BACKGROUND Unemployment is a major problem for people with first-episode psychosis and schizophrenia. This has repercussions for the economy, social functioning and illness prognosis. AIMS To examine whether a vocational intervention - individual placement and support (IPS) - which has been found to be beneficial in populations with chronic schizophrenia, was a useful intervention for those w...

OBJECTIVE Neurocognitive deficits are now recognized as part of the fundamental disturbances and are a major determinant of functional outcome in psychosis. A cross-sectional association between cognitive deficits and poor social and occupational outcomes has been demonstrated; and treatment of cognitive impairment at the time of the first episode may have the potential to change functional out...

BACKGROUND Delusional disorder (DD) is thought to be distinct from schizophrenia (SZ). However, few systematic investigations have been conducted on DD because of the difficulty in ascertaining a representative sample size. Existing knowledge has been mostly generated from inpatient cohorts, which may be biased towards a more severe sample. METHOD We compared the demographic, clinical and cog...

BACKGROUND Sexual dysfunction is common in psychotic disorder but it is not clear whether it is intrinsic to the development of the illness or secondary to other factors. AIMS To compare sexual function in people at ultra-high risk (UHR) of a psychotic disorder, patients with first-episode psychosis predominantly taking antipsychotic drugs and healthy volunteers. METHOD Sexual function was ...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of comorbid obsessive-compulsive symptoms on emotional perception and theory of mind (ToM) in patients with first-episode psychosis. Participants were 65 patients with non-affective first episode psychosis (FEP) and 47 healthy controls. The patient group was divided into two subgroups, those with (FEP+; n=38) and those without obsessiv...

BACKGROUND Antipsychotic medications facilitate the improvement of psychotic symptoms in patients with first-episode psychosis. Paliperidone extended-release (pali-ER), an atypical antipsychotic, was assessed for efficacy and safety in Chinese patients with first-episode psychosis. METHODS In this 8-week, open-label, single-arm, multicenter study, patients with first-episode psychosis (Diagno...

IMPORTANCE At present, no reliable predictors exist to distinguish future responders from nonresponders to treatment during the first episode of psychosis. Among potential neuroimaging predictors of treatment response, gyrification represents an important marker of the integrity of normal cortical development that may characterize, already at illness onset, a subgroup of patients with particula...

The first-episode of psychosis is followed by a transient time-window of ca. 60 days during which therapeutic interventions have a higher likelihood of being effective than interventions that are started with a greater latency. This suggests that, in the immediate time-period after first-episode psychosis, functional changes occur in the brain that render it increasingly resistant to interventi...

BACKGROUND Converging evidence suggests that patients with first-episode psychosis who show a poor treatment response may have a higher degree of neurodevelopmental abnormalities than good Responders. Characterizing the disturbances in the relationship among brain regions (covariance) can provide more information on neurodevelopmental integrity than searching for localized changes in the brain....

OBJECTIVES This study employed the Future Thinking Task (MacLeod et al., 2005, Br. J. Clin. Psychol., 44, 495) to investigate whether future-directed thinking in first-episode psychosis is significantly different from that of matched controls, and to identify its correlates in this patient group. DESIGN Cross-sectional, mixed-model, case-control design. METHOD Participants were 30 patients ...