Venlafaxine has shown benefit in the treatment of depression and pain. Worldwide data are extensively lacking investigating the outcome of chronic pain patients with depressive symptoms treated by venlafaxine in the primary care setting. This observational study aimed to elucidate the efficacy of venlafaxine and its prescription by Swiss primary care physicians and psychiatrists in patients with chronic pain and depressive symptomatology.

We studied 505 patients with depressive symptoms suffering from chronic pain in a prospective naturalistic Swiss community based observational trial with venlafaxine in primary care. These patients have been treated with venlafaxine by 122 physicians, namely psychiatrists, general practitioners, and internists.

On average, patients were treated with 143 ± 75 mg (0–450 mg) venlafaxine daily for a follow-up of three months. Venlafaxine proved to be beneficial in the treatment of both depressive symptoms and chronic pain.

Although side effects were absent in most patients, physicians might have frequently omitted satisfactory response rate of depression by underdosing venlafaxine. Our results reflect the complexity in the treatment of chronic pain in patients with depressive symptoms in primary care.

Further randomized dose-finding studies are needed to learn more about the appropriate dosage in treating depression and comorbid pain with venlafaxine.

To evaluate quality of life and patient preference for schizophrenia treatment in a community based study comparing the use of aripiprazole to the standard of care (SOC).

This open-label, 26-week, multi-centre, randomised study compared aripiprazole with SOC (olanzapine, quetiapine or risperidone) in patients with schizophrenia (DSM-IV-TR criteria). The primary effectiveness variable was the mean total score of the Investigator Assessment Questionnaire (IAQ) at Week 26. The outcome research variables included the Preference of Medicine (POM) questionnaire, the Quality of Life Scale (QLS), and the EuroQoL-5D (EQ-5D). The results from these outcome research variables are the focus of this paper addressing quality of life and patient preference.

A total of 555 patients were randomised to receive aripiprazole (n = 284) or SOC (n = 271). The OC data at Week 26, reported that more respondents rated the study medication as ‘much better’ compared with their previous medication in the aripiprazole group versus SOC for patients (59% vs 35%, P < 0.001) and caregivers (58% vs 30%, P = 0.014). The improvement in QLS total score was also significantly greater in the aripiprazole group compared with SOC – mean change from baseline in QLS total score of 16.21 vs 10.01 (P < 0.001) at Week 26 (OC data set). A greater proportion of patients (93% vs 85%; P = 0.005) in the aripiprazole group had a satisfactory response on the EQ-5D Self Care Scale; all other EQ-5D scores were similar.

The study findings suggest that quality of life and patient medication preference measures were better for aripiprazole than for SOC.

While it is known that patients with schizophrenia recognize facial emotions, specifically negative emotions, less accurately, little is known about how they misattribute these emotions to other emotions and whether such misattribution biases are associated with symptoms, course of the disorder, or certain cognitive functions.

Outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (n = 73) and healthy controls (n = 30) performed a computerised Facial Emotion Attribution Test and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Patients were also rated on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).

Patients were poor at recognizing fearful and angry emotions and attributed fear to angry and angry to neutral expressions. Fear-as-anger misattributions were predicted independently by a longer duration of illness and WCST perseverative errors.

The findings show a bias towards misattributing fearful and angry facial emotions. The propensity for fear-as-anger misattribution biases increases as the length of time that the disorder is experienced increases and a more rigid style of information processing is used. This, at least in part, may be perpetuated by subtle fearfulness expressed by others while interacting with people with schizophrenia.

In Early Onset Schizophrenia (EOS; onset before the 18th birthday) late brain maturational changes may interact with disease mechanisms leading to a wave of back to front structural changes during adolescence. To further explore this effect we examined the relationship between age of onset and duration of illness on brain morphology in adolescents with EOS.

Structural brain magnetic resonance imaging scans were obtained from 40 adolescents with EOS. We used Voxel Based Morphometry and multiple regressions analyses, implemented in SPM, to examine the relationship between gray matter volume with age of onset and illness duration.

Age of onset showed a positive correlation with regional gray matter volume in the right superior parietal lobule (Brodmann Area 7). Duration of illness was inversely related to regional gray matter volume in the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 11/47).

Parietal gray matter loss may contribute to the onset of schizophrenia while orbitofrontal gray matter loss is associated with illness duration.

Migration during the 1990s has been high and has been characterised by new migrations. Migration has been a key force in the demographic changes of the European population. Due to the different condition of migration in Europe, variables related to mental health of migrants are: motivation for migration, living conditions in the home and in the host country.

To give an overview on (i) prevalence of mental disorders; suicide; alcohol and drug abuse; (ii) access to mental health and psychosocial care facilities of migrants in the European region, and (iii) utilisation of health and psychosocial institution of these migrants.

Non-system review of the literature concerning mental health disorders of migrants and their access to and their consumption of health care and psychosocial services in Europe.

It is impossible to consider “migrants” as a homogeneous group concerning the risk for mental illness. The literature showed (i) mental health differs between migrant groups, (ii) access to psychosocial care facilities is influenced by the legal frame of the host country; (iii) mental health and consumption of care facilities is shaped by migrants used patterns of help-seeking and by the legal frame of the host country.

Data on migrant's mental health is scarce. Longitudinal studies are needed to describe mental health adjusting for life conditions in Europe to identify those factors which imply an increased risk of psychiatric disorders and influence help seeking for psychosocial care. In many European countries migrants fall outside the existing health and social services, particularly asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.

Scientific literature reviews aim to summarize the state of knowledge and published empirical evidence. In contrast, medical guidelines are intervention tools that aim to improve physician behaviour and patient outcome. They can have positive effects, but they can also have negative effects. Their effects must be tested by research.

In a randomized controlled trial, 103 psychiatrists in private practice were either provided with the WHO depression guideline only (information group), or provided with the WHO depression guideline and trained for one day in this guideline (intervention group), or left uninformed (control group). They then treated a total of 497 patients according to individual clinical considerations and the needs of the patients. Observation of routine treatment lasted 12 weeks. Physicians and patients documented the course of illness and treatment, including the patient–physician interaction.

Psychiatrists in the intervention group saw more psychosocial stressors in their patients, prescribed higher dosages of medication, had fewer drop-outs, and rated treatment outcome as better. The ratings of patient–physician interactions indicated more strain in their relationships.

The results show both positive and negative effects of guideline exposure, but only in the training group and not in the information group. Guidelines should be empirically tested before being called “evidence based”. Every guideline should also explain how it can or must be implemented in order to become effective.

This is a secondary analysis of clinical trial data collected in 12 European countries. We examined changes in weight and weight-related quality of life among community patients with schizophrenia treated with aripiprazole (ARI) versus standard of care (SOC), consisting of other marketed atypical antipsychotics (olanzapine, quetiapine, and risperidone).

Five-hundred and fifty-five patients whose clinical symptoms were not optimally controlled and/or experienced tolerability problems with current medication were randomized to ARI (10–30 mg/day) or SOC. Weight and weight-related quality of life (using the IWQOL-Lite) were assessed at baseline, and weeks 8, 18 and 26. Random regression analysis across all time points using all available data was used to compare groups on changes in weight and IWQOL-Lite. Meaningful change from baseline was also assessed.

Participants were 59.7% male, with a mean age of 38.5 years (SD 10.9) and mean baseline body mass index of 27.2 (SD 5.1). ARI participants lost an average of 1.7% of baseline weight in comparison to a gain of 2.1% by SOC participants (p < 0.0001) at 26 weeks. ARI participants experienced significantly greater increases in physical function, self-esteem, sexual life, and IWQOL-Lite total score. At 26 weeks, 20.7% of ARI participants experienced meaningful improvements in IWQOL-Lite score, versus 13.5% of SOC participants. A clinically meaningful change in weight was also associated with a meaningful change in quality of life (p < 0.001). A potential limitation of this study was its funding by a pharmaceutical company.

Compared to standard of care, patients with schizophrenia treated with aripiprazole experienced decreased weight and improved weight-related quality of life over 26 weeks. These changes were both statistically and clinically significant.

Differences in personality traits have long been acknowledged as potential risk factors in developing psychiatric disorders. Lately, several susceptibility genes of different psychiatric disorders have been linked to personality traits. This has not been done for schizophrenia yet. Neuregulin1 has been repeatedly shown to be associated with schizophrenia and is involved in numerous neurodevelopmental functions such as neuronal migration and myelination. The impact of this gene might also modulate personality traits in healthy subjects.

The NRG1 status of 523 healthy subjects was determined with a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP8NRG221533) which has been described as a tagging marker being part of the core at-risk haplotype for schizophrenia. Genotype was correlated with personality traits using the NEO-FFI questionnaire.

Subjects with the NRG1 risk allele scored higher on neuroticism (p <.05) and lower on conscientiousness (p <.05). Further, interactions of genotype by gender for extraversion (p <.05), openness (p <.05) and conscientiousness (p <.05) were found with men carrying the risk allele scoring the lowest.

The data indicate that the NRG1 gene which has found to be associated with schizophrenia may also influence personality differences in healthy subjects.

Schizoaffective disorder could be considered as a form of schizophrenia, a form of bipolar disorder, an independent disorder or a disorder intermediate between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, within a psychotic continuum. The study of cognitive deficits in subjects with those diagnoses could help differentiate between these possibilities.

We compared cognitive performances of schizoaffective (SZAff) subjects with those of subjects with schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar disorder with psychotic symptoms (life-time) (BDP), bipolar disorder without life-time occurrence of psychotic symptoms (BD) and normal controls (NC). We used two tests of executive functions – the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Trail-making Test (TMT) – that are known to be impaired in those disorders.

The number of perseverative errors on WCST was highest in SZ subjects and gradually decreased in SZAff, BDP and, finally in BD subjects. By contrast, SZ and SZAff subjects obtained similar scores in the TMT, as did BD and BDP patients.

These results suggest that, for some deficits, there may be a continuum between SZ, SZAff and affective disorders, whereas SZAff patients most closely resemble SZ patients for other deficits. This implies that different conceptual views about schizoaffective disorder should be seen as complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.

This study investigates the influence of age at onset of OCS on psychiatric comorbidities, and tries to establish a cut-off point for age at onset.

Three hundred and thirty OCD patients were consecutively recruited and interviewed using the following structured interviews: Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale; Yale Global Tic Severity Scale and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. Data were analyzed with regression and cluster analysis.

Lower age at onset was associated with a higher probability of having comorbidity with tic, anxiety, somatoform, eating and impulse–control disorders. Longer illness duration was associated with lower chance of having tics. Female gender was associated with anxiety, eating and impulse–control disorders. Tic disorders were associated with anxiety disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. No cut-off age at onset was found to clearly divide the sample in homogeneous subgroups. However, cluster analyses revealed that differences started to emerge at the age of 10 and were more pronounced at the age of 17, suggesting that these were the best cut-off points on this sample.

Age at onset is associated with specific comorbidity patterns in OCD patients. More prominent differences are obtained when analyzing age at onset as an absolute value.