Objective: To assess the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and its association with sociodemographic, clinical and lifestyle variables among Australian patients with a variety of psychiatric disorders.
Design and setting: Cross‐sectional study of patients attending a public mental health service in Western Australia between July 2005 and September 2006.
Participants: Patients who were aged 18–65 years; diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms, drug‐induced psychosis or borderline personality disorder; and currently taking at least one antipsychotic drug for a minimum of 2 weeks.
Main outcome measures: Prevalence of metabolic syndrome diagnosed with International Diabetes Federation criteria; fasting blood glucose and lipid levels; sociodemographic and lifestyle characteristics.
Results: Of 219 patients invited to participate, 203 agreed and had complete data. Prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 54% overall, and highest among patients with bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder (both 67%), followed by schizophrenia (51%). Sociodemographic variables, including age and ethnic background, were not significantly associated with metabolic syndrome, but a strong association was seen with mean body mass index. Other cardiovascular risk factors, such as smoking and substance misuse, were common among participants.
Conclusions: Prevalence of metabolic syndrome in this population was almost double that in the general Australian population, and patients with schizophrenia had a prevalence among the highest in the developed world. Prevalence was also high in patients with a variety of other psychiatric disorders.
Objective: To explore, using a naturalistic design, the efficacy of typical and atypical antipsychotics in the management of behavioural disturbance in people with psychiatric disorders.Method: Prospective naturalistic study of 15,278 incidents of behavioural disturbance perpetrated by 1,059 patients, over a two year period.Results: Typical and atypical antipsychotics did not differ in terms of their efficacy, overall. In terms of specific agents, haloperidol and quetiapine tended to show equal efficacy, with olanzapine being somewhat less effective on two of three outcome measures.Conclusions: Overall, atypical antipsychotics were as effective as typical agents in the management of acute behavioural disturbance in a mental health setting. Further work is required to determine the relative side effect burden of those agents.
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