Spinocerebellar ataxia 17 (SCA17) is a rare genetic disorder characterized by cerebellar, extrapyramidal, pyramidal as well as psychiatric signs. The pathoanatomical basis of this disorder is still not well known. A total of 12 patients and 12 age- and sex-matched controls were examined by in vivo MRI voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Besides general patterns of disease-related brain atrophy, char...

BACKGROUND Patient aggression is a common problem in acute psychiatric wards and calls for preventive measures. The timely use of preventive measures presupposes a preceded risk assessment. The Norwegian Brøset-Violence-Checklist (BVC) is one of the few instruments suited for short-time prediction of violence of psychiatric inpatients in routine care. Aims of our study were to improve the accur...

OBJECTIVE Little is known about the characteristic differences in alexithymic construct in various psychiatric disorders because of a paucity of direct comparisons between psychiatric disorders. Therefore, this study explored disorder-related differences in alexithymic characteristics among Korean patients diagnosed with four major psychiatric disorders (n=388). METHODS Alexithymic tendencies...

Seclusion is a last resort intervention for management of aggressive behavior in psychiatric settings. There is no current objective and practical decision-making instrument for seclusion use on psychiatric wards. Our aim was to test the predictive and discriminatory characteristics of the East London Modified-Broset (ELMB), to delineate its decision-making profile for seclusion of adult psychi...

OBJECTIVE The authors conducted a prospective study of the clinical utility of the four DSM-III-R subtypes of primary degenerative dementia of the Alzheimer type (with delirium, with delusions, with depression, or uncomplicated) and acute psychiatric hospitalization for treatment of these subtypes. METHOD The subjects were 120 consecutive inpatients with Alzheimer's disease, most of whom had ...

The ability to predict psychiatric readmission would facilitate the development of interventions to reduce this risk, a major driver of psychiatric health-care costs. The symptoms or characteristics of illness course necessary to develop reliable predictors are not available in coded billing data, but may be present in narrative electronic health record (EHR) discharge summaries. We identified ...

objective: To evaluate the prevalence of mental disorders in convicted sex offenders admitted to the Psychiatric Custody and Treatment Hospital (Forensic Psychiatric Facility). Method: 89 patient records of males admitted from March 2005 to August 2006 were analyzed. The analysis included evaluation of two study groups: Group I comprised subjects who had committed sex offenses (sexual offenders...

The placebo-controlled trial is widely regarded as the gold standard for testing the efficacy of new treatments; however, this research design is subject to ethical controversy, especially when standard treatments of proven efficacy exist. After examining regulatory standards and ethical codes relevant to placebo-controlled trials, I offer a critique of arguments against the use of placebo cont...

Objective It was aimed to detect acylated ghrelin (AG), unacylated ghrelin (UG) and copeptin levels in patients with suicide attempts and to determine if these biomarkers are risk factors for suicide attempts. Methods Serum copeptin, AG and GU levels were screened in 128 patients who were admitted to emergency department with suicide attempts and 59 healthy controls. Beck Anxiety Inventory (B...

BACKGROUND Andropause and psychiatric disorders are associated with various symptoms in aging males and are part of the differential diagnosis of depression and anxiety. This study was designed to investigate the relationship between symptoms of aging, anxiety, and depression, and to determine if sexual dysfunction could be a differentiating characteristic in the psychiatric outpatient clinic. ...