Schizophrenia is a devastating psychiatric disorder. Clozapine has long been the gold standard for treatment of patients with treatment-resistant schizophrenia; however, some patients are only partially responsive to clozapine treatment. Augmentation of clozapine treatment might enhance its effectiveness in partial responders, but only a few studies have investigated possible augmentation strategies. This study compared the effectiveness and tolerability of the combination of amisulpride and clozapine with the combination of quetiapine and clozapine in patients who were only partially responsive to clozapine monotherapy. Fifty-six treatment-resistant patients who were partially responsive to clozapine were randomly assigned to receive amisulpride or quetiapine along with an ongoing stable dose of clozapine. Fifty patients completed the study. Patients were evaluated at baseline and at the first, third, sixth, and eighth weeks. Efficacy measures consisted of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS), and the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale. Tolerability and adverse effects were assessed with the Udvalg for Kliniske Undersogelser (UKU) Side Effect Rating Scale and the Simpson Angus Scale (SAS). A substantial improvement occurred in both groups by the end of the eighth week; however, the improvement associated with amisulpride was significantly greater than that seen with quetiapine. This difference was noted as early as the third week of follow-up in terms of CGI scores, and by the sixth week with regard to BPRS, SANS, and SAPS scores. Both drugs were well tolerated, as measured by UKU and SAS. Improvement favoring clozapine+amisulpride could be attributed to the selective D2/D3 binding property of amisulpride, which had an additional effect in improving symptoms of schizophrenia. The authors concluded that amisulpride seems to be effective and well tolerated for augmentation purposes in clozapine-resistant patients.

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Background: Behçet’s disease (BD) is a multisystem disease with unknown etiology. Until today, the role of emotional stress and the real incidence of psychiatric symptoms in this disease have not been clarified yet. Objective: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the general psychological profile of the patients diagnosed as having BD as well as their depression and anxiety levels in order to investigate the psychiatric aspects of this disease. Material and Methods: Twenty-three patients with BD and 17 patients with chronic plaque-type psoriasis who made up the control group were examined by the Beck Depression (BDI), Beck Anxiety (BAI) and Brief Symptom Inventories (BSI). Results: The mean BDI score of the BD group was 11.69 ± 6.93, and the corresponding value was 9.11 ± 7.34 for the psoriasis group. The mean BAI score of the BD group was 21.39 + 13.68 and this level was 12.41 ± 10.70 for psoriasis patients. The mean BSI score of the BD group was 61.30 ± 43.66 and it was 30.41 ± 28.77 for the control group. The mean BDI, BAI and BSI scores of the patients diagnosed as having BD were significantly higher than those of the control group (F = 0.234, F = 0.508, F = 0.549 and p < 0.05). Conclusion: BDI, BAI and BSI scales are useful to evaluate the psychiatric aspects of BD. The results of our study revealed that the collaboration of a dermatologist and psychiatrist is essential for the follow-up of patients with BD.

There has been limited study of suicide in Islamic countries. This paper marks the first study of suicide notes in Turkey, an Islamic country. Using a classification scheme, 49 suicide notes (a rate of 34.5%) were studied. The results show that note writers do not differ greatly from other suicides. Further analysis of younger (<40) and older (>40) suicide note writers reveal few significant differences. Our results, together with the results of classification studies in different countries, suggest that caution is in order in transposing findings from one country to other countries. Future study of suicide notes should, in fact, focus on cross-cultural investigation.

Objective: Online game addiction also referred to as internet gaming disorder, a clinical condition that is not well-established, is not listed in psychiatric classification systems due to lack of adequate studies but expected to be added to the manual in near future. In Turkey neither a scale nor a study is present to evaluate online game addiction/ addicts. We aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of "The Game Addiction Scale" that was developed by Lemmens in 2009 as an instrument to assess online game addiction in an online game players sample in Turkey and examine the game addiction levels in these players.Methods: For this purpose 726 "Travian" (a massively multiplayer online game) players were evaluated with the Young's Internet Addiction Test and the Lemmens's Game Addiction Scale to find out their game addiction levels. Individual properties of the participants reflecting their internet use and gaming habits were also examined. The study was performed using SurveyMonkey within three months between March 1 and May 31, 2013.Results: Both 21-item (Cronbach's α=0.96) and 7-item versions (Cronbach's α=0.88) of the Game Addiction Scale were found to be valid and reliable. Also using the monothetic format 11.1% of the participants was found to be online game addicts. Conclusion:Our findings indicates that there is a considerably high percentage of game addiction within this online gamers sample compared to other countries. Further studies with online gamers and general population are needed to see the whole picture in Turkey.

These results show "basic" ToM abilities of OCD patients are generally preserved, but they show significant reduction in their "advanced" ToM abilities, which seem to be related to their reduced memory capacities. The possible reasons for the relation between memory and ToM impairments, as well as the clinical significance of ToM deficits in OCD are discussed.

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of both promoter and intron polymorphisms of the serotonin transporter (5HTT) gene on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) development. For this purpose, two polymorphisms of the 5-HTT gene, which are found in the promoter (5-HTT gene-linked polymorphic region) and second intron (variable number of tandem repeats) of the gene, were analyzed in 100 patients who were admitted to the Emergency Department after a mild physical trauma. None of the 5-HTT polymorphisms studied have an effect on PTSD development after a mild physical injury, but having L allele for 5-HTT gene-linked polymorphic region may cause milder hyperarousal symptoms in those patients who have developed PTSD.

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