View clinical trials related to Disease.
Filter by:This trial will test the efficacy of robot-enhanced interventions for developing social skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The study will compare, in an equivalence design, an innovative intervention delivered by a semi-autonomous robotic agent with standard behavioral intervention. The target group is children between 3 and 6 years old which will be randomly allocated to one of the two treatments. Each treatment will be delivered over 8 bi-weekly sessions of 45 minutes each.
The goal of the study is to evaluate two 6-month adjunct interventions (peer mentorship and social support mentorship) for individuals with eating disorders. Individuals will be randomized to peer-mentorship, social support mentorship, or a wait-list and eating disorder symptoms will be evaluated at baseline and post-treatment.
Depression is a psychiatric disorder that affects mood, thoughts and is usually accompanied by physical annoyances. It affects the person's eating habits, his sleep, the way he sees himself and the way he thinks and understands. Depressed emotion has great tension, lasts longer and leads to a reduction in the person's functioning in many areas of his life. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is the psychiatric disorder characterized by a multitude of diverse organic responses as well as a generalized, persistent and indeterminate anxiety that covers almost all of the individual's activities. It is a diffuse and intense negative mood and anxiety that is present for most of the day and whose exact causes are often undetectable.
This randomised three-arm study aims to evaluate the efficacy and feasibility of a cognitive behavioral therapy (INT-Integrated Neurocognitive Therapy for Schizophrenia Patients) in the treatment of schizophrenia patients in an inpatient setting. The intervention will be compared with an active comparator (IPT- Integrated Psychological Therapy) and a control condition. Overall the study will include 90 patients (30 in each arm). Each patient will receive at least 16 sessions of the respective treatment. Baseline and follow up assessments up to 12 months after the intervention will investigate the stability of treatment.
The present trial consists of 2 sub-studies that investigate important novel aspects of treatment with erythropoietin (EPO) on cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder (BD) and recurrent unipolar depressive disorder (UD) (defined as minimum 2 treatment-requiring depressive episodes). The aims of the trial are three-fold. We aim to investigate the effects of 12 weekly recombinant human EPO infusions on cognition in (i) healthy people with cognitive impairment (substudy 1) and (ii) patients with remitted BD or recurrent UD (substudy 2), and (iii) explore early treatment-associated neural activity changes that may predict subsequent cognitive improvement. It is hypothesized that: i. 12 weekly EPO infusions improve cognition in healthy first-degree relatives and remitted BD patients in comparison with saline. ii. EPO vs. saline-treated participants will display early cognition-related neural activity in the frontal lobes, which will correlate with cognitive improvement.
The overall aim of this pilot study is to conduct a preliminary trial to evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of adding a transdiagnostic, emotion-focused group intervention (the Unified Protocol, UP) to treatment as usual (TAU) in a comprehensive outpatient program for adolescents and young adults with substance use disorders and emotional distress. Only patients seeking services or engaged in care at an existing outpatient program at MGH (the Addiction Recovery Management Service) are eligible for participation.
This experiment consists on a 20-day reduction in daily step in free-living active individuals to induce physical inactivity. This will be used to test the efficacy of the anti-oxidant cocktail we aim to test as a new countermeasure in 2016 during the 60-d bed rest planed by ESA/CNES. The objective of this study is to investigate whether the cocktail of natural antioxidants XXS-2A comprising vitamin E and coupled with omega-3 helps to prevent and / or reduce the glucose intolerance and improve oxidative defenses induced by 20 days of physical inactivity through daily step reduction Although physical inactivity is reported to affect glucose tolerance within days of inactivity, we selected a period of 20 days for the effect of the cocktail to take place and assess secondary molecular mechanisms. The effect of this short period of inactivity on metabolism will moreover be boosted during the last 10 days by taking fructose, a sugar found in abundance in fruits, honey and juices, which is known to quickly trigger metabolic deregulation.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a subtype of Major Depressive Disorder, characterized by a recurrent temporal relationship between the season of year, the onset and the remission of a major depressive episode. Estimates of the annual prevalence state that 1-6% of the population will develop SAD with the larger prevalences found at greater extremes in latitude. SAD is most likely triggered by the shortening photoperiod experienced in the winter months leading to a deterioration of mood. Recent cross-sectional neuroimaging studies have found cellular and neurotransmitter changes in response to seasonality, ultimately having an impact on the affect of patients. Conversly, this study aims to investigate the changes in neurocircuitry related to depression and euthymic states. Patients with SAD offer a unique ability to study these changes since they have predictable triggers for the onset of depression (i.e. the winter months) and remission (i.e. the summer months).
As mental disorders constitute a core health care challenge of the 21th century, increased research efforts on preventive interventions are indispensable. In the field of clinical psychology, indicated preventive interventions targeted to those with initial symptomatology appear particularly promising. Applied relaxation (AR) is a well-established intervention technique proven to effectively reduce tension/distress, anxiety and depressive symptoms in the context of treatment of a wide variety of manifest mental disorders as well as somatic illnesses. However, it has not been studied so far whether AR as indicated preventive intervention in subjects with initial symptomatology but no full-threshold mental disorder yet is capable to prevent a further symptom escalation. This randomized controlled trial in subjects with elevated tension/distress, anxiety or depressive symptomatology aims to investigate whether an AR intervention (10 sessions à 60 min) can (a) effectively reduce present psychopathological symptoms as well as (b) prevent a further symptom progression to full-threshold DSM-5 mental disorders. Putative mediators (physiological, emotional, cognitive and behavioral changes including heart rate and heart rate variability, hair and salivary cortisol secretion, affectivity, self-efficacy, internal locus of control and cognitive / behavioral coping) and moderators (sex, age, symptom severity at baseline and homework adherence during the intervention course) of the intervention/preventive efficacy will be additionally studied. Predictor and outcome measures will be assessed both conventionally (via personal interview, questionnaires and physiological measures during the respective main assessment) and with ecological momentary assessments (EMA, applied via smart phone over a 1-week interval following the respective main assessment) in everyday life.
Depressive symptoms are associated with significant psychosocial impairment. However, current treatments of bipolar depression are only partially effective. Cannabidiol is a natural component of cannabis without psychotomimetic or addictive properties. Cannabidiol has been shown to produce therapeutic effects including anticonvulsive, anxiolytic, antipsychotic and neuroprotective effects. The investigators hypothesize that treatment with cannabidiol will result in improvement of depressive and anxiety symptoms, as well as, improvement in functioning and inflammatory biomarkers. During the clinical trial, subjects will receive study medication (cannabidiol 150-300mg/day) or placebo for a period of 12 weeks.