Psychiatry research
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Psychiatry research · Sep 2015
Meta AnalysisA meta-analysis of the response of pathological hoarding to pharmacotherapy.
This meta-analysis aimed to identify all studies that have assessed treatment response for pathological hoarding treated with pharmacological agents. Seven studies were identified with a total of 92 participants. Most participants had a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder. ⋯ More than half (ER=0.58, 95% CI=0.37-0.76) of the participants treated with pharmacotherapy responded. This study encourages us to consider the use of SRIs in patients with hoarding disorder. The study also encourages more studies of pharmacotherapy for pathological hoarding, noting that these studies should use validated outcome measures that specifically assess pathological hoarding and novel agents that target the unique neurobiological correlates of pathological hoarding.
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Psychiatry research · Sep 2015
Clinical variables associated with suicide attempts in schizophrenia before and after the first episode.
The aim of this study was to investigate variables associated with suicide attempts in schizophrenia before and after the first episode. We evaluated history of past sucide attempts, clinical symptoms, level of functioning and cognitive performances of 172 patients with first-episode schizophrenia at first admission. Information was collected regarding clinical symptom severity, treatment compliance, and suicide attempts during the follow-up. ⋯ Treatment compliance during the first 6 months and duration of remission was lower in this group. Our findings suggest that longer duration of first hospital treatment, the presence of depressive symptoms, and nonadherence to treatment in early phases of follow up after FES are predictors of suicide attempts. On the other hand, keeping remission during the follow-up protects against suicide attempts.
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Psychiatry research · Sep 2015
The Mental Health Literacy Scale (MHLS): A new scale-based measure of mental health literacy.
Although Mental Health Literacy (MHL) has been a topic of substantial interest, measurement of this concept using a scale-based measure has been limited, including a lack of psychometric and methodologically robust scale-based measures of MHL. This study developed a new scale-based measure of MHL, the Mental Health Literacy Scale (MHLS), which assesses all attributes of MHL. Construction of the MHLS was done over three key stages, including measure development, pilot testing and assessment of psychometrics and methodological quality. ⋯ The MHLS also demonstrated good internal and test-retest reliability. Evaluation of the methodological quality of the MHLS indicated that it has substantial methodological advantages in comparison to existing scale-based measures of MHL. The MHLS can be used in assessing individual and population level differences in MHL and in determining the impact of programmes designed to improve MHL.
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Psychiatry research · Sep 2015
Review Comparative StudyComparison of automated brain segmentation using a brain phantom and patients with early Alzheimer's dementia or mild cognitive impairment.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and brain volumetry allow for the quantification of changes in brain volume using automatic algorithms which are widely used in both, clinical and scientific studies. However, studies comparing the reliability of these programmes are scarce and mainly involved MRI derived from younger healthy controls. This study evaluates the reliability of frequently used segmentation programmes (SPM, FreeSurfer, FSL) using a realistic digital brain phantom and MRI brain acquisitions from patients with manifest Alzheimer's disease (AD, n=34), mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n=60), and healthy subjects (n=32) matched for age and sex. ⋯ With poor image quality, especially noise, SPM provides the best segmentation results. An optimised template for segmentation had no significant effect on segmentation results. While our findings underline the applicability of the programmes investigated, SPM may be the programme of choice when MRIs with limited image quality or brain images of elderly should be analysed.