View clinical trials related to Mental Disorders.
Filter by:Cannabis use during adolescence represents a significant risk factor for the development of psychosis including schizophrenia. Moreover, cannabis is the most commonly used drug among patients with an existing psychotic disorder. An estimated 25% of patients with psychosis reportedly meet the criteria of a cannabis use disorder particularly among younger patients experiencing their first episode. Cannabis use significantly exacerbates symptomatology resulting in an increased duration of the first hospitalization visit, number of hospital readmissions, and overall reduced functional outcome. Discovering novel strategies to treat the underlying pathophysiology of cannabis dependence early in the disorder may translate into improved functional outcome. Working memory deficits have been shown to predict relapse in the first-year of psychosis and is modulated with cannabis use. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) targeted to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has shown tremendous promise for the treatment of both tobacco dependence and working memory impairment in patients with psychosis possibly through the modulation of gamma (30-50 Hz) oscillations. The proposed study will therefore evaluate the effect of rTMS on abstinence, working memory performance, and gamma oscillations through a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled 28-day longitudinal abstinence study design in patients with early psychosis. It will further explore if baseline performance and gamma oscillations predict abstinence in response to rTMS. It is hypothesized that active compared to sham rTMS will improve abstinence rates and improve working memory performance through the modulation of gamma oscillations.
Quitting smoking has important health benefits for people with serious mental illness, more than half of whom are smokers. Smoking reductions in this population, in turn, could contribute to saving billions of dollars in healthcare expenditures. Finding ways to deliver more effective and wider reaching smoking cessation interventions to individuals with serious mental illness is a pressing priority. Smartphone apps are a wide reaching technology that could provide a viable platform to deliver smoking cessation interventions for individuals with serious mental illness. However, do smoking cessation apps need to be tailored for people with serious mental illness to ensure their success? Or can providers simply use standard and freely available smoking cessation mobile health treatments designed for the general population? Furthermore, is it feasible to conduct mHealth trials in this population? Therefore, this trial will test whether (1) a tailored smoking cessation app for people with serious mental illness results in higher levels of engagement with smoking cessation content as compared to an app designed for the general population and (2) smoking cessation mHealth trials can be feasibly conducted in this population.
The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of reward processing dysfunctions in schizophrenia using neuroimaging techniques that capture in vivo brain functioning, such as EEG and fMRI.
The goal of this Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) is to develop, evaluate, and commercialize a linked parent-youth mobile app system, VillageWhere, to support the key treatment targets of evidence-based treatments for youth with conduct disorders: clear parental expectations, parental monitoring, discipline consistency, and parental support, while simultaneously cultivating intrinsic motivation in youth toward prosocial behaviors. When used in conjunction with an evidence-based treatment for delinquent youth, VillageWhere could help reduce treatment length and cost. When provided in non-evidence-based clinical settings, VillageWhere may increase access to state-of-the-art clinical techniques to those who might not otherwise receive them. Investigators will conduct usability and acceptability tests of new features with target-end-users (youth and their parents) and key stakeholders (i.e., probation officers, clinic administrators). Once usability and acceptability is achieved, investigators will conduct a 16-week randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing VillageWhere to an attention-control (placebo) mobile app. We expect that across four time points, VillageWhere use will result in greater improvements in parent management practices and youth autonomy support, parent-youth communication and connectedness, youth intrinsic motivation for positive behavior, and youth conduct problems than the placebo. The RCT will occur with 100 parent-youth dyads recruited from various treatment and probation settings, and represent clinically-significant conduct-problems of various clinically-significant severity levels.
This study aims to test a new device called the Social Skills Coach that is being created to help mental health consumers with social skills and community functioning. People diagnosed with schizophrenia and clinicians will be included as participants in this study. Mental health consumers (diagnosed with schizophrenia) will be randomly assigned to either test the new device or to participate in a social skills training course. Data will be collected from participants through surveys before participants either use the device or participate the course and afterwards. Individual interviews will be conducted with a sub sample of mental health consumers and clinicians. The study looks to test the credibility and acceptability of the new device to help mental health consumers and clinicians. it will also influence future research.
This is a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the community-based effectiveness of virtual reality job interview training (VR-JIT). Northwestern University is partnering with Thresholds Inc. to evaluate the effectiveness of VR-JIT at improving interviewing skills and access to employment. In addition, we will evaluate the cost effectiveness of VR-JIT and the process for implementing VR-JIT at Thresholds.
The purpose of this study is to perform longitudinal high-resolution 7T MRI and Prisma 3T MRI in participants with first-episode psychosis (FEP) enrolled in our ongoing randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT) of cognitive training. The investigators seek to determine whether a 12-week course of intensive cognitive training of auditory processing in young FEP patients delivered remotely as a stand-alone treatment is neuroprotective against neural tissue loss in auditory cortex (superior temporal gyrus, STG), and possibly in other cortical regions. The investigators will also observe the effects of training on white matter integrity in the brain.
About 60% of Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients have REM sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD), a parasomnia characterized by partial or complete loss of REM sleep muscle atonia and dream-enacting behaviors, usually associated to vivid dreams. The REM Sleep without atonia is the polysomnographic hallmark of RBD, and its quantification is necessary for the diagnosis. RBD in PD is believed to be a marker of a more widespread degenerative process and a marker of malignant phenotype. Therefore, PD patients with RBD (PD-RBD) are more severely impaired in both motor and non-motor domains, compared to those without RBD, with an increased risk of dementia. However, little is know about the relationship between the evolution of RBD, clinic and video-polysomnographic, and the progression of PD. Besides, an improvement of RBD symptoms is anecdotally reported in PD patients over time. Longitudinal evaluation of RBD in PD, assessed by questionnaires, led to controversial results, but so far, no longitudinal vPSG study has been performed in PD-RBD population. Thus, the main objective of this study is to longitudinally evaluate clinical and video-polysomnographic features of RBD, including measure of REM Sleep without atonia, in patients with PD-RBD, after three years from the diagnosis of RBD, in order to ascertain whether RBD features remain stable over time. The possible remission of RBD with the progression of PD would question indeed its reliability as prognostic bio-marker.
A ten-week study to assess MP-101 in Dementia-Related Psychosis and/or Agitation and Aggression
There is increasing clinical and molecular evidence for the role of hormones and specifically estrogen and its receptor in schizophrenia. A selective estrogen receptor modulator, raloxifene, stimulates estrogen-like activity in brain and can improve cognition in older adults. The present study will test the extent to which adjunctive raloxifene treatment improved cognition and reduced symptoms in young to middle-age men and women with schizophrenia. 110 patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder will be recruited in a multicenter twelve-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel trial of adjunctive 120mg raloxifene treatment in addition to their usual antipsychotic medications. The investigators hypothesize that daily treatment with raloxifene 120 milligrams (mg) in addition to antipsychotic treatment improves cognition, reduces psychotic symptoms, increases social and personal functioning and reduces health care costs, as compared to placebo.