To the Editor: We read with great interest an important contribution by Gaebel et al1 in which they compared antipsychotic maintenance treatment with discontinuation and intermittent treatment in first-episode schizophrenia. We note several caveats in interpreting their crucial findings for well-balanced decision-making. The authors found that about half of patients in the intermittent treatmen...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) program on psychiatric symptoms, global functioning, life satisfaction, and recovery-promoting relationships among individuals with mental illness. METHODS Participants were patients at the Suwon Mental Health Center. Thirty-two patients were part of the ACT program and 32 patients matched fo...

BACKGROUND There is little evidence on the effectiveness of services for the care of people with mental disorders among refugee populations. Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) has established a mental health centre in a mixed urban-refugee population in Beirut to respond to the significant burden of mental health problems. Patients received comprehensive care through a multidisciplinary team. A coh...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to translate, adapt and validate the “Perceived Devaluation and Discrimination Scale” (PDD) in Spanish in a sample of people with schizophrenia. METHOD A total of 130 people between 18 and 65 years and with a diagnosis of schizophrenia according to DSM-IV-R criteria from Barcelona and Vitoria were included. The patients were assessed with the tr...

Fluency deficits have been associated with poor community functioning in patients with schizophrenia. In our previous study we demonstrated that the ability to generate higher-quality responses on tasks of divergent thinking as measured by several fluency tests was impaired in patients with schizophrenia. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the contribution of the deficits in di...

This study aimed to examine the reliability and validity of the Thai version of the FOCI (FOCI-T), which is a brief self-report questionnaire to assess the symptoms and severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Forty-seven OCD patients completed the FOCI-T, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), and the Pictorial Thai Quality of Life (PTQL). They were then interviewed to determine the...

BACKGROUND A few studies on short-term psychodynamic approach have been conducted on social phobia. OBJECTIVES In this study, the effectiveness of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy on the treatment of social phobia has been compared to the effectiveness of sertraline and waiting list. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this randomized-controlled trial study, 13 male students were treated with sh...

AIM The aim of this study was to examine the speed of response, doses, and safety of treatment with second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) in patients at ultra-high risk (UHR) compared to those with schizophrenia. METHODS A 12-week open-label, prospective study of SGAs was performed in UHR patients and those with first-episode schizophrenia (FES) and multi-episode schizophrenia (MES). The su...

BACKGROUND Bipolar disorder is a chronic illness that impairs functioning and affects the quality of life of patients. The onset of this illness usually occurs at an early age, and the risk of relapse remains high for decades. Thus, due to the great clinical relevance of identifying long-term predictors of functioning in bipolar disorder, Strauss and Carpenter developed a scale composed of item...

BACKGROUND Assessment of psychosocial functioning in people with schizophrenia is important. The Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF-F) scale represents a widely applied, easy, and quick tool, but its validity and reliability have been debated. The aim was to investigate whether GAF-F scores are associated with other indicators of functioning, severity, and hospitalization. METHODS A Danish...