There has been considerable research on the influence of the lunar cycle on mental illness with conflicting findings. The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between full moon (FM), new moon (NM), and other moon (OM) days and the frequency of specific psychiatric disorders in patients seen at a tertiary psychiatric hospital in Goa and to examine relationships with eclipses...

While alexithymia, or difficulties identifying and describing affect, has been commonly observed in schizophrenia, little is known about its causes and correlates. To test the hypothesis that deficits in emotion identification and expression result from, or are at least related to, deficits in neurocognition and affective symptoms, we assessed alexithymia using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TA...

Epidemiological studies indicate a high prevalence of major depression and anxiety disorder (including post-traumatic stress disorder) among Asian refugees and immigrants living in North America. Yet there exists an alarming underutilization of mental health services and underdiagnosis of psychiatric illness in this rapidly growing minority group. In order to investigate a culturally-derived ba...

This study presents estimates of current and lifetime psychiatric illness among inmates not identified as acutely mentally ill at intake into all five of Connecticut's adult jails (four male facilities and one female facility). Diagnoses were assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID), Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale, and the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) and a...

INTRODUCTION There is an ongoing debate about a possibly enhanced risk of suicidal behaviour in some psychiatric patients due to psychopharmacotherapy. Our retrospective study aimed at analyzing the psychopharmacotherapy of 133 inpatient suicides and 133 controls by a matched pair design. METHODS We analyzed all suicides (n = 133) reported in the AGATE study from 1991 to 2008. Besides evaluat...

Similar to members of the public, people with mental illness may exhibit general negative automatic prejudice against their own group. However, it is unclear whether more specific negative stereotypes are automatically activated among diagnosed individuals and how such automatic stereotyping may be related to self-reported attitudes and emotional reactions. We therefore studied automatically ac...

Endophenotypes are intermediate phenotypes which are considered a more promising marker of genetic risk than illness itself. While previous research mostly used cognitive deficits, emotional functions are of greater relevance for bipolar disorder regarding the characteristic emotional hyper-reactability and deficient social-emotional competence. Hence, the aim of the present study was to clarif...

BACKGROUND Allelic variation in the gene encoding brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been associated with affective disorders, but generally not schizophrenia. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor variants may help clarify the status of schizoaffective disorder. AIMS To test the hypothesis that BDNF haplotypes are associated with psychiatric illness marked by a prominent affective comp...

BACKGROUND Several complex mechanisms including biological, psychological and social factors may contribute to the development of bodily symptoms. Affective temperaments may represent heritable subclinical manifestations of mood disorders, and the concept of ego defense mechanisms has also provided a model for the comprehension of psychopathology. The relationship between affective temperaments...

Background and Objectives: Diagnostic reliability is of major concern both to clinicians and researchers. The aim has been to investigate the trustworthiness of clinical ICD-10 affective disorder diagnoses for research purpose. Methods: 150 ECT patients with chronic affective disorders were investigated. A standardized schema for basic anamnesis and the Operational Criteria Checklist for Psycho...