BACKGROUND Despite a large scientific literature on early clinical precursors of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and unipolar depression, few data are available on axis I disorders preceding the adult onset of these illnesses. SAMPLING AND METHODS Disorders before the age of 18 years were retrospectively assessed with a structured interview in 3 groups of consecutive adult inpatients with DSM...

BACKGROUND Schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and psychotic bipolar disorder overlap with regard to symptoms, structural and functional brain abnormalities, and genetic risk factors. Neurobiological pathways connecting genes to clinical phenotypes across the spectrum from schizophrenia to psychotic bipolar disorder remain largely unknown. METHODS We examined the relationship between str...

BACKGROUND Increased semantic priming is an influential theory of thought disorder in schizophrenia. However, studies to date have had conflicting findings. AIMS To investigate semantic memory in patients with schizophrenia with and without thought disorder. METHOD Data were pooled from 36 studies comparing patients with schizophrenia and normal controls in semantic priming tasks. Data from...

BACKGROUND Anxiety disorders occur commonly in schizophrenia but are often overlooked by psychiatrists. Their presence may compound the challenges faced by these patients and may contribute to poor outcome. OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of anxiety disorders among the participants with schizophrenia, and the association between this co-morbidity and disab...

The schizophrenia spectrum disorders are a group of psychiatric diagnoses that share several clinical features, typically involving reality distortion. Each is considered a disorder, diagnosed with a distinct set of diagnostic criteria. Spectrum conveys the idea that they are somehow similar to each other. Such similarity could be defined on purely clinical grounds or at the level of disease me...

Recent findings from genetic epidemiology and from genome-wide association studies point strongly to a partial overlap in the genes that contribute susceptibility to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD). Previous data have also directly implicated one of the best supported schizophrenia-associated loci, zinc finger binding protein 804A (ZNF804A), as showing trans-disorder effects, and the sa...

BACKGROUND Administrative data can be used to support research, such as in the UK Biobank. Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) are national data for England that include contain ICD-10 diagnoses for inpatient mental healthcare episodes, but the validity of these diagnoses for research purposes has not been assessed. METHODS 250 peoples' HES records were selected based on a HES recorded inpatien...

traditionally, schizophrenia was considered to be a severe psychiatric disorder, with a chronic course and an unfavorable outcome. throughout history, there has been incidence of schizophrenia, roughly one percent of the population, consistently, in every culture. it is generally acknowledged that schizophrenia has multifactorial etiology, with multiple susceptibility genes interacting with env...

Introduction: This study aims to compare the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia in patients who had psychotic symptoms more than one month after discontinuation of methamphetamine abuse. These factors were analyzed by the PANSS (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) questionnaire. Materials and Methods: 60 participants were selected from patients referred to Iran Psychiatric Hospi...

BACKGROUND Historical aspects of the dichotomy between manic-depressive disorders and schizophrenia raise the question of a continuum between the two entities. Griesinger (1817-1868) proposed a unitary concept of psychosis: "Einheitspsychose", adaptations of which have survived until the present day. Although Kraepelin's traditional dichotomy is still a common base for clinicians every day: dia...