View clinical trials related to Mental Disorders.
Filter by:The purpose of this study is to assess whether improving sleep in children and adolescents with anxiety disorder will further enhance affective, clinical, and social functioning.
Risperidone is an important medication used to treat children with psychiatric illnesses or neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism. Despite excellent symptom control, the potential for side effects is worrisome. Treating these disorders is difficult because not everyone responds the same way to the same risperidone dose. One reason for this is genetic differences in how people break down the drug. Understanding these differences will help clinicians choose a dose and better predict the response so patients will be treated successfully with a lower risk for side effects. This study will research these genetic differences in children with psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders. Hypothesis: The inter-patient variability in risperidone pharmacokinetics and exposure, adverse events, and clinical response in patients with psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders is associated with identifiable pharmacogenetic factors, such as CYP2D6 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
Intention of the study is to examine, if the symptomatology of dual diagnosis patients is less severe after a special indication training for reduction of cannabis consumption in comparison to unspecified trainings. Point of interest is psychopathology and consumerism.
Serious mental illness (SMI) is the second most costly disorder treated in the VHA, yet clinical outcomes for these patients in public sector settings are often poor due to a combination of low quality care and severe cognitive and functional impairments evidenced by this group. While these problems are multifaceted, studies outside the VHA have shown that using "consumer providers" (CPs) can improve and augment public care. Similar to recovering addiction counselors, CPs are individuals with SMI who use their lived experiences to provide services to others with SMI. CPs can reach out to patients that are difficult to engage, assist patients with tasks of daily living, offer a variety of rehabilitation (vocational, social, residential) services, be role models and offer hope for recovery, and facilitate support groups. Randomized controlled and quasi-experimental trials, all done outside the VHA, have shown that CPs can provide services that yield at least equivalent patient outcomes with particular benefits noted on intensive case management teams. Based on these successes both the President's New Freedom Commission and the Veteran Administration's Mental Health Strategic Plan call for broader dissemination of CPs as way to make mental health services more recovery-oriented, a recent national priority. Because of these recent calls, employing mentally ill veterans has just begun, although no effort has been made to evaluate their impact inside the VA mental health system. Yet its success outside the VHA and the recent emphasis on recovery-oriented care suggests the need to test this model in the VHA.
The purpose of this study is to investigate neurobehavioral, affective, and social processes that may influence and predict treatment response in pediatric anxiety disorders.
Atypical antipsychotics have been found not only to be beneficial in the treatment of psychotic disorders, but even for depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Remarkably, preliminary data suggest that the atypical antipsychotic quetiapine has antidepressive properties. Until now, there is limited knowledge concerning the efficacy of quetiapine in major depressive illness and especially in psychotic depression. In our own clinical practice, several patients with psychotic depression were successfully treated with quetiapine as add-on therapy or as monotherapy. On the background of that, the convincing effects of quetiapine in bipolar depression, single-case reports and pilot studies concerning its effectiveness in depressive mood states in psychotic disorders as well as our clinical experiences, it is to assume that a treatment with quetiapine over a 6 weeks period show similar effects in major depressive episode with psychotic features, i.e. psychotic depression. In this pilot study we plan to investigate 20 patients with psychotic features of depression under treatment with quetiapine.
Psychiatric disorders or drug addiction are often regarded as contraindications against the use of Interferon-alpha in patients with chronic hepatitis C. The investigators aim is/was to get prospective data about adherence, efficacy and mental side effects of IFN-alpha treatment in different psychiatric risk groups compared to controls. In a prospective trial, 81 patients with chronic hepatitis C (positive HCV-RNA and elevated ALT) and psychiatric disorders (n=16), methadone substitution (n=21), former drug addiction (n=21) or controls without psychiatric history or addiction (n=23) should be/were treated with a combination of IFN-alpha-2a 3 x 3 Mio U/week and ribavirin (1000-1200 mg/day).
Since side effects of antipsychotics, dopamine D2 receptor blockers, frequently occur in older patients with schizophrenia and the risk is dose dependent, clinical guidelines universally advocate the use of lower doses. However, there is no report to test this dosing guideline with measurements of D2 receptor blockade caused by antipsychotics. In this study, dopamine D2 receptor occupancy will be measured, using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), in 40 patients aged 50 and older with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders before and after a gradual 40 % dose reduction of antipsychotics that was safely achieved in the past study while setting a target dose still above the lower limit of the dose range recommended in clinical guidelines for older patients. Our goal is to relate changes in clinical outcome, including subjective and objective clinical ratings, to dopamine D2 receptor occupancy, and compare these results with the data for younger patients in the literature.
Women with a close relative who has experienced mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder often have a poor understanding of the causes of the illness, and are often very worried about the chance that any children that they have will become affected with the same illness. Often, because of this fear, these healthy women choose not to have children. Genetic counseling is a process where information about the causes of illnesses, and about chances for family members of individuals with these illnesses to become similarly affected is provided in a supportive environment by a specially trained healthcare professional. This study will investigate whether genetic counseling can reduce perceptions of risk and stigma, and increase perceived control and knowledge about the causes of the illness, amongst women who have a first degree relative with a major mental illness.
People who have experienced mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder often have a poor understanding of the causes of their illness, and that they are often very worried about how the illness affects their families. In particular, affected individuals worry that there is a high chance that any children that they have will become affected with the same illness. Often, because of this fear, affected individuals choose not to have children. Genetic counseling is a process where information about the causes of illnesses, and about chances for family members of individuals with these illnesses to become similarly affected is provided in a supportive environment by a specially trained healthcare professional. This study will investigate whether genetic counseling can reduce perceptions of risk and stigma, and increase perceived control and knowledge about the causes of the illness, amongst individuals who have a major mental illness.