Insight and symptom change in schizophrenia and other disorders

OBJECTIVE: This study sought to evaluate levels of insight and change in insight in subjects with schizophrenia and other major psychiatric disorders. This study also evaluated the relationship of insight to acute psychopathology. METHOD: One-hundred and eighty-seven subjects consecutively admitted to an acute care psychiatric unit and who met DSM-III-R criteria were evaluated by the Insight and Treatment Attitudes Questionnaire and Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale on admission and discharge. Relationships of insight to diagnosis, involuntary commitment status and change in insight were evaluated with analysis of variance and post hoc Tukey's Standardized Range test. Relationships of change in insight and symptoms were evaluated with analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and correlation. RESULTS: Insight deficits were more prevalent in schizophrenia, a mixed group of other psychosis and bipolar disorder as compared with major depressive and schizoaffective disorder. Committed patients had lower insight. Insight improved across diagnoses during hospital care in both voluntary and committed patients. Significant relationships between improved symptoms and improved insight were obtained in the bipolar, schizophrenia and major depressive groups. Conclusion: Insight deficits are prevalent in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Many patients show improved insight as their acute symptoms improve. Some aspects of insight are state related during exacerbation of illness in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.     

Do daughters with eating disorders agree with their parents' perception of family functioning?

OBJECTIVE: The current study compared the perceptions of family functioning between daughters with eating disorders (EDs) and their parents. This investigation was an expansion of the Fornari et al (Compr Psychiatry 1999;40:434-441) study, which investigated the relationship between the perceived family functioning and depressive symptoms in individuals with ED patients receiving outpatient services. METHOD: One hundred twenty-six female subjects, ranging in age from 13 to 34 years (mean 18.3 years) completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) (Arch Gen Psychiatry 1961;4:561-571) and the Family Assessment Device (FAD) (J Marital Fam Ther 1983;9:171-180) on admission to an outpatient ED program. The patient's parent(s) (118 mothers and 96 fathers) also completed the FAD. Eating disorder subgroup diagnosis and major depressive disorder diagnosis were established according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition , criteria, using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Lifetime (Arch Gen Psychiatry 1987;35:837-844). Repeated measures analysis of covariance was performed comparing family members on each of the 7 subscales of the FAD with BDI entered as the covariate. RESULTS: Statistically significant differences were found between patient and parental perceptions of overall family functioning. Mothers rated family functioning as significantly healthier and less chaotic than their daughters did. There were fewer significant differences between maternal and paternal perceptions of family functioning, and no significant differences between fathers' and daughters' perceptions of the family. Eating disorder diagnosis did not contribute to these differences in perception of family functioning. In addition, high self-reported depressive symptoms of the daughters were related to the perception of high family dysfunction for all 3 informants; depressive symptoms did not, however, alter the differences in perception between family members. DISCUSSION: Differences in viewpoints between parents and daughters regarding the family environment may contribute to the continuation of a dysfunctional family pattern and maintenance of the ED and/or impact negatively on the course of treatment. Possible implications for treatment are discussed, particularly because of the differences of the mothers' views. The results of this study strongly support the importance of including the patient's family in the initial evaluation, regardless of the patient's age.     

Common and disease-specific dysfunctions of brain systems underlying attentional and executive control in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder broadly overlap in multiple areas involving clinical phenomenology, genetics, and neurobiology. Still, the investigation into specific elementary (sub-)processes of executive functioning may help to define clear points of distinction between these categorical diagnoses to validate the nosological dichotomy and, indirectly, to further elucidate their pathophysiological underpinnings. In the present behavioral study, we sought to separate common from diagnosis-specific deficits in a series of specific elementary sub-functions of executive processing in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. For our purpose, we administered a modern and multi-purpose neuropsychological task paradigm to equal-sized and matched groups of schizophrenia patients, patients with bipolar disorder, and healthy control subjects. First, schizophrenia patients compared to the bipolar group exhibited a more pronounced deficit in general measures of task performance comprising both response speed and accuracy. Additionally, bipolar patients showed increased advance task preparation, i.e., were better able to compensate for response speed deficits when longer preparation intervals were provided. Set-shifting, on the other hand, was impaired to a similar degree in both patient groups. Finally, schizophrenia patients exhibited a specific deficit in conflict processing (inhibitory control) and the shielding of task-relevant processing from distraction (i.e., attentional maintenance). The present investigation suggests that specific neuropsychological measures of elementary executive functions may represent important points of dissociation between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which may help to differentiate the pathophysiological underpinnings of these major psychiatric disorders. In this context, the present findings highlight the measures of inhibitory control and attentional maintenance as promising candidates.     

Reliability of psychiatric diagnosis in postmortem research.

BACKGROUND: Postmortem human brain research is an important approach for identifying the cellular, molecular, and genetic pathways involved in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. One critical component in postmortem research is the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses used to define study cohorts. Finding reliable methods for assessing lifetime psychiatric diagnoses in subjects after death is extremely challenging. METHODS: Two commonly used approaches were compared: psychiatric record reviews and postmortem family interviews. We hypothesized that these two methods would lead to more diagnostic agreement for subjects with schizophrenia than those with mood disorders. For 37 cases, psychiatric records were reviewed retrospectively using the Diagnostic Evaluation After Death, and family members were interviewed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. RESULTS: Comparison of diagnoses derived from these two approaches generated an overall kappa coefficient of .67. Kappa coefficients for the schizophrenia cohort were .94, .68 for the major depressive disorder cohort, and .58 for the bipolar disorder cohort. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, although it may be sufficient to establish the postmortem diagnosis of schizophrenia using one of the two methods, the best method for reaching an accurate postmortem diagnosis for mood disorders is more difficult to determine and requires further study.     

Traumatic brain injury and schizophrenia in members of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder pedigrees

OBJECTIVE: Schizophrenia following a traumatic brain injury could be a phenocopy of genetic schizophrenia or the consequence of a gene-environment interaction. Alternatively, traumatic brain injury and schizophrenia could be spuriously associated if those who are predisposed to develop schizophrenia have greater amounts of trauma for other reasons. The authors investigated the relationship between traumatic brain injury and psychiatric diagnoses in a large group of subjects from families with at least two biologically related first-degree relatives with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or bipolar disorder. METHOD: The Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies was used to determine history of traumatic brain injury and diagnosis for 1,275 members of multiplex bipolar disorder pedigrees and 565 members of multiplex schizophrenia pedigrees. RESULTS: Rates of traumatic brain injury were significantly higher for those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression than for those with no mental illness. However, multivariate analysis of within-pedigree data showed that mental illness was related to traumatic brain injury only in the schizophrenia pedigrees. Independent of diagnoses, family members of those with schizophrenia were more likely to have had traumatic brain injury than were members of the bipolar disorder pedigrees. The members of the schizophrenia pedigrees also failed to show the gender difference for traumatic brain injury (more common in men than in women) that was expected and was present in the bipolar disorder pedigrees. Subjects with a schizophrenia diagnosis who were members of the bipolar disorder pedigrees (and thus had less genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia) were less likely to have had traumatic brain injury (4.5%) than were subjects with schizophrenia who were members of the schizophrenia pedigrees (and who had greater genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia) (19.6%). CONCLUSIONS: Members of the schizophrenia pedigrees, even those without a schizophrenia diagnosis, had greater exposure to traumatic brain injury compared to members of the bipolar disorder pedigrees. Within the schizophrenia pedigrees, traumatic brain injury was associated with a greater risk of schizophrenia, consistent with synergistic effects between genetic vulnerability for schizophrenia and traumatic brain injury. Posttraumatic-brain-injury schizophrenia in multiplex schizophrenia pedigrees does not appear to be a phenocopy of the genetic disorder.     

Health-related quality of life and functioning of middle-aged and elderly adults with bipolar disorder

OBJECTIVE: Data characterizing bipolar disorder in older people are scarce, particularly on functional status. We evaluated health-related quality of life and functioning (HRQoLF) among older outpatients with bipolar disorder as well as the relationship of HRQoLF to bipolar illness characteristics. METHOD: We compared community-dwelling middle-aged and older adults (age range, 45 to 85 years) with bipolar disorder (N=54; mean age=57.6 years), schizophrenia (N=55; mean age=58.5 years), or no psychiatric illnesses (N=38; mean age=64.7 years) on indicators of objective functioning (e.g., education, occupational attainment, medical comorbidity) and health status (e.g., Quality of Well-Being scale [QWB] and the Medical Outcomes Study-Short Form Health Survey [SF-36]). Within the group with bipolar disorder, we examined the relationship between HRQoLF and clinical variables (e.g., phase and duration of illness, psychotic symptoms, cognitive functioning). RESULTS: Patients with bipolar disorder were similar in educational and occupational attainment to the normal comparison group, but they obtained lower scores on the QWB and SF-36 (with large effect sizes). Compared with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder was associated with better educational and work histories but similar QWB and SF-36 scores and more medical comorbidity. Patients in remission from bipolar disorder had QWB scores that were worse than those of normal comparison subjects. Greater severity of psychotic and depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment were associated with lower HRQoLF. CONCLUSIONS: Bipolar disorder was associated with substantial disability in this sample of older adults, similar in severity to schizophrenia. Remission of bipolar disorder was associated with significant but incomplete improvement in functioning, whereas psychotic and depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment seemed to contribute to lower HRQoLF.     

A population-based cohort study of premorbid intellectual,language, and behavioral functioning in patients with schizophrenia,schizoaffective disorder,and nonpsychotic bipolar disorder

OBJECTIVE: The premorbid intellectual, language, and behavioral functioning of patients hospitalized for schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or nonpsychotic bipolar disorder was compared with that of healthy comparison subjects. METHOD: The Israeli Draft Board Registry, which contains measures of intellectual, language, and behavioral functioning for the unselected population of 16- to 17-year-olds, was merged with the National Psychiatric Hospitalization Case Registry, which contains diagnoses for all patients with psychiatric hospitalizations in Israel. The database was used to identify adolescents with no evidence of illness at their draft board assessment who were later hospitalized for nonpsychotic bipolar disorder (N=68), schizoaffective disorder (N=31), or schizophrenia (N=536). The premorbid functioning of these subjects was compared to that of nonhospitalized individuals matched for age, gender, and school attended at the time of the draft board assessment. The diagnostic groups of hospitalized subjects were also compared. RESULTS: Relative to the comparison subjects, subjects with schizophrenia showed significant premorbid deficits on all intellectual and behavioral measures and on measures of reading and reading comprehension. Subjects with schizophrenia performed significantly worse on these measures than those with a nonpsychotic bipolar disorder, who did not differ significantly from the comparison subjects on any measure. Subjects with schizoaffective disorder performed significantly worse than the comparison subjects only on the measure of nonverbal abstract reasoning and visual-spatial problem solving and performed significantly worse than subjects with nonpsychotic bipolar disorder on three of the four intellectual measures and on the reading and reading comprehension tests. CONCLUSIONS: The results support a nosologic distinction between nonpsychotic bipolar disease and schizophrenia in hospitalized patients.     

Child comorbidity, maternal mood disorder, and perceptions of family functioning among bipolar youth

OBJECTIVE: To examine the association between youth comorbid psychiatric disorders, maternal mood disorder, and perceptions of family cohesion and conflict among youth diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD). METHOD: Three hundred eighty-nine bipolar youths and their parents completed a diagnostic interview and instruments assessing family psychiatric history and functioning. Family functioning was assessed with the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scales-II and the Conflict Behavior Questionnaire. RESULTS: The presence of a maternal mood disorder was associated with lower family cohesion. The presence of a youth externalizing disorder with or without a co-occurring anxiety disorder was also associated with lower family cohesion as well as higher family conflict. Furthermore, the negative relationship between maternal mood disorder and family functioning was stronger in the presence of a youth externalizing disorder. CONCLUSIONS: Youth comorbidity and maternal mood disorders appear to be associated with worse family functioning among bipolar youths. Family-based treatments with bipolar youths may need to integrate treatment of youth comorbidity and address maternal mood disorder for optimal results.     

强迫症患者与正常对照的家庭功能和社会支持的对照研究(英文)

背景在强迫症的发生与病情演变中家庭功能起着重要的作用,因而理解强迫症患者的家庭问题类型有助于制定针对性的家庭干预。目的比较强迫症患者及其同住的父母与正常对照及其同住父母的家庭功能和社会支持。方法在同济大学东方医院门诊的32例符合DSM-IV强迫症诊断标准的患者和其同住的父母中的一位以及通过附近居委会招募的31位社区对照者(年龄、受教育程度相匹配)及其同住的父母之一参加了本研究。所有受试者独立填写2个中文版自评量表,即用于评估家庭功能7个维度的McMaster家庭功能评定量表(Family Assessment Device,FAD)以及用于评估主观感受到的来自于家庭成员、朋友以及其他社会支持的领悟社会支持量表(Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support,MSPSS)。结果根据原版量表划分正常与否的分界值,强迫症患者及其父母的FAD所有维度的得分均处于异常范围。除了FAD的情感卷入这一维度,强迫症患者及其父母报告的家庭功能和社会支持都分别低于社区对照及其父母报告的程度。患者与父母在问题解决、沟通和情感介入等3个FAD因子的得分一致性高于社区对照与父母的一致性(p均小于0.001),但行为控制的得分一致性低于对照(p=0.009)。除个别相关系数未达统计学意义外,所有研究对象的MSPSS的4个得分均与FAD的7个得分呈正相关。结论在中国,强迫症类似于其他精神障碍,也是一种广泛影响家庭功能的疾病。治疗强迫症时,需要整合基于家庭的心理社会干预(如家庭治疗)以及基于个体的生物学干预和心理干预。本研究结果发现所有研究对象主观感受到的社会支持与家庭功能密切相关,这凸显了在中国,家庭功能在个体的身份认同与社交网络中的中心地位作用。     

Lifetime psychopathology in child and adolescent offspring of parents diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder: a 2-year follow-up study

Having one parent diagnosed with a severe mental disorder is considered one of the main risk factors for developing that disorder in adulthood, and it also increases the risk of a wide range of mental disorders in the offspring. The aim of this study is to compare the prevalence of several psychopathological diagnoses, the presence of prodromal symptoms, and global functioning in offspring of parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and in offspring of controls at baseline and 2-year follow-up. This study included 41 offspring of parents with schizophrenia, 90 offspring of parents with bipolar disorder, and 107 offspring of controls (mean age 11.7 ± 3.2 at baseline and 13.9 ± 3.2 at follow-up). The prevalence of psychopathology and comorbidity was higher in offspring of parents with schizophrenia and offspring of parents with bipolar disorder than in offspring of controls at baseline and at 2-year follow-up. Interestingly, mood disorders were more prevalent in offspring of parents with bipolar disorder and disruptive disorders were more prevalent in offspring of parents with schizophrenia. Prodromal symptoms were more frequent in offspring of parents with schizophrenia than in offspring of controls, while the offspring of parents with bipolar disorder showed an intermediate pattern. Finally, global functioning was lower in the offspring of parents with schizophrenia than the offspring of parents with bipolar disorder and the offspring of controls. Screening patients’ children is clinically relevant, since, as a group, they have an elevated risk of developing a psychiatric disorder and of experiencing their first symptoms during childhood and adolescence.