PURPOSE OF REVIEW The aim of this review is to highlight the traditional and newly recognized suicide risk factors in patients with mood disorders. RECENT FINDINGS Current research findings clearly suggest that suicidal behaviour in patients with mood disorder is a 'state-dependent' phenomenon. Recently, there is, however, a growing body of evidence that besides the well accepted clinically e...

Many patients within the Bipolar spectrum, especially when recurrence is high and the inter-episodic period is not free of affective manifestations, may meet criteria for personality disorders. This is particularly true for cyclothymic patients, who are often misclassified as borderline personality disorder because of their extreme mood instability and reactivity. In patients with cyclothymic t...

Although a relatively large body of research has now accumulated concerning the relationship between quality of life (QoL) and nonseasonal depression, there is a dearth of information about QoL in seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The aim of this study was to compare perceived levels of broad ('generic') and health-related QoL in patients with seasonal and nonseasonal depression. Participants ...

Sir, In reference to the paper by Avasthi et al. (1996) regarding "Seasonality and Recurrent Mania" I have to say that this is very common observation which every psychiatrist do recognize i.e. many a patient do suffer only from mania year after year for many consecutive years with no trace of depression in between. I have also come across such patients which forms a respectable proportion of a...

Teasdale's (Teasdale, J.D. (1988). Cognitive vulnerability to persistent depression. Cognition and Emotion, 2, 247-274) differential activation hypothesis refers to the ease with which maladaptive cognitive processes are triggered by mild dysphoria as cognitive reactivity. Supporting this model is evidence of a differential association between sad mood and dysfunctional cognitions in formerly d...

Sir, In reference to the paper by Avasthi et al. (1996) regarding "Seasonality and Recurrent Mania" I have to say that this is very common observation which every psychiatrist do recognize i.e. many a patient do suffer only from mania year after year for many consecutive years with no trace of depression in between. I have also come across such patients which forms a respectable proportion of a...

Remission is the optimal outcome for major depressive disorder (MDD), but many patients do not improve appreciably despite treatment with medication. Treatment-resistant patients may experience deterioration in cognitive functions. Research has reported structural abnormalities in certain brain areas that may contribute to a poor clinical response. We hypothesize that there will be structural d...

Clinical evidence suggests that cortical excitability is increased in depressives. We investigated its cellular basis in a mouse model of depression. In a modified version of forced swimming (FS), mice were initially forced to swim for 5 consecutive days and then were treated daily with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) or sham treatment for the following 4 weeks without swimm...

BACKGROUND To ascertain the impact of postpartum onset (PPO) on the subsequent time course of mood disorders. METHODS This retrospective study compared per year rates of excited (manic or mixed) and depressive episodes between fifty-five women with bipolar (N = 22) or major depressive (N = 33) disorders with first episode occurring postpartum (within four weeks after childbirth according to D...