No abstract

Thought–action fusion (TAF) refers to the belief that thoughts and actions are linked. While ‘Moral’ TAF refers to the belief that unacceptable thoughts are morally equivalent to overt actions, ‘Likelihood’ TAF is the belief that certain thoughts can increase the probability of some events (related to self or others) to occur. The objective of this study was to compare the schizophrenic patients with nonclinical controls in terms of TAF Likelihood and TAF Moral after controlling for the effects of obsessive compulsive and depressive symptoms, magical ideation and schizotypy. The sample was composed of patients hospitalised for schizophrenia (n = 45) and nonclinical control subjects (n = 41). Thought–Action Fusion Scale, Maudsley Obsessive–Compulsive Inventory, Magical Ideation Scale, Schizotypal Personality Characteristics Subscale and Beck Depression Inventory were administered. Results revealed that after controlling the effects of obsessive–compulsive and depressive symptoms, magical ideation and schizotypy, patients still had higher scores on TAF Likelihood Others but not on Self. Patients also had a tendency to get higher scores on TAF Moral. It is concluded that the study shows the presence of TAF Likelihood Others in schizophrenia even after controlling for the effects of magical ideation, depressive and OCD symptoms and schizotypal characteristics.

No abstract

Objective: Currently, schizophrenia guidelines recommend waiting for 3 to 6 weeks before considering a patient as non-responder. However, recent studies indicate that the response to antipsychotic medications starts within the first two weeks of treatment. The aim of this study is to determine the predictive value of early improvement at 2 or 4 weeks for non-response at 6 weeks.Methods: Twenty seven in-and out-patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia according to DSM-IV, between the ages of 18 to 65 years, who were moderately-to-severely ill (baseline Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) total score ≥ 75, with at least "moderate" level of severity / score>4 on at least 2 of the 4 Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) psychotic cluster items) were included. Ten patients were receiving antipsychotic treatment for the first time, and 17 patients' treatment was changed due to nonresponse to prior antipsychotic treatment. The patients were evaluated with the PANSS and the Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) scale at 0, 2, 4 and 6 weeks of antipsychotic treatment. Non-response at endpoint was defined in 3 different ways to reflect the variations in the level of response to medication:"not minimally improved", "not much improved" and "not remitted". As previously described, "not minimally improved" and "not much improved" were defined as less than 28% and 53% improvement in the PANSS total scores, respectively. "Not remitted" was defined according to the criteria developed by "The Remission in Schizophrenia Working Group" without the time criterion. Signal detection methods using receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves were implemented to detect the optimal threshold of early nonresponse at 2 and 4 weeks. Total accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive value of cut-off points were calculated for predicting "not minimally improved", "not much improved" and "not remitted" at endpoint. Results:The early response threshold for predicting "not minimally improved' was less than 15.3% reduction in PANSS total score at week 2, less than 15.5% reduction at week 4. The early response threshold for predicting "not much improved" was less than 22.1% reduction at week 2 and less than 44.3% reduction at week 4; for "not remitted" was less than 17.5% reduction at week 2 and less than 23.2% reduction at week 4. Specific thresholds of "much improvement" and "remission" were not identified at week 2, whereas thresholds calculated for week 4 had good discriminative power. Conclusion:The findings of this study did not support the findings of earlier studies indicating that nonresponse at 2 weeks accurately predicts subsequent lack of response in patients with schizophrenia. Instead, the findings revealed that non-response could best be predicted at 4 weeks as in some other previous studies. The question of which time point for early prediction of response could be best predicted in schizophrenia patients needs to be further addressed in subsequent studies with larger sample size.

Aim: Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS Syndrome) is a neuropsychiatric disorder whose diagnosis and treatment are controversial. The goal of this study was to highlight trends and discuss problems in Pandas Syndrome research since 1998 and to assist researchers in identifying new avenues for this field of study. Material and Method: The Vosviewer program was used to conduct bibliometric analysis on the articles chosen from the Web of Science Core Collection. Results: The analysis included 361 publications. 2004 was the year with the highest number of publications. In the following years, the number of publications followed an irregular course. The most cited publications were published in 2021 and these publications received 881 citations. The United States (n=191,52.91%), Italy (n=43,11.91%), England (n=32,8.86%), Germany (n=18,4.98%), Sweden (n=13,3.60%), Turkey (n=13,3.60%) and Spain (n=10, 2.77%) were detected as the mostly publishing countries. The United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany were the countries with the largest number of countries and the most cooperation between countries. The National Institute of Mental Health, Yale University, and Johns Hopkins University were the most prolific institutions. Conclusion: With this study, we reviewed the global studies on PANDAS in the field of psychiatry and tried to highlight the issues that can be identified as emphasis. According to the study findings, the number of publications on PANDAS is still much lower than expected. Scientific productivity on PANDAS syndrome, which has many unknowns about diagnosis, treatment and etiology, needs to be increased globally.