In three general medical settings (general practice, hospital medical wards and emergency rooms) about 20% of the adult attenders had a DSM-III mental disorder, mainly in the area of affective and anxious disorders. Some of these disorders were quite severe. Of those cases reassessed 1 year and 2 years after the first interview, less than a quarter reached a "no-diagnosis status". The chronicity of most cases dependent on the interplay not only of either relapse or duration of the main disorder but also of comorbidity and incidence of new disorders. A high incidence of more transient disorders in subjects who were well at first assessment was also found.
Background: One third to two thirds of people with schizophrenia have persistent psychotic symptoms despite clozapine treatment. Under real-world circumstances, the need to provide effective therapeutic interventions to patients who do not have an optimal response to clozapine has been cited as the most common reason for simultaneously prescribing a second antipsychotic
Embodied cognition theories suggest that observation of facial expression induces the same pattern of muscle activation, and that this contributes to emotion recognition. Consequently, the inability to form facial expressions would affect emotional understanding. Patients with schizophrenia show a reduced ability to express and perceive facial emotions. We assumed that a physical training specifically developed to mobilize facial muscles could improve the ability to perform facial movements, and, consequently, spontaneous mimicry and facial expression recognition. Twenty-four inpatient participants with schizophrenia were randomly assigned to the experimental and control group. At the beginning and at the end of the study, both groups were submitted to a facial expression categorization test and their data compared. The experimental group underwent a training period during which the lip muscles, and the muscles around the eyes were mobilized through the execution of transitive actions. Participants were trained three times a week for five weeks. Results showed a positive impact of the physical training in the recognition of others’ facial emotions, specifically for the responses of “fear”, the emotion for which the recognition deficit in the test is most severe. This evidence suggests that a specific deficit of the sensorimotor system may result in a specific cognitive deficit.
SummaryObjective. - To test by means of ROC analysis the performance of the Symptom Questionnaire (SQ) of Kellner and Fava against an interview designed for making DSM-III diagnoses in 517 subjects. To analyse the trend of SQ scores at 3 months, 1 year and 2 years after the first interview in a sample of 112 persons. Design. - Cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the distributions of SQ scores in DSM-III cases and in non-cases. Setting. - General practice, hospital medical wards and emergency departments of Regione Emilia Romagna. Main outcome measures. - Symptom Questionnaire, Bech Mini-compendium to formulate DSM-III diagnoses. Results. - The SQ reached high sensitivity and specificity levels (80%, 76% in general practice, 86%, 74% in hospital medical wards, 83%, 85% in emergency departments with the cut-off scores of 24, 24 and 26, respectively). SQ scores show a similar trend in cases and in non-cases, with a significant drop at three months. Conclusions. - The SQ seems to be an adequate screening tool in the above-mentioned settings, but its length and the assistance sometimes needed during the compilation make its use in the emergency departments problematic.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.