The association between affective instability and both family history of mood disorders and signs of neurodevelopmental disturbance was examined in a sample of 303 adults. Affective instability was measured using the borderline personality disorder "affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood" diagnostic criterion as assessed dimensionally using the Personality Disorder Interview--...

OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of prenatal exposure to severe life events on risk of affective disorders in the offspring. METHODS In a cohort of 1.1 million Danish births from May 1978 until December 1997, mothers were considered exposed if one (or more) of their close relatives died or was diagnosed with serious illness up to 6 months before conception or during pregnancy. Offspring were f...

The aim of this study is to estimate the frequency of personality disorders in patients with recurrent unipolar or bipolar affective disorders and the possible relationship of the categorical model with two dynamic psychopathological configurations. Forty-eight patients were studied using semi-structured interviews for assessing Axis I and Axis II disorders. We found that approximately 70% of p...

OBJECTIVES Plausible candidates of psychopathological phenomena that may associate with or anticipate suicidal risk, include negative affects, including admixtures of dysphoria, depression and anxiety described mainly in nonpsychotic disorders. We ascertained the distribution of such affective features in various first-episode psychotic disorders and correlated these and other clinical and ante...

Major depressive episode (MDE) is one of the most common psychiatric diagnoses and it has long-term mental and physiological consequences. The status of cognitive functions is of specific importance in case of affective disorders, due to their influence not only on patients' behaviour, but to a certain extent also on the success of psychotherapy. In addition, examining the impact of mood and af...

INTRODUCTION Depression is the most frequent mental disorder encountered in all medical services. Multiple studies have shown that depression may predict the onset of different conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke and many other. The relation between depression and diabetes is still unclear. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study we evaluated patients with both major depressive di...

Affective disorders, including major depression, mania and bipolar disorder, represent a spectrum of severe psychiatric diseases reflecting a continuum of psychopathological symptoms. Starting in young adulthood and often leading to suicidal ideation, affective disorders are ranking among the most disabling diseases worldwide in terms of the WHO global burden of disease, are socio-economically ...

Advances in clinical and basic research methodology combined with clearly articulated concepts create new opportunities for researching the roles of cholinergic mechanisms in the pathophysiology of affective disorders. Areas for study include: 1) roles of cholinergic mechanisms in mediating effects of stress and cholinergic mechanisms linking the pathophysiologies of affective and panic disorde...

Anticonvulsant drugs are widely used in psychiatric indications. These include mainly alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal syndromes, panic and anxiety disorders, dementia, schizophrenia, affective disorders, bipolar affective disorders in particular, and, to some extent, personality disorders. A further area in which neurology and psychiatry overlap is pain conditions, in which some anticonvu...