bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The capacity of a measure of disability (the LSP) to predict hospital readmission in those with schizophrenia
Authors: Parker Gordon , Hadzi-Pavlovic Dusan 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisOne hundred and eighteen subjects with an admission diagnosis of schizophrenia were reassessed after 12 months to establish whether hospital readmission had occurred. All subjects were rated at baseline and after 12 months on the Life Skills Profile (LSP), a 39-item measure of disability, with scores demonstrating moderate stability. The baseline LSP score was a significant predictor of readmission, both in univariate and multivariate analyses. By contrast, several univariate variables (e.g. unemployment and non-compliance with medication over the review period) did not maintain their predictive capacity in multivariate analyses, suggesting that they were manifestations or consequences of significant disability, rather than independent contributors to poor outcome.
Obese binge eaters: metabolic characteristics, energy expenditure and dieting
Authors: Adami G. F. , Gandolfo P. , Campostano A. , Cocchi F. , Bauer B. , Scopinaro N. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisThe study was carried out in two groups of massively obese women with BMI values who were to undergo bariatric surgery. The patients were evaluated for weight variability and for the presence and the frequency of binge eating. Body composition, resting energy expenditure (REE) and metabolic parameters were also measured. When non-bingeing individuals were compared with patients who met Binge Eating Disorder criteria, no differences in body composition, fat distribution, REE values and concentrations of serum lipids, insulin and thyroid hormones were found. On the other hand, weight variability due to reduced diet in the subjects' lifetime was significantly higher. This study does not support the hypothesis that in massively obese women binge eating is somehow induced by a reduced energy expenditure.
Isolated retrograde amnesia for autobiographical material associated with acute left temporal lobe encephalitis
Authors: Hokkanen L. , Launes J. , Vataja R. , Valanne L. , Iivanainen M. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisRetrograde amnesia for autobiographical material in the absence of anterograde amnesia or other memory disturbances was found in a patient with acute viral encephalitis. Memory loss showed a temporal gradient, but new learning was spared. Both brain perfusion imaging with 99mTc-HMPAO SPECT, and EEG localized the lesion in the left temporal lobe while CT and MRI were normal. This observation supports the anatomical differentiation between the different memory functions. The uncommon combination of isolated retrograde amnesia without other neuropsychological findings may raise the doubt of psychogenic aetiology, which in this case was refuted.
Neuropsychological and P300 abnormalities in schizophrenics and their relatives
Authors: Roxborough H. , Muir W. J. , Blackwood D. H. R. , Walker M. T. , Blackburn I. M. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisSchizophrenic subjects (N = 30) performed less well than controls (N = 30) on neuropsychological tests sensitive to frontal and temporal lobe impairment and showed prolonged latency of the P300 event-related potential. Relatives of schizophrenic probands were also tested. Relatives with an abnormal P300 had a similar range of neuropsychological deficits as were found in the schizophrenic group and relatives with a normal P300 response performed as well as the normal control group. The results suggest that neurophysiological and neuropsychological testing of relatives may help to clarify the mode of inheritance of schizophrenia in some families.
Depression, demoralization and control over psychotic illness: a comparison of depressed and non-depressed patients with a chronic psychosis
Authors: Birchwood M. , Mason R. , MacMillan F. , Healy J. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisThis paper explores the hypothesis that depression in chronic schizophrenia is in part a psychological response to an apparently uncontrollable life-event, namely the illness and its long-term disabilities. It is suggested that depression is linked to patients' perception of controllability of their illness and absorption of cultural stereotypes of mental illness. Clinically and operationally diagnosed schizophrenic and manic-depressive patients receiving long-term maintenance treatment were studied. The cross-sectional prevalence of depression in schizophrenics was 29% and 11% for patients with bipolar affective illness. The hypothesis was supported. Multivariate analyses revealed that patients' perception of controllability of their illness powerfully discriminated depressed from non-depressed psychotic patients. Although those patients who accepted their diagnosis reported a lower perceived control over illness and an external locus of control, label acceptance was not associated with lowered depression, self-esteem or unemployment. The cross-sectional nature of the study makes the direction of causality and the role of intrinsic illness variables difficult to ascertain; however, the results set the scene for prospective and intervention studies and the various possibilities are discussed.
Panic disorder in women: a population-based twin study
Authors: Kendler Kenneth S. , Neale Michael C. , Kessler Ronald C. , Heath Andrew C. , Eaves Lindon J. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisPrevious studies based on probands from clinical samples suggest that panic disorder aggregates strongly in families and may be due to a highly penetrant single major locus. In this study we examine panic disorder as assessed at blind, structured psychiatric interview in 2163 women from a population-based twin registry. DSM-III-R diagnoses were assigned at a narrow and at a broad level both by clinician review and by computer algorithm. The familial aggregation of panic disorder in this sample was only modest. The relatively small number of affected individuals prevented a definitive resolution of competing genetic and non-genetic models of familial transmission. Although there was some inconsistency across diagnostic approaches, most results suggested that the familial aggregation of panic disorder was due largely to genetic factors. Using a multifactorial-threshold model, the best estimates of the heritability of liability ranged from 30 to 40%. From a familial perspective, panic disorder with phobic avoidance appears to represent a more severe form of the syndrome than panic disorder without avoidance. Our results, which suggest that in the general population panic disorder is only a moderately heritable condition, are at variance with results from several previous investigations based on clinically ascertained samples.
Behavioural and emotional problems in children and adolescents with congenital heart disease
Authors: Utens Elisabeth M. W. J. , Verhulst Frank C. , Meijboom Folkert J. , Duivenvoorden Hugo J. , Erdman Rudolph A. M. , Bos Egbert , Roelandt Jos T. C. , Hess John 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisBehavioural/emotional problems were assessed at least nine years after surgical correction for congenital heart disease (ConHD) in childhood. Parents of 144 10–15-year-old ConHD-children completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and 179, 11–17-year-old, ConHD-adolescents completed the Youth Self-Report (YSR). On the CBCL and YSR ConHD-children and adolescents obtained significantly higher problem scores than same-aged peers from normative reference groups. No significant differences were found between problem scores for different cardiac diagnostic groups. A negative correlation was found between CBCL total problem scores and IQ-scores of ConHD-children; for YSR total problem scores no such relationship was found.
New findings on tardive dyskinesia in a community sample
Authors: O'Hara Peter , Brugha Traolach S. , Lesage Alain , Wing John 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisIn a geographically defined area sample of 141 long-term psychiatric patients in day care in south London, the relationship between tardive dyskinesia (TD) and other aspects of illness, treatment, and social and psychological functioning were studied. The results are compared with previous findings. TD was significantly associated with parkinsonian symptoms and with the number of years in contact with the psychiatric services. There was a trend, in affective disorder only, towards an association with current neuroleptic dose. The patients with affective disorder also had higher rates of TD than patients with schizophrenia and paranoid psychosis. History of treatment with ECT correlated negatively with TD among those with schizophrenia, and positively among those with affective disorder. As in other studies, duration of neuroleptic treatment did not correlate with the presence or absence of TD. In contrast to some previous reports, age and cognitive status were not related to TD status. Possible reasons for this are discussed.
The epidemiology of psychotropic use in the City of São Paulo
Authors: de Jesus Mari Jair , Almeida-Filho Naomar , Coutinho Evandro , Andreoli Sergio Baxter , de Miranda Claudio Torres , Streiner David 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisThis is a cross-sectional community study conducted to assess the one-year prevalence of psychotropic use in the city of São Paulo. A representative stratified sample of the city was drawn from three sub-districts selected on the basis of their health indicators (Ramos & Goihman, 1989). The probability of a psychiatric disorder was estimated by means of the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Questionnaire (QMPA) developed by Santana (1982). The total sample comprised 1742 subjects: 11·7% of males and 24·6% of females were probable cases in the QMPA, at the cut-off point 7/8. The overall psychotropic consumption was 101·6 persons/1000 inhabitants. The rate of psychotropic use was higher for females (142·3 persons/1000 inhabitants) than males (50·0 persons/1000), a difference statistically significant (χ2 = 18·0, 1 df, P < 0·001). The highest rate of consumption was for tranquillizers (80·4/1000 inhabitants) and the general physician was found to be the leading prescriber (46·9%), being followed by cardiologists (15·3%). A log-linear model was constructed to study the combined effect of sociodemographic factors on the probability of being a tranquillizer user. Women were found to take more tranquillizers than men, consumption increased with age, and the positives in the QMPA were more likely to be users than were the negatives. The higher the family income per capita the higher the risk of being a tranquillizer user. These findings applied regardless of the sub-district, marital status, and migration status of the subjects. These results are discussed in the light of the alternative possible interventions by general practitioners.
Normality, deviance and minor psychiatric morbidity in the community
Authors: Anderson Jeremy , Huppert Felicia , Rose Geoffrey 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisThis paper investigates factors affecting the distribution of psychiatric morbidity in the community. It identifies a close relationship between mean Chronic General Health Questionnaire (CGHQ) scores in subdivisions of a large random sample of the community (the Health and Lifestyle Survey, N = 6317) and the prevalence in these groups of abnormal, above-threshold CGHQ scores. The frequency distributions of CGHQ scores in these different populations move up and down as a whole: like other physiological and behavioural attributes, these mental health outcomes in individuals are associated with characteristics of the populations in which they arise. Populations thus carry a collective responsibility for their own mental health and well-being. This implies that explanations for the differing prevalence rates of psychiatric morbidity must be sought in the characteristics of their parent populations; and control measures are unlikely to succeed if they do not involve population-wide changes.
Urban–rural differences in the associations between social deprivation and psychiatric service utilization in schizophrenia and all diagnoses: a case-register study in Northern Italy
Authors: Thornicroft Graham , Bisoffi Giulia , De Salvia Domenico , Tansella Michele 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisService utilization measures from the psychiatric case registers for urban South-Verona and rural Portogruaro in North East Italy for the period 1983–9 were used to identify associations with socio-demographic variables from the 1981 census in schizophrenia and related disorders as well as in all diagnoses. The patterns of service use were broadly similar, except that Portogruaro has significantly more community contacts, and has about twice the treated incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia. The census data showed that unmarried and unemployed people were more likely to live alone in the urban than in the rural area. In South-Verona the most strongly associated predictor variables, both for schizophrenia and all diagnoses, are: living alone, unemployment, percentage of the total population who are dependents and the percentage who are divorced, separated or widowed. In contrast, in Portogruaro there were no consistent associations between census and service use variables. Stepwise multiple regression models using three census predictor variables accounted for over 85% of the variance in South-Verona utilization rates. The results indicate that the strongly predictive associations previously described in England hold in urban South-Verona, but not in rural Portogruaro, and may be related to the effect of cities in clustering seriously disabled psychiatric patients in areas of low-cost housing where they live in relative social isolation.
Cognitive disorders and negative symptoms as correlates of motivational deficits in psychotic patients
Authors: Schmand B. , Kuipers T. , Gaag M. Van Der , Bosveld J. , Bulthuis F. , Jellema M. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisThe problem of a possible lack of motivation to perform cognitive tasks, which is often encountered in psychotic patients, has been approached from the perspective of the ‘energetics’ of cognition (Hockey et al. 1986) and from the broader clinical context of psychosis as an ‘amotivational syndrome’ and its related negative symptoms.The presence of motivational deficits was investigated in a group of psychotic in-patients (N = 73, and 40 had schizophrenia) compared with a control group of non-psychotic psychiatric in-patients (N = 23). The motivational deficit was operationalized in terms of Sanders's (1983) cognitive–energetic model as a large effect of ‘time-on-task’ during a simple, monotonous reaction test. Significantly more psychotic patients than control patients showed evidence of this type of motivational deficit. The deficit appeared to be related with negative but not with positive symptoms of psychosis. Furthermore, the deficit was shown to be related to the cognitive disorders of psychosis, which have been amply documented in the literature, i.e. disorders of vigilance, verbal memory and distractibility. These results suggest that the cognitive disorders of psychosis are not of a ‘computational’ but of an ‘energetical’, i.e. motivational nature.
Are cities bad for your mental health?
Authors: Lewis Glyn , Booth Margaret 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisA study was conducted using data from the Health and Lifestyle Survey, a population based community survey of England, Wales and Scotland in which psychiatric morbidity was assessed using the General Health Questionnaire. An association was found between urban residence and the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity (odds ratio 1·54, 95% CI 1·32–1·80) which persisted after adjustment for various confounding factors (odds ratio 1·34, 95% CI 1·13–1·58). The discussion mentions the need for further study into the psychologically harmful elements of urban life.
Patterns of cortical activity in schizophrenia
Authors: Schroeder J. , Buchsbaum M. S. , Siegel B. V. , Geider F. J. , Haier R. J. , Lohr J. , Wu J. , Potkin S. G. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisEighty-three patients with schizophrenia and 47 healthy controls received positron emission tomography (PET) with 18F-2-deoxyglucose uptake while they were executing the Continuous Performance Test (CPT). The entire cortex was divided into 16 regions of interest in each hemisphere, four in each lobe of the brain, and data from corresponding right and left hemispheric regions were averaged. Data from the schizophrenic patients were subjected to a factor analysis, which revealed five factors that explained 80% of the common variance. According to their content, the factors were identified and labelled ‘parietal cortex and motor strip’, ‘associative areas’, ‘temporal cortex’, ‘hypofrontality’ (which included midfrontal and occipital areas) and ‘frontal cortex’. Hemispheric asymmetry was only confirmed for the temporal cortex. Factor weights obtained in the schizophrenic group were applied to the metabolic data of the healthy controls and factor scales computed. Schizophrenics were significantly more hypofrontal than the controls, with higher values on the ‘parietal cortex and motor strip’ factor and a trend towards higher values in the temporal cortex. A canonical discriminant analysis confirmed that the ‘hypofrontality’ and ‘parietal cortex and motor strip’ factors accurately separated the schizophrenic group from the healthy controls. Hemispheric asymmetry was only confirmed for the temporal lobe. Significantly higher factor scores for the left temporal lobe in schizophrenics than in normals were obtained when calculated for the right and left hemisphere separately. Taken together, our results confirm the importance of hypofrontality as a pattern of cortical metabolic rate and point to the potential importance of parietal and motor strip function in schizophrenia.
Memory functions, alprazolam and exposure therapy: a controlled longitudinal study of agoraphobia with panic disorder
Authors: Curran H. V. , Bond A. , O'Sullivan G. , Bruce M. , Marks I. , Lelliot P. , Shine P. , Lader M. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisBenzodiazepines (BZs) produce transient anterograde amnesia when given to normal subjects. The present longitudinal study assessed whether BZs impair memory functions in a clinically anxious group. Eighty-two agoraphobics with panic disorder were randomly allocated to one of four treatment groups resulting from a combination of two drug treatments (alprazolam or placebo) and two psychological treatments (exposure or relaxation). Of these, 38 subjects were assessed on a range of objective and subjective indices of memory and mood at three time points: before treatment, after 8 weeks of treatment and again at 24 weeks when patients had been free of medication from 5–8 weeks.Alprazolam produced pronounced impairments on a word recall task. At the 24-week medication-free follow-up, alprazolam patients were still impaired on the task compared with placebo patients. Alprazolam did not impair performance on an implicit memory task and did not affect digit span. Differences between psychological treatments emerged mainly in subjective memory effects. Findings are discussed in terms of the specificity of BZ-induced amnesia and differential tolerance to the varying effects of BZs. Implications are drawn out for the patient's ability to function optimally in daily life while taking alprazolam.
Neurasthenia in a longitudinal cohort study of young adults
Authors: Merikangas K. , Angst J. 
Published: July 2009

SynopsisThis study examines the concept of neurasthenia in a longitudinal cohort of young adults selected from a community sample of the canton of Zurich, Switzerland. The major focus is on the validity of the case definition of neurasthenia. Close approximations of the proposed descriptive and research definitions of the ICD-10 are employed as well as the concept of ‘irritable weakness’ as described in 1831 by Kraus (1926–1932).The prevalence of neurasthenia defined according to the ICD-10 criteria was: 1% across 10 years and 0·9% in 1988 for a duration criterion of ≥ 3 months; and 8·1% across 10 years and 12% in 1988 for a duration criterion of ≥ 1 month. The duration criterion of ≥ 3 months appeared to be excessively restrictive to represent individuals with neurasthenia in the community. Subjects with 1 month episodes of neurasthenia exhibited sufficient differences from controls and similarities to subjects with anxiety or depressive disorders to justify a 1 month duration criterion for neurasthenia in community samples.The clinical significance of neurasthenia was indicated by the magnitude of subjective distress, and occupational and social impairment reported by the majority of the cases. Prospective assessment of the longitudinal course of neurasthenia revealed that approximately 50% of the cases continued to exhibit this disorder at follow-up. Our findings suggest that neurasthenia is equally likely to represent an early manifestation of affective illness as it is a consequence in those neurasthenic subjects who exhibited comorbid affective disorders. The magnitude, chronicity, impairment, longitudinal stability and distinction from anxiety and depression associated with this condition in the general population, suggest that neurasthenia is an important diagnostic entity for which additional validation studies should be undertaken.
Perceptual distortion of body image in adolescent girls: distortion of body image in adolescence
Authors: Halmi Katherine A. , Goldberg Solomon C. , Cunningham Sheila 
Published: July 2009

synopsisBody image estimations in 86 normal-weight adolescent girls showed (a) a tendency to overestimate body width and underestimate body length and (b) an association between the younger ages and the extent of overestimation of body width. In particular there is a sharp drop in overestimation between ages 10 and 11 and thereafter a more gradual and non-significant decline. These age-specific normative data are useful in assessing body image distortions in a variety of medical and psychiatric disorders.
Epileptic seizures induced by psychotropic drugs
Authors: Toone B. K. , Fenton G. W. 
Published: July 2009

synopsisOn the basis of information abstracted from case histories, 41 patients who had experienced epileptic seizures thought to be due either to treatment with psychiatric drugs or to withdrawal from sedative drugs were compared with a control group of patients. Those who had experienced seizures were more commonly first born and had a history of post-natal brain damage. During the week preceding the seizure there had been a marked increase in drug prescribing. The implications for drug management are discussed.
Neurotic illness in the families of children with asthma and wheezy bronchitis: a general practice population study
Authors: Davis J. B. 
Published: July 2009

synopsisIn a controlled population study 111 families of children with asthma and wheezy bronchitis were screened. The mothers of asthmatics suffered more depressive illness than controls. This correlates with the severity of the child's asthma. There was no difference in immunological status between depressive and non-depressive mothers of asthmatics.
The characteristics of psychiatric patients readmitted within a month of discharge
Authors: Marks Frances M. 
Published: July 2009

synopsisFrom the Camberwell Register it was found that 9–14% of all admissions in the years 1965–70 were readmissions within a month of discharge. The characteristics of these patients were compared with the total population admitted. No particular diagnostic category was associated with rapid readmissions but the rapidly readmitted group contained a high proportion of young patients and divorced or separated patients.The case notes of rapidly readmitted patients were examined and compared with the case notes of a control group. The circumstance which predisposed patients to require rapid readmission was the degree of socially disruptive behaviour of the patient.Patients benefited from readmission and the reasons for this are discussed.