The impact of obsessive-compulsive symptoms on functioning in schizophrenia is still debated. This study investigated the relationship between OC symptoms and functioning along a severity gradient of obsessive-compulsive dimension. Sixty patients affected by schizophrenia completed the SCID-IV, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale and the Social and Occupational Functioning Assessment Scale. The relationship between functioning and obsessive-compulsive dimension was described by a reverse U-shaped curve; functioning was positively related to the presence of mild obsessive-compulsive symptoms and inversely related to moderate and severe symptoms, after controlling for the severity of positive, negative, disorganization and general psychopathological symptoms. The role of obsessive-compulsive symptoms on social functioning in schizophrenia occurs along a severity continuum with a gradual transition from a positive correlation (from absent to mild symptoms) to an inverse correlation (for symptoms ranging from moderate to severe) and independently from schizophrenia symptom dimensions.

The association between depression and acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is well-established and the first seems to impact meaningfully on cardiac prognosis. Nonetheless only a few studies have evaluated the relationship between incident depression, defined as new cases in patients with no history of depression, and ACS. Therefore the aim of this study is to analyse the risk factors of incident depression in a sample of patients who were presenting their first ACS. 304 consecutive patients were recruited. The presence of major (MD) and minor (md) depression was assessed with the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD), whereas its severity was evaluated with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Evaluations were collected both at baseline and at 1, 2, 4, 6, 9 and 12 month follow ups. Out of 304 subjects (80.6% males), MD was diagnosed in 15 (4.9%) and md in 25 patients (8.2%). At baseline risk factors for a post-ACS depressive disorder were being women (MD only), widowed (md only) and having mild anhedonic depressive symptoms few days after the ACS. Clinicians should keep in mind these variables when facing a patient at his/her first ACS, given the detrimental effect of depression on cardiac prognosis.

Our data suggests that TDP does not predict the development of depressive disorders in never-depressed patients at their first ACS, when the baseline depression severity was controlled.

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Data suggest that in patients with schizophrenia, functioning at least in part depends on the interaction between disorganization and OCS.