We explored relationships between positive symptoms of schizophrenia and neurocognitive functions (language and memory). The semantic and phonemic associations among words produced in a verbal fluency task by 26 participants diagnosed with DSM-III-R schizophrenia were examined. Formal thought disorder was associated with producing fewer contextually related words and with producing more unrelat...

Antipsychotic medication represents the treatment of choice in psychosis according to clinical guidelines. Nevertheless, studies show that half to almost three-quarter of all patients discontinue medication with antipsychotics after some time, a fact which is traditionally ascribed to side-effects, mistrust against the clinician and poor illness insight. The present study investigated whether p...

Negative and positive symptoms were investigated in a sample of 72 young schizophrenic and depressed patients at followup approximately 1 1/2 years after hospital discharge. Flat affect, poverty of speech, and psychomotor retardation were included as negative symptoms, and delusions, hallucinations, and florid thought disorder as positive symptoms. Marked negative symptoms were found to occur i...

The measures most frequently used to assess psychotic symptoms fail to reflect important dimensions. The Psychotic Symptom Rating Scale (PSYRATS) aims to capture the multidimensional nature of auditory hallucinations and delusions. Individuals (N = 276) who had recently relapsed with positive symptoms completed the auditory hallucinations and delusions PSYRATS scales. These scores were compared...

BACKGROUND This randomized clinical trial compared 16-week interventions with interpersonal psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, supportive psychotherapy, and supportive psychotherapy with imipramine for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive patients with depressive symptoms. METHODS Subjects (N = 101; 85 male, 16 female) with known HIV seropositivity for at least 6 months were ...

Although negative symptoms were traditionally considered to be unresponsive to neuroleptic medication, recent studies have demonstrated that negative symptoms do improve during neuroleptic treatment and that such improvement tends to occur concurrently with improvement in positive symptoms. Clozapine is an atypical neuroleptic that is effective in a significant proportion of otherwise neurolept...

Approximately 50-75% of all patients do not take their antipsychotic medication as prescribed. The current study examined reasons why patients continue versus discontinue antipsychotic medication. We were particularly interested to which extent positive attitudes towards psychotic symptoms foster medication nonadherence. An anonymous online questionnaire was set up to decrease response biases. ...

The study of dermal ridges in schizophrenia has been extensive, but only recently has fluctuating asymmetry been described. This study relates dermatoglyphic patterns with the specific positive and negative symptoms of the disease in 72 DSM-III-R defined schizophrenia and 72 normal unrelated ethnically matched controls. Schizophrenic subjects had significant lower ridge counts in both hands. Fl...

A 20-year-old white female nonsmoker presented to the pulmonary function laboratory for a methacholine challenge test. The patient denied wheezing, dyspnea, cough, or chest tightness. In fact, she competes in collegiate basketball and softball without respiratory complaints. She stated that her primary care physician wanted to “screen her for asthma,” because her father is asthmatic. Her medica...

PURPOSE To examine predictors of depressive symptoms among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive, pregnant women in Thailand. DESIGN Correlational, cross-sectional study. METHODS Data were collected at prenatal clinics in five hospitals in Thailand from January 2004 to January 2006. One hundred twenty-seven HIV-positive pregnant women completed questionnaires in Thai on depressive sym...