It is common for both practitioners and patients to have concerns about the possible neurocognitive side effects of neuromodulation techniques and these may also be related to poor adherence.1 Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is currently considered the most effective treatment for severe depression. However, effects such as anterograde and retrograde amnesia and impairment of orientation, proce...

Over the last two decades, deep brain stimulation has become widely accepted as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and tremor, and its use is increasing in disorders such as obsessivecompulsive disorder, depression and pain. The primary objective is always to achieve symptom suppression with few or no side effects; in other words, to attain as wide a therapeutic window as possible. I...

Correspondence: Leonardo F Fontenelle rua Visconde de Pirajá, 547, sala 719, ipanema rio de Janeiro, rJ 22410-003, Brazil Tel/Fax +55 21 2239 4919 Email [email protected] Abstract: The pharmacodynamic properties of fluvoxamine maleate include the modulation of different populations of serotonergic, dopaminergic, and sigma receptors and/or transporters, a complex pattern of activity that may...

Over the last two decades, deep brain stimulation has become widely accepted as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and tremor, and its use is increasing in disorders such as obsessivecompulsive disorder, depression and pain. The primary objective is always to achieve symptom suppression with few or no side effects; in other words, to attain as wide a therapeutic window as possible. I...

Beginning with DSM-III-R, the condition of an intact insight towards obsessive-compulsive symptoms, which was essential for the classical definition of obsessivecompulsive neurosis, has been removed, permitting inclusion of cases with poor insight. A total of 94 cases who met DSM-III-R criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder were included in this study. The Structured Clinical Interview for ...

facets. BDD, whether delusional or nondelusional, responds to antidepressants, particularly SRIs. A recent double-blind trial comparing clomipramine with desipramine demonstrated the efficacy of the former irrespective of whether the patients had insight or held their dysmorphic perception with delusional intensity (Hollander etal., 1999). Moreover, there are reports of cases resistant to pimoz...

Despite being a core characteristic of anxiety disorders, little data have been reported on somatic symptoms (SSs) in youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Eighty-five children and adolescents with OCD were administered the Children’s Yale Brown ObsessiveCompulsive Scale and completed the Children’s Depression Inventory and Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children. Their parents co...

Information on the use of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) in neuropsychiatric disorders has increased in recent publications. Although there are positive reports on the use of NAC in obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (OCRD), such data have not yet been validated. This article aims to review the research, case series and case reports that have been published about the use of NAC in OCRD. Researc...

Multiple converging lines of evidence suggest that neurobiology plays a significant role in the etiology of obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD). During the past decade, there has been considerable progress in the identification of neuroanatomic substrates involved in the expression of OCD. The brain areas most frequently identified by in vivo neuroimaging studies as potentially involved in the m...

Background: Given that on the one side considerable similarities between hypochondriasis and obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD) by means of sharing a number of features, including intrusive thoughts and repeated checking (Barsky, 1992), on the other side similar structural neuroimaging data that found hypochondriac patients to have significantly smaller mean left and right OFC, and greater left...