摘要:

DSM III-R acknowledges that delusional disorder and mood disturbance can coexist. The aim of the study is to analyze mood disturbances occurring within a delusional disorder. An external validator, as the increased familial risk of psychiatric disorder, is also added to clarify the relationship between the two diagnostic areas. We found a high frequency of mood disturbances in our patients (50.7%). We were able to identify a proportion of delusional patients affected by a recurrent form of mood disturbance (35.2%); in about 42% of these patients the onset of the mood disturbance preceded the onset of the delusional disorder by a considerable interval of time. Our hypothesis is that, in these cases, the observed mood disturbance could represent a codiagnosis of true mood disorder. This hypothesis is partly supported by familial data.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284800

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

In a search for an external validation of the negative syndrome construct and the attentional impairment item on Andreasen’s scale, 49 unmedicated schizophrenic patients were administered the Span of Apprehension Test and a Continuous Performance Test with two levels of difficulty. This schizophrenic sample performed significantly more poorly on the attentional tests than a comparable group of 27 healthy control subjects. Depending on the difficulty of the test we found a number of significant correlations between the SANS composite score and the pertaining attentional impairment item on the one hand and experimental indices of attentional functioning on the other hand, which might corroborate the psychopathological assumptions. The implications of these results for further attempts to validate clinical concepts of the positive/negative dichotomy by experimental means will be discusse

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284801

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

One hundred and six staff members and 150 patients of three psychiatric hospitals in Israel were administered a smoking habit and attitutes questionnaire. Upon analyzing the data, staff members and patients made up a very high percentage of smokers, 48.1 and 76%, respectively. The staff was not knowledgeable enough about the hazards of smoking. Nurses generously used cigarettes in order to appease the patients. Furthermore, the patients admitted being encouraged to smoke by the staff. According to these findings, a patient hospitalized in the psychiatric hospitals surveyed is significantly exposed to the pro-smoking atmosphere and the hazards of smoking.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284802

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

This study has used neuropsychological tasks – Wisconsin Card Sort (WCST), Trail Making (TMT) A and B, Verbal Fluency, Digit Span – to compare acute and currently off-medication schizophrenics, patients with unipolar nonpsychotic major depression and healthy controls. Both patient groups differed significantly from healthy controls in their neuropsychological performance. Furthermore there was only little (quantitative) difference between schizophrenics and depressed patients in the frontal lobe associated tasks: WCST, TMT and Verbal Fluency. Depressed patients tended to perform worse than schizophrenics on Digit Span, a task hypothesized to involve other than frontal areas of the brain. Although the group of depressed patients was older than the schizophrenic sample, the effect of age may not totally explain the findings. The results indicate that there do exist disturbances in frontal lobe cognitive functioning in schizophrenia and depression. Symptomatology (SANS/SAPS) and cognitive functioning in the schizophrenic group revealed only a trend for negative symptoms to be associated with worse performance in the WCST, but were significantly correlated with negative as well as positive symptoms on the

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284803

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

This article briefly reviews the duration criteria for delusional disorder in current diagnostic systems. Furthermore, a sample of 72 first-admitted patients with delusional disorder, personally re-examined after a mean of 10 and 27 years, has been analysed as to duration of delusional symptoms. One third of the sample displayed delusions for less than 6 months at admission. During the observation period one half of these patients (one sixth of the total sample), displayed delusional symptoms for less than 6 months, recovered fully, and functioned excellently at follow-up, while patients with a total duration of delusions for more than 6 months functioned worse. This report adds further support to setting up a dividing line of 6 months for the separation of acute from persistent delusional disorder.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284804

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

The effect of neuroleptics in the treatment of schizophrenia is well established. Some reports indicate that at least pimozide may be effective in delusional disorder as well. In this article a long-term follow-up study of 72 first-admitted patients with delusional disorder is described. Outcome in patients admitted during 1946–1948 was compared with that of patients admitted during 1958–1961. We did not find a more favourable outcome in the group admitted after the introduction of neuroleptics. This contradicts our earlier finding for patients with schizophrenic psychoses, indicating that neuroleptics generally may be more effective for schizophrenics than for patients with delusional disorder. Controlled drug trials in delusional disorder are strongly nee

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284805

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

The prevalence of most individual schizophrenic symptoms in late paraphrenia is unknown. Previous attempts to characterize the symptoms of late paraphrenia have been retrospective case-note studies, have not used standardized assessment instruments or have only examined small populations of patients. We examined 83 late paraphrenic patients using the Present State Examination. Persecutory delusions occurred in 86.7% of patients and were the most common symptom elicited. Nonverbal (63.8%) and verbal third person (50.6%) auditory hallucinations were common, as were visual hallucinations (30.1 %). Earlier authors have claimed that thought insertion and thought withdrawal do not occur in late paraphrenia; we found them in 15.7 and 6.0%, respectively, of our patients.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284806

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

Two instruments for the assessment of the DSM-III-R personality disorders were compared: The Personality Disorders Questionnaire – Revised (PDQ-R) and the Munich Diagnostic Checklist for the assessment of DSM-III-R Personality Disorders (MDCL-P). Using к value as a measure of agreement, the diagnostic agreement was less than 0.40 for personality disorder vs. no personality disorder as well as for the specific personality disorders. The PDQ-R diagnosed more frequently personality disorders (58%) than did the MDCL-P (4

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284807

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is a self-rating questionnaire to identify current non-organic non-psychotic morbidity. Each item of the GHQ has four response codes; the left-side one represents the most healthy while the right-side one the most ill. The ability of four scoring systems of the GHQ items to discriminate psychiatric cases from non-cases, 0-0-0-1 (codes 1–3 = 0, code 4=1), 0-0-1-1 (codes 1 and 2 = 0, codes 3 and 4 = 1 the original GHQ scoring) and 0-1-1-1 (code 1 = 0, codes 2–4 = 1), were compared against the greatest increase in the rate of cases between neighbouring codes and by using discriminant function analysis with the three scoring systems as predictors among 108 antenatal clinic attenders. The data revealed that the original GHQ scoring was the most valid in its ability to identify psychiatric ca

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284808

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger

摘要:

We report on an uncommon case of a woman who presents with pseudopregnancy. In the past she suffered from postpartum psychosis and an episode characterized by pseudohallucinations. No such association was reported in the literature survey we have made. We discuss the distinction between the overvalued idea as presented in pseudopregnancy and delusion as presented in the postpartum psychosis and suggest that the two phenomena can be viewed as a continuum rather than dichotomized, especially in cases like the one reported here.

ISSN:0254-4962    

DOI:10.1159/000284809

出版商:S. Karger AG    

年代:1993

数据来源: Karger