Open access. Stressful life events (SLEs) are associated with psychotic experiences. SLEs might act as an environmental risk factor, but may also share a genetic propensity with psychotic experiences.
Antipsychotic drug treatment can potentially lead to adverse events such as leukopenia and neutropenia. Although these events are rare, they represent serious and life-threatening hematological side effects.
Long-term improvement of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in schizophrenia may improve adherence and reduce relapse and rehospitalization. This analysis examines long-term changes in HRQoL among patients with schizophrenia switched to lurasidone from other antipsychotics.
he objective of the study was to describe use of services and self-care strategies by people experiencing suicidal thoughts. Login at top righthand side of page using your SSSFT NHS Athens for full text . SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Question: How does fluphenazine decanoate compare with other neuroleptics in people with schizophrenia?
Clinical Answer: Data from largely underpowered trials indicates that fluphenazine decanoate does not seem to differ in safety or efficacy from other first generation antipsychotics (given as oral or long-acting injectable formulations) in patients with schizophrenia but no firm conclusions can be drawn. There was randomized controlled trial evidence assessing fluphenazine compared with second generation antipsychotics.
As part of the second phase of the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study (NAPLS-2), Cannon and colleagues report, concurrently with the present article, on a risk calculator for the individualized prediction of a psychotic disorder in a 2-year period. The present study represents an external validation of the NAPLS-2 psychosis risk calculator using an independent sample of patients at clinical high risk for psychosis collected as part of the Early Detection, Intervention, and Prevention of Psychosis Program (EDIPPP). Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
This study examined the adherence of psychiatrists to the Schedule of Recommended First and Second Line Antipsychotic Medications (“Antipsychotic Schedule”), which was implemented in two Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) Connection Program Implementation and Evaluation Study clinics. : Login at top right hand side of page using your SSSFT NHS Athens for full text. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Open access. Persecutory delusions may be unfounded threat beliefs maintained by safety-seeking behaviours that prevent disconfirmatory evidence being successfully processed. Use of virtual reality could facilitate new learning.
Aims- To test the hypothesis that enabling patients to test the threat predictions of persecutory delusions in virtual reality social environments with the dropping of safety-seeking behaviours (virtual reality cognitive therapy) would lead to greater delusion reduction than exposure alone (virtual reality exposure).
Karin Neufield and colleagues explore this question in their paper published this year (Neufield et al, 2016). This is a systematic review and meta-analysis looking at whether antipsychotics are any good in the treatment and prevention of delirium.
An association between low levels of physical activity and impaired cognitive performance in schizophrenia has been proposed, but most studies have relied on self-report measures of activity. This study examined the association between actigraphy-derived physical activity and cognitive performance adjusting for multiple covariates in patients with schizophrenia. You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Since the first study published in the Lancet in 1976, structural neuroimaging has been used in psychosis with the promise of imminent clinical utility. The actual impact of structural neuroimaging in psychosis is still unclear.
We present here a critical review of studies involving structural magnetic resonance imaging techniques in patients with psychosis published between 1976 and 2015 in selected journals of relevance for the field. For each study, we extracted summary descriptive variables. Additionally, we qualitatively described the main structural findings of each article in summary notes and we employed a biomarker rating system based on quality of evidence (scored 1–4) and effect size (scored 1–4). Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
In a population-based cohort study of 1433 mothers with schizophrenia in Ontario, Canada (2003–2011), we compared women with and without psychiatric admission in the 1st year postpartum on demographic, maternal medical/obstetrical, infant and psychiatric factors and identified factors independently associated with admission. Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
It has been argued that those with a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis experience greater levels of self-stigma than those with other severe mental illness (SMI) diagnoses. This is primarily due to the recognition that those diagnosed with schizophrenia are viewed most negatively by the public (Wood et al., 2014), experience the greatest amount of discrimination (Dinos et al., 2004) and encounter the most rejection (Lundberg et al., 2008). This is supported by research which has found that almost half (47.1%) of participants in a large European sample with a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnoses reported experiencing self-stigma (Brohan et al., 2010).
Given its commonality and the adverse outcomes associated with self-stigma, there has recently been an increasing interest in the development of interventions to reduce self-stigma.
Smoking in the general population is on the decline. However, in people with severe mental disorders (SMDs) such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder the estimated smoking prevalence rate is anywhere between 50-80%. High rates of medical morbidity and severely reduced life expectancy are associated with increased prevalence rates in these individuals.
Pharmacological treatments for smoking cessation are effective in the general population. We have blogged extensively about the efficacy, tolerability and cost-effectiveness of the three main treatments; transdermal nicotine patches (TNP), varenicline and bupropion.
There is emerging evidence to suggest individuals with SMDs are often motivated to quit and pharmacological treatments in those with SMDs are similarly effective. Despite these promising findings, treatments are often under-utilised, with one study finding less than one third of clinicians advising patients about smoking cessation.
Blogpost. The message from recent surveys is that it’s not just people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who hear voices in their heads, many people considered mentally well do to. This revelation may have a welcome de-stigmatising effect in terms of how people think about some of the symptoms associated with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but a new study published in Psychosis asks us to hang on a minute – to say that one “hears voices” can mean different things to different people.
Schizophrenia is not a taboo topic anymore. Some aspects of the illness, like hearing voices and delusions (‘positive symptoms’), are increasingly spoken and written about by laypeople. But ‘negative symptoms’ (lack of thought content, motivation, meaningful pleasure and sociability) and the predisposition for people with schizophrenia to get depressed, are still commonly under-appreciated.
Both these domains are often treated by adding an antidepressant to an already-prescribed antipsychotic, but the evidence for this isn’t as comprehensive as we’d like. There have been multiple small studies, but there is little consensus and some subsidiary questions (like whether antidepressants might worsen positive symptoms) remain unanswered. Fortunately for us, a team based in Munich have recently published a systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Journal of Psychiatry, to pull together all of the data in this broad area (Helfer et al, 2016).
In a pragmatic clinical trial, this study sought to compare relapses among patients receiving either long-acting injectable or oral second-generation antipsychotics.
An employment support scheme for people receiving treatment for first episode psychosis helped more than half into full-time education, jobs or work placements and improved self-esteem.