No abstract

We aimed to assess whether Internet addiction (IA) severity was related to alexithymia scores among high school students, taking into account the role of gender differences and the possible effect of anxiety, depression, and age. Participants in the study were 600 students (ages ranging from 13 to 22; 48.16% girls) recruited from three high schools in two cities from Southern Italy. Participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Internet Addiction Test, the Hamilton Anxiety Scale, and the Hamilton Depression Scale. The findings of the study showed that IA scores were associated with alexithymia scores, over and above the effect of negative emotions and age. Students with pathological levels of alexithymia reported higher scores on IA severity. In particular, results showed that difficulty in identifying feelings was significantly associated with higher scores on IA severity. No effect of gender was found. Implications for clinicians were discussed.

Based on the evidence that aripiprazole added to serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) or clomipramine in treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has reported promising results, the present 16-week, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial had the aim to explore the efficacy of aripiprazole add-on pharmacotherapy on clinical symptoms and cognitive functioning in a sample of treatment-resistant OCD patients receiving SRIs. After clinical and neurocognitive assessments, patients were randomly allocated to receive, in a double-blind design, 15 mg/d of aripiprazole or a placebo. A final sample of 30 patients completed the study. The results obtained indicate that aripiprazole added to stable SRI treatment substantially improved obsessive-compulsive symptoms as measured by changes on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale total score and subscores (obsessions, P = 0.007; compulsions, P = 0.001; total score, P < 0.0001). Regarding cognitive functions, improvement was observed in some explored areas, such as attentional resistance to interference (Stroop score, P = 0.001) and executive functioning (perseverative errors, P = 0.015). The findings provide evidence that aripiprazole augmentation of SRIs/clomipramine treatment is well tolerated and may be proposed as an effective therapeutic strategy to improve outcome in treatment-resistant OCD.

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The development of therapeutic strategies to effectively treat negative symptoms remains one of the primary goals in the treatment of schizophrenia. Mirtazapine is the first of a new class of dual action compounds, the noradrenergic and specific serotonergic antidepressants (NaSSa), whose activity is related to the enhancement of noradrenergic and serotonergic transmission by a presynaptic alpha2 antagonism and postsynaptic 5-HT2 and 5-HT3 antagonism, respectively. This study was a 8-week double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of 30 mg adjunctive mirtazapine to clozapine therapy in 24 patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia. The main finding at the end of the trial was a significant reduction on the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) total scores in the mirtazapine group compared to placebo (P<0.01) with a significant improvement on the SANS subscales avolition/apathy and anhedonia/asociality. The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale total score at week 8 showed superiority of mirtazapine over placebo. These findings suggest a potential role for mirtazapine as an augmentation strategy in the treatment of negative symptoms of schizophrenia.