Psychiat Danub
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The concept of personalized drug therapy on the basis of genetic investigations has become a major issue in psychopharmacology. Pharmacogenetic studies have focused on polymorphisms in liver cytochrome P450 isoenzymes that metabolize many antidepressant and antipsychotic medications. The most significant results are the association between drug metabolic polymorphisms of cytochrome P450 with variations in drug metabolic rates and side effects. ⋯ Genetic tests for the pretreatment prediction of antipsychotic response have obvious implications for the selection of most appropriate drug and dose and contribute for the optimization of antipsychotic treatment. The pretreatment determination of individual's drug metabolic rates by CYP genotyping is the leading field. This review summarizes the present knowledge of associations between cytochrome P450 isoenzymes and the efficacy and side effects of antipsychotics.
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Violence is an important social problem. Violence in the community has important social relevance for the political, criminal justice, and health care systems. Studies of homicide offenders have suggested a high prevalence of neurologic dysfunction due to organic brain damage such as traumatic brain injury, epilepsy and dementia have been observed to exhibit excessive violence. ⋯ A correlation between the potential for impulsive aggression mediated by limbic brain structures, and the control of the aggression by frontotemporal brain regions has been shown. The individuals with such brain dysfunction have an increased risk of violent behavior and scored high on the Webster's and Hare's violence risk assessment scale. This article reviews the relationship between psychiatric comorbidity, violence risk assessment and neuroimaging in forensic psychiatry and showing the useful directions for future research, screening and prevention of violent behavior among mentally ill criminal offenders.
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The stress -vulnerability model (Zubin et al. 1977) is an extremely useful model for identifying and treating relapses of mental illness. We accept that human persons carry genetic and other predisposition to mental illness. However, the question arises as to how stress impacts on a person in order to cause mental illness to develop. Furthermore there arises the issue as to what other effects such stress has on the human body beyond the human brain. Our aim was to research and integrate the current literature in order to establish how stress impacts on the brain at the cellular level, and to establish whether there are other consequences for the human body brought about by the impact of stress on the human brain. ⋯ We have identified communalities in how the interplay between stress and vulnerability occurs in different disease processes.
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Our aim was to investigate is there association between level of religious moral beliefs and severity of PTSD symptoms, depressiion symptoms, anxiety and severity of alcohol abuse we tested 152 war veterans on presence of PTSD, depression symptoms, anxiety, alcohol misuse and level of religious moral beliefs. ⋯ A higher index of religious moral beliefs in war veterans enables better control distress, providing better mental health stability. It enables post traumatic conflicts typical for combatants' survivors to be more easily overcome. It also causes healthier reactions to external stimuli. A higher index of religious moral beliefs of war veterans provides a healthier and more efficient mechanism of tobacco and alcohol misuse control. In this way, it helps overcoming postwar psychosocial problems and socialization of the personality, leading to the improvement in mental health.