to vote. In Israel, mental health consumers are eligible to vote.

Baclofen as add-on to standard psychosocial treatment for alcohol dependence: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with 1 year follow-up.

Background: Limited clinical trials and case-reports yielded conflicting results regarding the efficacy of baclofen (a GABAB agonist) in the treatment of alcohol dependence. The aim of this study was to test the efficacy and tolerability of baclofen in alcohol dependent patients in Israel.

Methods: The study was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial comparing 50mg/day of baclofen to placebo over 12 weeks, in addition to a standard psychosocial intervention program, with 26-week and 52-week follow-up observations.

Social cognition in schizophrenia and healthy aging: differences and similarities.

Unlabelled: Social cognition is impaired in schizophrenia but it is not clear whether this is specific for the illness and whether emotion perception is selectively affected. To study this we examined the perception of emotional and non-emotional clues in facial expressions, a key social cognitive skill, in schizophrenia patients and old healthy individuals using young healthy individuals as reference. Tests of object recognition, visual orientation, psychomotor speed, and working memory were included to allow multivariate analysis taking into account other cognitive functions

Results: Schizophrenia patients showed impairments in recognition of identity and emotional facial clues compared to young and old healthy groups.

"Clinical brain profiling": a neuroscientific diagnostic approach for mental disorders.

Clinical brain profiling is an attempt to map a descriptive nosology in psychiatry to underlying constructs in neurobiology and brain dynamics. This paper briefly reviews the motivation behind clinical brain profiling (CBP) and presents some provisional validation using clinical assessments and meta-analyses of neuroscientific publications. The paper has four sections.

Mirror, mirror on the wall: how women learn body dissatisfaction.

Extensive research indicates that exposure to media as well as pressure and modeling by sociocultural agents, such as peers and family, are predictive of the development of body image dissatisfaction (BID). This influence is mediated by social comparison and internalization of the thin-ideal. In the current study we assessed comparisons between participants and other women with whom they were in close relationships, (e.

Intrusive trauma recollections is associated with impairment of interference inhibition and psychomotor speed in PTSD.

Background: Intrusive cognitions that enter consciousness involuntarily are prominent symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study aimed to identify neuropsychological mechanisms involved.

Method: Fifty PTSD outpatients and 50 healthy controls were tested using Finger Tapping, Simple and Choice Reaction Times and Stroop Tasks, to measure motor, psychomotor speed, response selection, and interference inhibition ability respectively.

The functional anatomy of schizophrenia: A dynamic causal modeling study of predictive coding.

This paper tests the hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in selectively attending to predictable events. We used dynamic causal modeling (DCM) of electrophysiological responses - to predictable and unpredictable visual targets - to quantify the effective connectivity within and between cortical sources in the visual hierarchy in 25 schizophrenia patients and 25 age-matched controls. We found evidence for marked differences between normal subjects and schizophrenia patients in the strength of extrinsic backward connections from higher hierarchical levels to lower levels within the visual system.

Pregnenolone treatment reduces severity of negative symptoms in recent-onset schizophrenia: an 8-week, double-blind, randomized add-on two-center trial.

Aims: Management of recent-onset schizophrenia (SZ) and schizoaffective disorder (SA) is challenging owing to frequent insufficient response to antipsychotic agents. This study aimed to test the efficacy and safety of the neurosteroid pregnenolone in patients with recent-onset SZ/SA.

Methods: Sixty out- and inpatients who met DSM-IV criteria for SZ/SA, with suboptimal response to antipsychotics were recruited for an 8-week, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, two-center add-on trial, that was conducted between 2008 and 2011.

Predicting 10-year quality-of-life outcomes of patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders.

Aims: This study aimed to determine predictors for 10-year good versus poor perceived general quality of life (QOL) outcomes from baseline variables in people with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.

Methods: We compared patients with poor versus good 10-year QOL outcomes using baseline clinical, personality-related variables, demographic and background characteristics. Logistic regression analysis was used for predicting the 10-year QOL outcomes from baseline data.

What is "effective treatment" for a schizophrenic inpatient with persistent treatment-resistant psychosis and severe violent behavior?: a case of ECT.

Aggressive behavior among treatment-resistant schizophrenic patients is a major clinical challenge whose prevalence is underestimated.In our 420-bed psychiatric hospital, some 15% of patients exhibit active psychosis and high rates of verbal/physical aggression necessitating physical restraints. In addition to their condition, these individuals endanger staff and other patients, consume extensive resources, and induce a sense of clinical helplessness.

Brain "Globalopathies" cause mental disorders.

"Consciousness" "mood," "identity" and "personality" are all emergent properties from whole-brain organizations; these are typically disturbed in psychiatric disorders. This work proposes that the underlying etiopathology of mental disorders originates from disturbances to global brain dynamics, or "Globalopathies" that are divided into three major interdependent types (1) "Resting-State Networkpathies," in personality disorders, (2) "Entropiathies" in mood disorders, and (3) "Connectopathies" in psychosis and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Novel approaches of processing signals from the brain are beginning to reveal brain organization in health and disease.

Local contextual processing in major depressive disorder.

Objective: The study investigated local contextual processing in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). This was defined as the ability to utilize predictive contextual information to facilitate detection of predictable versus random targets.

Method: We recorded EEG in 15 MDD patients and 14 age-matched controls.

Pathways to similar executive impairment: comparison of schizophrenia patients and healthy aging individuals.

Executive impairment is prominent in schizophrenia, in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and dementia and in healthy aging. Identifying processes that critically constrain executive function can advance investigation of their biological basis and treatment planning. Recent findings that elderly healthy individuals showed similar impairment on conditional exclusion task as schizophrenia patients raised the question whether similar processes are impaired.

Late-onset psychosis and risedronate treatment for osteoporosis.

As women age and enter menopause, they are sometimes more susceptible than men to certain physical and mental disorders such as osteoporosis and late-onset schizophrenia. Risedronate (Actonel©) is a bisphosphonate used for the treatment of osteopenia. Early initiation of pharmacotherapy for osteopenia is recommended to prevent greater bone loss.

Symptom severity scale of the DSM5 for schizophrenia, and other psychotic disorders: diagnostic validity and clinical feasibility.

Innovations in DSM5 include dimensional diagnosis of schizophrenia (SZ) and other psychotic (OP) disorders using the symptom severity scale (SS-DSM5). We evaluated the psychometric properties and diagnostic validity of the SS-DSM5 scale using a cross-sectional design and an unselected convenience unselected sample of 314 inpatients and outpatients with SZ/OP and mood disorders who received standard care in routine clinical practice. The SS-DSM5 scale, the Clinical Global Impression-Severity scale (CGI-S), the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and the Bech-Rafaelsen Mania Scale (BRMS) were administered.