Introduction. Recent research has drawn attention to the link between childhood maltreatment and schizophrenia. Child abuse and neglect may have an impact on symptoms and physical health in these patients. This association has not been studied to date in India. Materials and Methods. Clinically stable patients with schizophrenia (n = 62) were assessed for childhood adversity using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. The association of specific forms of adversity with symptomatology and associated variables was examined. Results. Emotional abuse was reported by 56.5% patients and physical abuse by 33.9%; scores for childhood neglect were also high. Persecutory delusions were linked to physical abuse, while anxiety was linked to emotional neglect and depression to emotional abuse and childhood neglect. Physical abuse was linked to elevated systolic blood pressure, while emotional abuse and neglect in women were linked to being overweight. Conclusions. Childhood adversity is common in schizophrenia and appears to be associated with a specific symptom profile. Certain components of the metabolic syndrome also appear to be related to childhood adversity. These results are subject to certain limitations as they are derived from remitted patients, and no control group was used for measures of childhood adversity.

Supersensitivity psychosis is a recognized complication of long-term antipsychotic treatment, in which patients develop new or reemergent psychotic symptoms, generally accompanied by dyskinetic movements, due to prolonged dopamine receptor blockade and resultant supersensitivity. Though it is most closely associated with schizophrenia and the use of typical antipsychotic agents, it has also been documented in patients with other diagnoses, and in those receiving atypical antipsychotics. There is no established treatment for this condition. In this paper, we describe a patient with persistent delusional disorder, jealous type, who developed a supersensitivity psychosis characterized by persecutory delusions, auditory hallucinations, and thought insertion in association with mild tardive dyskinesia. These symptoms resolved completely following six weeks of treatment with the second-generation antipsychotic asenapine, 20 mg/day. The mechanisms and implications of the patient's symptomatology and response are discussed.

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The aim of this article is to identify the prevalence of posttraumatic psychological symptoms following maxillofacial trauma among an Indian population sample and assess changes in these symptoms over a period of time. Forty-eight adult patients were assessed within 2 weeks of injury with two follow-up visits (4-6 weeks and 12-14 weeks). Patients were administered three self-reporting questionnaires in local language (GHQ-12; HADS; TSQ) on all occasions. Relevant sociodemographic and clinical data were obtained. Forty patients were included in the final analysis. Emotional distress was present in nine participants and five participants satisfied the TSQ criteria for a diagnosis of stress disorder. Anxiety and depression were observed in 10 and 4 patients, respectively. Characteristics associated with abnormal high scores included substance abuse, low education and income levels, facial scars, and complications needing additional intervention. These findings reveal the abnormal psychological response to maxillofacial trauma in immediate and follow-up periods. The use of such screening tools can be considered by the maxillofacial surgeon for early identification of psychological symptoms and referral to the psychiatrist.

Reports of association of genetic variants of IL6 and its receptor (IL6R) with psychiatric disorders are inconsistent, and there are few population-based studies thus far in bipolar disorder (BD). We genotyped the IL6 rs1800795 and IL6R rs2228145 polymorphisms in two independent sets of patients exposed to different environmental stimuli such as climatic conditions or specific infectious burden – a French sample and a south Indian Tamil sample of BD with quantitation of circulating plasma IL-6 levels in the latter sub-sample.In both populations, allele and genotype frequencies did not differ significantly between cases and controls for either polymorphism. Upon stratifying based on age at onset, we found no associations with the IL6 rs1800795 variant. However, the IL6R rs2228145 C allele and CC genotype were associated with early onset of disease in the French sample when compared to late onset BD. A similar trend was observed in the Indian population where we also found that plasma IL-6 levels were significantly higher in BD and also in patients who were in residual phase or remission both as compared to controls.Our findings are in favour of a possible trans-ethnic implication of the IL6R genetic diversity in BD and reinforce the notion that IL-6 is an important marker of the operating inflammatory processes in the disease.