View clinical trials related to Disease.
Filter by:A qualitative study assessing the impact of early narrative medicine practice on Medical Honors Program (MHP) students' attitudes regarding patient-centered interactions, through interviewing patients with chronic or life-limiting illnesses to obtain their illness stories. MHP students will develop a patient narrative for the patients interviewed. These narratives will be edited by the patient, and, with the permission of the patients, may be published as a collection of stories.
The main purpose of this study is to determine whether electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes any structural or functional brain changes and thus indicating its mechanism of action. The second aim is to find predictors of an immediate response, sustained remission, relapse and side-effects. Thirdly, this study aims to explore whether ECT causes any changes in blood-brain barriers permeability and whether these changes correlate to memory problems. The fourth objective is to examine whether ECT causes any brain tissue damage.
This is a research clinical trial of double-blind, stratified randomized, parallel group, two-centre study. It will be conducted in a total of 250~300 male and female subjects from the Department of Psychiatry at National Cheng Kung University Hospital. Eligible subjects will be psychiatric out- and in-patients, aged between 18~65 years old, who have psychiatric evaluation with clinically suspected of having bipolar II disorder and fulfill the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The add-on double-blind study treatment with dextromethorphan/place will commence at randomization for while patients continue open-label valproate. Subjects will be enrolled for 12 weeks double-blind add-on treatment and randomly assigned to (1) 30mg dextromethorphan+valproate, (2) 5mg memantine+valproate, (3) dextromethorphan+memantine+valproate or (4) placebo+valproate. Concomitant benzodiazepine medication (preferably up to 8mg lorazepam) may be used for daytime sedation, agitation or insomnia during the study. For the consideration of the less influence to immune-system, resperidone 1-3mg/daily and fluoxetine maximum 20mg/daily will be chose. We will measure the treatment response and side effect to clarify the curative effect of DM and memantine add-on therapy to valproate in the treatment of bipolar disorders. This study is being performed to investigate the possibly significant beneficial effects on the subtypes of bipolar disorders psychopathology.
This study is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel group, two-site study designed to assess the effects of varenicline as compared with placebo on responses to in vivo alcohol cue exposure in the human laboratory setting.
Unipolar and bipolar disorder combined account for nearly half of all morbidity and mortality due to mental and substance use disorders, and burden society with the highest health care costs of all psychiatric and neurological disorders. Among these, costs due to psychiatric hospitalization is a major burden. Smartphones comprise an innovative and unique platform for monitoring and treatment of depression and mania. The RADMIS trials use a randomized controlled single-blind parallel-group design. Patients with unipolar or bipolar disorder discharged from psychiatric hospitals in The Capital Region of Denmark are invited to participate. Patients are at discharge from the psychiatric hospitals randomized, separately according to psychiatric diagnosis (thus, the RADMIS trial consists of two separate trials according to diagnosis, bipolar disorder or unipolar disorder), to: 1) a smartphone-based monitoring system including a) an integrated feedback loop between patients and clinicians and b) context-aware CBT modules (intervention group) or 2) treatment-as-usual (control group) for a 6-months trial period. The trial is started in March 2017. The outcomes are 1) differences in the number and duration of re-admissions between the intervention group and the control group (primary), 2) differences in severity of depressive and manic symptoms (manic symptoms only for patients with bipolar disorder); differences in psychosocial functioning; and differences in number of affective episodes between the intervention group and the control group (secondary), and 3) differences in perceived stress, quality of life, self-rated depressive symptoms, self-rated manic symptoms (only for patients with bipolar disorder), recovery, empowerment, adherence to medication, well-being, ruminations, worrying, and satisfaction between the intervention group and the control group (tertiary).
Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent, costly, and disabling mental illnesses. One central, yet largely understudied, abnormality in anxiety disorders is the heightened tendency to display fear and avoidance in reaction to benign or safe events that resemble feared situations. The current project maps brain circuits associated with this abnormality in order to contribute to future brain-based diagnosis and treatments for clinical anxiety.
The objective of this study is to quantify salivary oxidative stress biomarkers in patients with temporomandibular disorders and to quantify recently isolated endogenous peptide opiorphin in saliva of these patients. As chronic exposure to stress may cause hyperalgesia as a result of the stress response in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, aim is to test this as an underlying mechanism by correlating opiorphin and oxidative stress markers to salivary cortisol levels. The aim is to assess the association of oxidative stress salivary biomarkers with muscle and joint pain and to measure opiorphin, a potential biomarker of different pathological states.
In the recent context of deinstitutionalization and longitudinal studies pointing to a large number of positive long-term outcommes for people affected by a psychiatric disorder (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorder, severe personality disorder, etc.), the possibility of overcoming the consequences of a psychiatric pathology emerges as a solid fact. Therefore, the existence of this possibility calls for the identification of the determinants underlying of the various outcomes over time of those affected by a severe psychiatric disorder, in particular those likely to underpin the most positive developments. While it is well known from a medical point of view that certain dimensions affect the prognosis of persons affected by a severe psychiatric disorder (such as the persistence of negative symptoms or cognitive disorders in schizophrenic disorders), prognosis from a purely medical perspective (and putting aside the role of the person and his environment) seems to be able to account only for a modest proportion of the prognosis of people affected by a serious psychiatric disorder. It is this fact that has gradually led to the emergence of complementary models capable of enriching the understanding of the determinants of the future of people affected by a severe psychiatric disorder, in particular models inviting to separate "becoming of the person" from the " psychiatric disorder "to take into account the" personal role of the person "in his or her own healing. This perspective is the "recovery" perspective. Recovery process is defined as a personal trajectory which includes the person's experiences and the reactions of his / her environment following the installation of a psychiatric disorder, which can support a mode of release of the status of "psychiatric patient". Recovery thus implies an "approach underpinned by the understanding of the human response to pathology" (Noiseux) and, one might add, of its environment. However, while these studies point to a number of crucial dimensions involved in the recovery of a severe psychiatric disorder, one of the important limitations of these studies is the distance from any psychopathological consideration, thus setting aside the possibility of specific processes of recovery depending of the pathology. The identification of recurrent experiential logics specific to the various psychiatric disorders therefore appears to be an important field of investigation. It would potentially be able to guide the development of new therapeutic devices based on the recovery model.
Cognitive remediation (CR) is the best treatment to improve neurocognitive abilities for individuals with psychosis, however, there is no gold standard method of cognitive remediation available. Cognitive training refers to the training component of CR in which people practice computerized exercises that train specific cognitive abilities. There is no agreed upon approach within the field as to the type of training that is most effective with some studies, training higher level cognitive abilities, some training perceptual abilities, and others training general cognitive skills. This study will directly compare two competing methods of cognitive training on measures of neurophysiology, neurocognition, functional competence, and real-world functional performance.
To evaluate the acute and chronic effects of costal mobilization techniques and diaphragmatic release in chest cavity kinematics, diaphragmatic mobility and functional capacity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease