BACKGROUND Recent studies suggest that violence is more common in the first episode of psychosis than after treatment. AIM To estimate the proportion of survivors of violent suicide attempts during psychotic illness who had not previously received treatment with antipsychotic medication. METHODS An audit of the medical records of patients admitted to an inner city trauma centre after having...

BACKGROUND It has been proposed that the hippocampus is a potential site for a neurodevelopmental lesion in schizophrenia. While smaller hippocampal volumes have been described in chronic schizophrenia, there have been few magnetic resonance imaging studies in first-episode psychosis. Furthermore, no studies have examined the specificity of this finding to first-episode schizophrenia, compared ...

Medication non-adherence is a great challenge in the treatment of psychotic disorders. Several factors leading to medication non-adherence in schizophrenia have been identified: drug side-effects, lack of illness insight, negative attitude of the patient and friends/relatives toward medication, stigma of mental illness and taking medication, poor therapeutic alliance, substance abuse, and role ...

To assist in improving early interventions for psychosis, this study explored how adult people narrated their experience of becoming psychotic, and how contact with mental health personnel was established. Narrative interviews were conducted with 12 participants with psychotic illnesses recruited from acute psychiatric wards. The interviews were content analysed. Participants described being in...

Major self-mutilation (MSM) is a rare but catastrophic complication of severe mental illness. Most people who inflict MSM have a psychotic disorder, usually a schizophrenia spectrum psychosis. It is not known when in the course of psychotic illness, MSM is most likely to occur. In this study, the proportion of patients in first episode of psychosis (FEP) was assessed using the results of a syst...

Institut für Mikrobiologie, Mikrobielle Phytopathologie, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, D6 07743 Jena, Germany, 1 Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology 7 Hans Knöll Institut D-07745 Jena, 2 Institut für Virologie und antivirale Therapie, Friedrich8 Schiller-Universität Jena, D-07743 Jena, 3 Institut für Organische Chemie und Biochemie II, 9 Technische Univer...

OBJECTIVE To compare the prevalence of non-organic psychiatric disorders among disabled patients of normal intelligence with epilepsy with the prevalence of similar psychiatric disorders among age and sex matched disabled patients with other somatic diseases. METHODS A case-control study was carried out in Iceland among people receiving disability benefits using information available at the S...