Data Analytics and Psychiatry

The literature on gun violence is broad and variable, describing multiple legislation types and outcomes in observational studies. Our objective was to document the extent and nature of evidence on the impact of firearm legislation on mortality from firearm violence.

Studies have indicated that cadmium (Cd) exposure is associated with neurotoxicity. However, data linking Cd exposure to cognitive impairment are sparse. We aimed to investigate the association between urinary Cd concentration and cognitive impairment in US adults.

Blood-based biomarkers offer a promising, less invasive, and more cost-effective alternative for Alzheimer's disease screening compared to cerebrospinal fluid or imaging biomarkers. However, they have been extensively studied only in memory clinic-based cohorts. We aimed to validate them in a more heterogeneous, older patient population from primary care.

Individuals who have a dual diagnosis of both a psychiatric disorder and an intellectual disability (ID) are more likely to exhibit challenging behaviour than the general population. Clinicians globally have been encouraged to use positive approaches such as Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) when managing challenging behaviour.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) commonly co-occur and are associated with more severe symptomatology than either disorder alone, increased risk of suicide, and poorer response to existing treatments. A promising therapeutic intervention is the integration of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and psychotherapy. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated MDMA- assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) as a Breakthrough Therapy for PTSD based on results from six Phase 2 clinical trials. Case data from the first study evaluating MDMA-AT study for AUD found the treatment was well tolerated and alcohol use was significantly reduced post treatment.

Although many studies have been conducted on the efficacy of behavioral activation in depression, few studies have evaluated the efficacy of this treatment in patients with mixed depression and anxiety through telecare.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a progressive condition that affects millions of people worldwide. A standardized core outcome set (COS) was developed for CKD by the International Consortium for Health Outcomes and Measurements in 2019. This study aims to evaluate the frequency of measurement for these outcomes before and after the publication of the COS.

Given the many challenges of conducting research that addresses the palliative and end-of-life care needs of patients with serious illnesses, stakeholder engagement starting from the moment of study conceptualization and design is critical to ensure successful participant recruitment, data collection, intervention delivery, data analysis, and dissemination.

Pain empathy represents a fundamental building block of several social functions, which have been demonstrated to be impaired across various mental disorders by accumulating evidence from case-control functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. However, it remains unclear whether the dysregulations are underpinned by robust neural alterations across mental disorders.

Maternal separation (MS) in rodents is a paradigm of early life events that affects neurological development in depression. Adolescence is a time of dramatic increases in psychological vulnerability, and being female is a depression risk factor. However, data on whether different MS scenarios affect behavioral deficits and the potential mechanisms in adolescent female mice are limited.

Sexual minority (e.g., bisexual, gay, lesbian, queer) and gender minority (e.g., transgender, non-binary, gender expansive) individuals (SGMI) experience higher rates of alcohol and other substance use disorders than their heterosexual and cisgender (i.e., non-transgender) counterparts. 12-Step programs are currently the most common source of support for alcohol and other substance use-related problems in the United States. Little is known about rates and levels of participation and outcomes of SGMI in 12-Step programs. Examining SGMI with a lifetime alcohol or other substance use disorder, this study aims to: 1) describe lifetime attendance rates (any vs. none) and levels of participation (number of program activities) in 12-Step groups among SGMI overall and compare rates of attendance and levels of participation across sexual and gender minority identities and 2) determine how lifetime level of participation in 12-Step programs relates to past-year alcohol and other substance use outcomes.

Benzodiazepines are effective in managing anxiety and related disorders when used properly (short-term). Their inappropriate use, however, carries significant risks, involving amnesia, rebound insomnia, rebound anxiety, depression, dependence, abuse, addiction, and an intense and exceedingly prolonged withdrawal, among other complications. Benzodiazepines also amplify the effects of opioids and, consequently, have been implicated in approximately 30 % of opioid overdose deaths. Despite their unfavorable profile, sharp increases in medical and non-medical use of benzodiazepines have been steadily reported worldwide. Alprazolam (Xanax®), a potent, short-acting benzodiazepine, is among the most prescribed and abused anxiolytics in the United States. This medication is commonly co-abused with opioids, increasing the likelihood for oversedation, overdose, and death. Notwithstanding these risks, it is surprising that research investigating how benzodiazepines, such as alprazolam, interact with opioids is severely lacking in clinical and preclinical settings. This review therefore aims to present our current knowledge of benzodiazepine use and misuse, with an emphasis on alprazolam when data is available, and particularly in populations at higher risk for developing substance use disorders. Additionally, the potential mechanism(s) surrounding tolerance, dependence and abuse liability are discussed. Despite their popularity, our understanding of how benzodiazepines and opioids interact is less than adequate. Therefore, it is now more important than ever to understand the short- and long-term consequences of benzodiazepine/alprazolam use.

There are elevated mental health concerns in paramedic students, but estimates vary between studies and countries, and no review has established the overall prevalence. This systematic review addressed this by estimating the global prevalence of common mental health disorders, namely anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in paramedic students internationally.

Numerous studies show that early palliative care improves quality of life and other key outcomes in patients with advanced cancer and their caregivers, although most lack access to this evidence-based model of care.

Psychedelics have recently attracted significant attention for their potential to mitigate symptoms associated with various psychiatric disorders. However, the precise neurobiological mechanisms responsible for these effects remain incompletely understood. A valuable approach to gaining insights into the specific mechanisms of action involves comparing psychedelics with substances that have partially overlapping neurophysiological effects, i.e., modulating the same neurotransmitter systems. Imaging data were obtained from the clinical trial NCT03019822, which explored the acute effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), d-amphetamine, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in 28 healthy volunteers. The clinical trial employed a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design. Herein, various resting-state connectivity measures were examined, including within-network connectivity (integrity), between-network connectivity (segregation), seed-based connectivity of resting-state networks, and global connectivity. Differences between placebo and the active conditions were assessed using repeated-measures ANOVA, followed by post-hoc pairwise t-tests. Changes in voxel-wise seed-based connectivity were correlated with serotonin 2 A receptor density maps. Compared to placebo, all substances reduced integrity in several networks, indicating both common and unique effects. While LSD uniquely reduced integrity in the default-mode network (DMN), the amphetamines, in contrast to our expectations, reduced integrity in more networks than LSD. However, LSD exhibited more pronounced segregation effects, characterized solely by decreases, in contrast to the amphetamines, which also induced increases. Across all substances, seed-based connectivity mostly increased between networks, with LSD demonstrating more pronounced effects than both amphetamines. Finally, while all substances decreased global connectivity in visual areas, compared to placebo, LSD specifically increased global connectivity in the basal ganglia and thalamus. These findings advance our understanding of the distinctive neurobiological effects of psychedelics, prompting further exploration of their therapeutic potential.

Having traditionally received limited attention in empirical research and safety improvement agendas, issues of patient safety in mental healthcare increasingly feature in healthcare quality improvement discourses. Dominant approaches to safety stem from narrow clinical risk management perspectives, yet existing evidence points to the limitations of this characterisation. Although mental healthcare is increasingly delivered in community-based settings, narratives of safety pertain primarily to hospital-based mental healthcare. Therefore, through exploratory qualitative interviews and one focus group, we aimed to examine how service users, carers, and healthcare providers conceptualise 'patient safety' in community-based mental healthcare.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition that is associated with atypical brain network organization, with prior work suggesting differential connectivity alterations with respect to functional connection length. Here, we tested whether functional connectopathy in ASD specifically relates to disruptions in long- relative to short-range functional connections. Our approach combined functional connectomics with geodesic distance mapping, and we studied associations to macroscale networks, microarchitectural patterns, as well as socio-demographic and clinical phenotypes.

The authors used longitudinal biobank data with up to 25 years of follow-up on over 2,600 clozapine users to derive reliable estimates of the real-world burden of clozapine adverse drug events (ADEs).

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide, particularly affecting low- and middle-income countries. Food environments may be linked with the risk of CVD; however, current study findings regarding their relationship are inconsistent. A systematic review of their associations is needed to guide interventions to improve cardiovascular health.

Long-distance romantic relationships present unique challenges, necessitating couples to employ adaptive strategies to maintain intimacy and marital satisfaction. This study aimed to examine the validity of an adaptive model of sustaining behaviors in long-distance relationships and its capacity to predict marital intimacy and satisfaction. The model included mindfulness, sexual function, religious, and online social support domains. Data were collected online from 366 couples (aged 18 to 57; Mean = 34.82, SD = 7.34; 79.8 % female) engaged in long-distance relationships. A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the acceptable fit of the four-factor model which was also invariant across gender groups. The results indicated significant associations between sustaining behaviors and marital intimacy and satisfaction, with varying predictive power among specific components. Notably, relationship/sexual mindfulness and marital sanction/religious communication within the religion domain emerged as robust predictors. Conversely, religious practice showed a significant negative association. Additionally, the realization component of the sexual function domain significantly predicted both marital satisfaction and intimacy, while its partnership component significantly predicted only marital intimacy. None of the social support components significantly predicted marital intimacy or satisfaction. These findings are important as they highlight the nuanced interplay between sustaining behaviors and relational well-being in long-distance relationships, emphasizing the need for tailored interventions to enhance relationship quality in this context.

Treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) with buprenorphine improves outcomes and mortality among people with HIV (PWH). However, engagement is low and is influenced by comorbidities. We examined the impact of patterns of co-occurring pain, substance use disorders (SUDs), and mental health diagnoses on buprenorphine initiation and retention in PWH. The Veterans Aging Cohort Study contained 7,875 patients (2,702 PWH and 5,173 without HIV) with new OUD clinical encounters (2008-2017). Buprenorphine initiation and retention were derived from prescription data. We identified patterns of co-occurring diagnoses (via ICD codes) and assessed the effects of class membership on both outcomes using latent class analysis and regression analyses. The mean age of patients was 55, 98% were male, 58% Black, 8% Hispanic, and only 8% initiated buprenorphine within 12 months of OUD diagnosis. Four classes of co-occurring diagnoses were identified: "Few Co-occurring Diagnoses" (42.3%); "Multiple Pain Conditions" (21.3%); "Pain + SUD" (18.4%) and "Pain + SUD + Mental Health" (18.0%). Patients in the "Pain + SUD" class and "Pain + SUD + Mental Health" class were significantly less likely to initiate buprenorphine and had 59% and 45% lower odds, respectively, of initiating buprenorphine compared with patients in the "Few Co-occurring Diagnoses" class; this effect did not vary by HIV status. Buprenorphine retention was not significantly associated with HIV status or class membership. However, Black Veterans were less likely to initiate or be retained in buprenorphine treatment. Higher comorbidity burden was negatively associated with buprenorphine initiation but not with retention. More research is warranted to determine other factors that may influence treatment retention.

Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) commonly affects patient quality of life and the overall effectiveness of chemotherapy. This study aimed to evaluate whether adding neurokinin-1 receptor antagonists (NK1RAs) to 5-hydroxytryptamine-3 receptor antagonists (5-HTRAs) and corticosteroids provides clinically meaningful benefits in preventing CINV in patients receiving moderately emetogenic chemotherapy (MEC).

Mentalization-based interventions (MBIs) have been increasingly applied in school settings to support the social-emotional development and mental health of children and adolescents. This systematic review aimed to synthesize the evidence on the effectiveness of MBIs implemented in educational contexts for students aged 6-18 years. A comprehensive search was conducted in PsychInfo, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, and ERIC databases from inception to October 2023. The search strategy combined terms related to mentalization, school-based interventions, and the target age group. The review protocol was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42022302757). Inclusion criteria included peer-reviewed publications in English, studies published between 1980 and 2023, interventions based on mentalization principles, and a primary focus on children aged 6 to 18 years. Exclusion criteria involved non-mentalization based interventions and research outside the 6-18 age range. The risk of bias was assessed using the Quality Assessment Tools from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Data were synthesized narratively due to the heterogeneity of study designs and outcomes. Of the 5,250 articles screened, 21 studies met the inclusion criteria, comprising over 7,500 participants. The reviewed interventions targeted various aspects of mentalizing, such as emotion-understanding, empathy, perspective-taking, and Theory of Mind. Significant improvements were found in social-cognitive abilities, emotion regulation, and mental health outcomes, including reductions in disruptive behaviours. Interventions that combined mentalizing training for both students and teachers showed promising results. However, the long-term sustainability of these benefits remains unclear. Limitations of the reviewed studies include the lack of control groups, small sample sizes, and variations in outcome measures. The findings highlight the potential of MBIs as a promising approach to fostering socio-emotional competence, positive behaviour, and well-being in school-aged children. Future research should aim to establish the active components and optimal delivery of these interventions through well-designed randomized controlled trials with larger, more diverse samples and extended follow-up periods. The integration of MBIs within educational systems holds promise for promoting resilience and positive mental health outcomes in young people. Embedding MBIs within school curriculums and evaluating cost-effectiveness are important next steps to guide widespread implementation.

Non-communicable diseases are the current global burden including in sub-Saharan Africa, which increasing the incidence of cardiovascular disorders and their complications due to a lack of health checks and delayed treatments. To assess health checkup practice among adults in the South Gondar zone of northeast Ethiopia in 2022. A community-based cross-sectional study design was employed from July 30, 2022, to August 30, 2022. Three woredas (Debre Tabor, Guna Beyemidir, and Andabet) were selected by using a simple random sampling method from the south Gondar zone, and three kebeles were selected randomly from each woreda. A complete of 422 samples were selected by random sampling technique. Data were collected in a face-to-face interview using structured questionnaires. The collected data were entered into Epi data version 3.1 and exported to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26 for analysis. Binary logistic regression was done to identify the association between each variable with the outcome variable. A variable that had a p-value < 0.25 in binary logistic regression became a candidate for multivariate logistic regression then after factors p value < 0.05 was considered as predictors to the outcome variable. In this study, health checkup practice was 40.2%. Living with families (AOR 3.36; 95% CI 1.47-7.66), presence chronic disease (AOR 2.52; 95% CI 1.49-4.26), No self-medication practice (AOR 5.39; 95% CI 3.06-9.49) and having health insurance (AOR 3.02; 95% CI 1.68-5.430) were significantly associated with regular health checkup practice. Health checkup practice was low as compared to health policy recommendations and its health maintenance value. Creating awareness about health check-ups and prevention of disease complications will be taken by different stakeholders in the health care system.

Stereotypical motor movements (SMMs) are a form of restricted and repetitive behavior, which is a core symptom of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Current quantification of SMM severity is extremely limited, with studies relying on coarse and subjective caregiver reports or laborious manual annotation of short video recordings.

Understanding the factors contributing to mental well-being in youth is a public health priority. Self-reported enthusiasm for the future may be a useful indicator of well-being and has been shown to forecast social and educational success. Typically, cross-domain measures of ecological and health-related factors with relevance to public policy and programming are analyzed either in isolation or in targeted models assessing bivariate interactions. Here, we capitalize on a large provincial data set and machine learning to identify the sociodemographic, experiential, behavioral, and other health-related factors most strongly associated with levels of subjective enthusiasm for the future in a large sample of elementary and secondary school students.

The proliferation of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) has presented new challenges in public health, particularly among adolescents and young adults. While marketed as safer than tobacco and as cessation aids, e-cigarettes have raised concerns about their long-term health and psychosocial impacts, including potential links to increased suicidal behaviors. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between e-cigarette use and suicidal behaviors by conducting a systematic review of the current literature.

Since 2010, the American College of Medical Toxicology (ACMT) Toxicology Investigators Consortium (ToxIC) has maintained the ToxIC Core Registry, a national case registry of in-hospital and clinic patient consultations submitted by medical toxicology physicians. Deidentified patient data entered into the registry includes patient demographics, reason for medical toxicology evaluation, exposure agents, clinical signs and symptoms, treatments and antidotes administered, and mortality. This fourteenth annual report provides data from 7392 patients entered into the Core Registry in 2023 by 36 participating sites comprising 61 distinct healthcare facilities, bringing the total case count to 102331 between 2010 and 2023. Ethanol was the most commonly reported exposure agent class (24.4%), followed by opioids (22.7%), non-opioid analgesics (16.7%), and antidepressants (11.7%). For the first time since the registry's initiation, in 2023, ethanol was the leading agent of exposure. There were 98 fatalities (case fatality rate of 1.3%). Additional descriptive analyses in this annual report were conducted to describe the reasons for medical toxicology consultation by age in 2023, and yearly trends for opioid and psychoactive exposures, physostigmine and rivastigmine treatments, and acetaminophen exposures treated with fomepizole.

Globally, there is increasingly high prevalence of mental disorders across all age groups and social classes with more being projected by 2030, but without commensurate resources for mental health care delivery especially in developing countries.

Currently available clinical treatments on alcohol use disorder (AUD) exhibit limited efficacy and new druggable targets are required. One promising approach to discover new molecular treatment targets involves the transcriptomic profiling of brain regions within the addiction neurocircuitry, utilizing animal models and postmortem brain tissue from deceased patients with AUD. Unfortunately, such studies suffer from large heterogeneity and small sample sizes. To address these limitations, we conducted a cross-species meta-analysis on transcriptome-wide data obtained from brain tissue of patients with AUD and animal models. We integrated 36 cross-species transcriptome-wide RNA-expression datasets with an alcohol-dependent phenotype vs. controls, following the PRISMA guidelines. In total, we meta-analyzed 964 samples - 502 samples from the prefrontal cortex (PFC), 282 nucleus accumbens (NAc) samples, and 180 from amygdala (AMY). The PFC had the highest number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) across rodents, monkeys, and humans. Commonly dysregulated DEGs suggest conserved cross-species mechanisms for chronic alcohol consumption/AUD comprising MAPKs as well as STAT, IRF7, and TNF. Furthermore, we identified numerous unique gene sets that might contribute individually to these conserved mechanisms and also suggest novel molecular aspects of AUD. Validation of the transcriptomic alterations on the protein level revealed interesting targets for further investigation. Finally, we identified a combination of DEGs that are commonly regulated across different brain tissues as potential biomarkers for AUD. In summary, we provide a compendium of genes that are assessable via a shiny app, and describe signaling pathways, and physiological and cellular processes that are altered in AUD that require future studies for functional validation.

The pharmacodynamic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) are diverse and different in different individuals. Effects of other psychoactive substances have been shown to be critically influenced by non-pharmacological factors such as personality traits and mood states. The aim of this study was to determine pharmacological and psychological predictors of the LSD effects in healthy human subjects. This analysis is based on nine double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over studies with a total of 213 healthy subjects receiving between 25-200 µg LSD. The influence of sex, age, dose, body weight, pharmacogenetic, drug experience, personality, setting, and mood before drug intake on the peak autonomic and total subjective responses to LSD was investigated using multiple linear mixed effects models and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regression. Results were adjusted for LSD dose and corrected for multiple testing. LSD dose emerged as the most influential predictor, exhibiting a positive correlation with most response variables. Pre-drug mental states such as "Well-Being", "Emotional Excitability", and "Anxiety" were also important predictor for a range of subjective effects but also heart rate and body temperature. The trait "Openness to Experiences" was positively correlated with elevated ratings in "Oceanic Boundlessness" and mystical-type effects. Previous experiences with hallucinogens have been negatively associated with the overall altered state of consciousness and particularly with "Anxious Ego Dissolution". Acute anxiety negatively correlated with the genetically determined functionality of the Cytochrome 2D6 enzyme. In summary, besides the amount of drug consumed, non-pharmacological factors such as personal traits and current mood also significantly predicted the subjective drug experience. Sex and body weight were not significant factors in influencing the drug experience.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease (AD) but can also manifest secondary to AD pathology. Mild behavioral impairment (MBI) refers to later-life emergent and persistent NPS that may mark early-stage AD. To distinguish MBI from NPS that are transient or which represent psychiatric conditions (non-MBI NPS), we investigated the effect of applying MBI criteria on NPS associations with AD structural imaging biomarkers and incident cognitive decline. Data for participants (n = 1273) with normal cognition (NC) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set were analyzed. NPS status (MBI, non-MBI NPS) was derived from the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire and psychiatric history. Normalized measures of bilateral hippocampal (HPC) and entorhinal cortex (EC) volume, and AD meta-region of interest (ROI) mean cortical thickness were acquired from T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging scans. Multivariable linear and Cox regressions examined NPS associations with imaging biomarkers and incident cognitive decline, respectively. MBI was associated with lower volume and cortical thickness in all ROIs in both NC and MCI, except for EC volume in NC. Non-MBI NPS were only associated with lower HPC volume in NC. Although both of the NPS groups showed higher hazards for MCI/dementia than No NPS, MBI participants showed more rapid decline. Although both types of NPS were linked to HPC atrophy, only NPS that emerged and persisted in later-life, consistent with MBI criteria, were related to AD neurodegenerative patterns beyond the HPC. Moreover, MBI predicted faster progression to dementia than non-MBI NPS.

Computational models have become integral to human neuroimaging research, providing both mechanistic insights and predictive tools for human cognition and behavior. However, concerns persist regarding the ecological validity of lab-based neuroimaging studies and whether their spatiotemporal resolution is not sufficient for capturing neural dynamics. This review aims to re-examine the utility of computational neuroimaging, particularly in light of the growing prominence of alternative neuroscientific methods and the growing emphasis on more naturalistic behaviors and paradigms. Specifically, we will explore how computational modeling can both enhance the analysis of high-dimensional imaging datasets and, conversely, how neuroimaging, in conjunction with other data modalities, can inform computational models through the lens of neurobiological plausibility. Collectively, this evidence suggests that neuroimaging remains critical for human neuroscience research, and when enhanced by computational models, imaging can serve an important role in bridging levels of analysis and understanding. We conclude by proposing key directions for future research, emphasizing the development of standardized paradigms and the integrative use of computational modeling across neuroimaging techniques.

Neuroimaging plays a crucial role in understanding brain structure and function, but the lack of transparency, reproducibility, and reliability of findings is a significant obstacle for the field. To address these challenges, there are ongoing efforts to develop reporting checklists for neuroimaging studies to improve the reporting of fundamental aspects of study design and execution. In this review, we first define what we mean by a neuroimaging reporting checklist and then discuss how a reporting checklist can be developed and implemented. We consider the core values that should inform checklist design, including transparency, repeatability, data sharing, diversity, and supporting innovations. We then share experiences with currently available neuroimaging checklists. We review the motivation for creating checklists and whether checklists achieve their intended objectives, before proposing a development cycle for neuroimaging reporting checklists and describing each implementation step. We emphasize the importance of reporting checklists in enhancing the quality of data repositories and consortia, how they can support education and best practices, and how emerging computational methods, like artificial intelligence, can help checklist development and adherence. We also highlight the role that funding agencies and global collaborations can play in supporting the adoption of neuroimaging reporting checklists. We hope this review will encourage better adherence to available checklists and promote the development of new ones, and ultimately increase the quality, transparency, and reproducibility of neuroimaging research.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is a commonly used source for estimating trends in alcohol use disorders (AUD) in the United States. From 2015 to 2019 the annual prevalence of people diagnosed with either Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th edition (DSM-IV) alcohol abuse or dependence ranged from 5.3 to 5.9%. More recent estimates, using the DSM 5th edition (DSM-5) AUD diagnostic formulation, have been higher, with AUD base rates ranging from 10.1 to 10.7% from 2020 to 2022. This study aimed to compare the past 12-month base rates of AUD in the United States general population when using the DSM-5 versus DSM-IV AUD (i.e. abuse or dependence) and assess the AUD severity of individuals captured with each diagnostic formulation using DSM-5 AUD symptom counts.

Epidemiological and toxicological studies indicate that increased exposure to air pollutants can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. To further confirm this relationship, we evaluated the association between exposure to ambient air pollutants and corneal nerve measures as a surrogate for neurodegeneration, using corneal confocal microscopy.

To compare romantic and sexual relationships between adults born very preterm (VP; <32 weeks of gestation) or with very low birth weight (VLBW; <1500 g) and at term, and to evaluate potential biological and environmental explanatory factors among VP/VLBW participants.

Opioids are commonly used to provide analgesia during and after congenital heart surgery. The effects of exposure to opioids on neurodevelopment in neonates and infants are not well understood.

Due to the increasing role of psychostimulants in the US drug poisoning crisis, there is an increasing need to effectively implement evidence-based treatment for individuals with stimulant use disorder (StimUD). Contingency management is a behavioral strategy with robust evidence of support for the treatment of StimUD. In 2023, California initiated a large-scale effort to implement CM as a treatment for individuals with a stimulant use disorder (cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine) called the Recovery Incentives Program: California's Contingency Management Benefit.

Engagement in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) often begins in adolescence, and commonly occurs when a person is emotionally dysregulated. Parental emotion socialization (ES) plays a key role in shaping children's emotional expression, experience, and regulation. Longitudinal work is needed to understand how links between parental ES and adolescent clinical outcomes unfold over time. In this longitudinal study (N = 118; all assigned female at birth with a range of NSSI - from none to severe; age 12-17 years, Mage = 14.98 at the first assessment), for the Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2) annual assessments; adolescents reported NSSI and adolescents and parents reported depressive symptoms. Parents (primarily mothers) reported on their supportive and unsupportive ES responses to youth expressions of sadness, anger, and happiness. We examined (1) concurrent relationships across time points, (2) longitudinal models (T1 to T2 change in parental ES and its associated T1 to T2 changes in adolescent clinical outcomes), and (3) prediction models (T1 parental ES predicting changes in adolescent clinical outcomes). Concurrent associations between parental supportive ES responses to sadness and anger were inversely related to adolescent's depressive symptoms and NSSI episodes. Longitudinal analyses showed that increases in unsupportive responses to sadness correspond with increases in depressive symptoms from T1 to T2. The findings underscore the importance of examining how parents respond to their children's emotions. Next steps are to investigate potential mechanisms of risk and consider interventions that enhance adaptive responses of parents to adolescents embroiled in negative emotional states.

The continuum hypothesis proposes that binge drinking and severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD) share qualitatively similar cognitive and emotional impairments. In SAUD, these deficits have a demonstrated impact on social decision making, resulting in a utilitarian bias. Namely, when confronted with moral dilemmas, patients with SAUD tend to focus on the consequences of their actions rather than on social norms. However, social decision-making abilities remain unexplored in binge drinking. We offered the first insights on the generalization of the continuum hypothesis to social decision making, through a multinomial processing tree model applied to moral dilemmas, the "CNI model" of moral decision making.

Emerging evidence suggests that classical psychedelics possess immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory properties; however, these effects are yet to be well-established. This systematic review aims to provide a timely and comprehensive overview of the immunomodulatory effects of classical psychedelics in preclinical studies. A systematic search was conducted on six databases, including CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsychINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. Eligible studies targeting classical psychedelics for evaluation of their effects on inflammatory markers and immunomodulation have been included for analysis. Data was extracted from 40 out of 2822 eligible articles, and their risk of bias was assessed using the Systematic Review Center for Laboratory Animal Experimentation (SYRCLE) tool and Quality Assessment Tool for In Vitro Studies (QUIN). Studies examined 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI; n = 18); psilocybin (4-PO-DMT; n = 9); N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT; n = 8); lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD; n = 6); 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT; n = 3); psilocin (4-HO-DMT; n = 3); and mescaline (n = 2). In 36 studies where inflammatory cytokine levels were measured following psychedelic administration, a decrease in at least one inflammatory cytokine was observed in 29 studies. Immune cell activity was assessed in 10 studies and findings were mixed, with an equal number of studies (n = 5 out of 10) reporting either an increase or decrease in immune cell activity. Classical psychedelics were found to alleviate pre-existing inflammation but promote inflammation when administered under normal physiological conditions. This information is anticipated to inform future clinical trials, exploring classical psychedelics' potential to alleviate inflammation in various pathologies.

Cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) is a broad term encompassing subtle cognitive problems to more severe impairment. CRCI severity is influenced by host, disease, and treatment factors and affects patients prior to, during, and following cancer treatment. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Symptom Management and Health-Related Quality of Life Steering Committee (SxQoL SC) convened a Clinical Trial Planning Meeting (CTPM) to review the state of the science on CRCI and to develop both Phase II/III intervention trials aimed at improving cognitive function in cancer survivors with non-central nervous system (CNS) disease and longitudinal studies to understand the trajectory of cognitive impairment and contributing factors. Participants included experts in the field of CRCI, members of the SxQOL SC, patient advocates, representatives from all seven NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Research Bases, and the NCI. Presentations focused on the following topics: measurement, lessons learned from pediatric and geriatric oncology, biomarker and mechanism endpoints, longitudinal study designs, and pharmacologic and behavioral intervention trials. Panel discussions provided guidance on priority cognitive assessments, considerations for remote assessments, inclusion of relevant biomarkers, and strategies for ensuring broad inclusion criteria. Three CTPM working groups (longitudinal studies and pharmacologic and behavioral intervention trials) convened for one year to discuss and report on top priorities and to design studies. The CTPM experts concluded sufficient data exist to advance Phase II/Phase III trials utilizing selected pharmacologic and behavioral interventions for the treatment of CRCI in the non-CNS setting with recommendations included herein.

Accurate diagnosis of mental disorders is expected to be achieved through the identification of reliable neuroimaging biomarkers with the help of cutting-edge feature selection techniques. However, existing feature selection methods often fall short in capturing the local structural characteristics among samples and effectively eliminating redundant features, resulting in inadequate performance in disorder prediction. To address this gap, we propose a novel supervised method named local-structure-preservation and redundancy-removal-based feature selection (LRFS), and then apply it to the identification of meaningful biomarkers for schizophrenia (SZ). LRFS method leverages graph-based regularization to preserve original sample similarity relationships during data transformation, thus retaining crucial local structure information. Additionally, it introduces redundancy-removal regularization based on interrelationships among features to exclude similar and redundant features from high-dimensional data. Moreover, LRFS method incorporates l sparse regularization that enables selecting a sparse and noise-robust feature subset. Experimental evaluations on eight public datasets with diverse properties demonstrate the superior performance of our method over nine popular feature selection methods in identifying discriminative features, with average classification accuracy gains ranging from 1.30% to 9.11%. Furthermore, the LRFS method demonstrates superior discriminability in four functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets from 708 healthy controls (HCs) and 537 SZ patients, with an average increase in classification accuracy ranging from 1.89% to 9.24% compared to other nine methods. Notably, our method reveals reproducible and significant changes in SZ patients relative to HCs across the four datasets, predominantly in the thalamus-related functional network connectivity, which exhibit a significant correlation with clinical symptoms. Convergence analysis, parameter sensitivity analysis, and ablation studies further demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our method. In short, our proposed feature selection method effectively identifies discriminative and reliable features that hold the potential to be biomarkers, paving the way for the elucidation of brain abnormalities and the advancement of precise diagnosis of mental disorders.

Obesity in adolescents is a global health concern associated with several diseases and complications in adulthood. Obesity has been reported to be strongly associated with oral habits. To investigate the association between tooth brushing during lunchtime and the prevalence of obesity among adolescents in a nationally representative sample of South Korean adolescents. Data from the 2018-2021 Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey were used in this cross-sectional study. Obesity was measured based on the body mass index. The chi-square test was used to investigate and compare tooth brushing habits during lunchtime in the study population, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze the relationship between tooth brushing during lunchtime and the prevalence of obesity. The odds of obesity were lower in the group that brushed their teeth during lunchtime (adjusted odd ratio: 0.90, 95% confidence interval: 0.88-0.93). Furthermore, the odds of obesity were significantly higher in high school students; boys; those with a low household income, low subjective health status awareness, medical history (asthma or atrophy), and history of sealant use; and those who responded after the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. A significant inverse relationship was found between tooth brushing habits during lunchtime and the prevalence of obesity. This relationship was consistent regardless of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors.

Autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) both feature atypical social cognition. Despite evidence for comparable group-level performance in lower-level emotion processing and higher-level mentalizing, limited research has examined the neural basis of social cognition across these conditions. Our goal was to compare the neural correlates of social cognition in autism, SSDs, and typically developing controls (TDCs).

A dramatic decline in mental health of people worldwide in the early COVID-19 pandemic years has not recovered. In rural and remote Australia, access to appropriate and timely mental health services has been identified as a major barrier to people seeking help for mental ill-health. From 2020 to 2021 a care navigation model, Navicare, was co-designed with rural and remote communities in the Greater Whitsunday Region of Central Queensland in Australia. The Exploration, Preparation, Implementation and Sustainment (EPIS) framework was used to design and guide multiple aspects of a multisite study, The Bridging Study, to evaluate the implementation of Navicare in Australia.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to healthcare systems worldwide, particularly in managing critically ill patients requiring mechanical ventilation early in the pandemic. Surging patient volumes strained hospital resources and complicated the implementation of standard-of-care intensive care unit (ICU) practices, including sedation management. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of an evidence-based ICU sedation bundle during the early COVID-19 pandemic. The bundle was designed by a multi-disciplinary collaborative to reinforce best clinical practices related to ICU sedation. The bundle was implemented prospectively with retrospective analysis of electronic medical record data. The setting was the ICUs of a single-center tertiary hospital. The patients were the ICU patients requiring mechanical ventilation for confirmed COVID-19 between March and June 2020. A learning health collaborative developed a sedation bundle encouraging goal-directed sedation and use of adjunctive strategies to avoid excessive sedative administration. Implementation strategies included structured in-service training, audit and feedback, and continuous improvement. Sedative utilization and clinical outcomes were compared between patients admitted before and after the sedation bundle implementation. Quasi-experimental interrupted time-series analyses of pre and post intervention sedative utilization, hospital length of stay, and number of days free of delirium, coma, or death in 21 days (as a quantitative measure of encephalopathy burden). The analysis used the time duration between start of the COVID-19 wave and ICU admission to identify a "breakpoint" indicating a change in observed trends. A total of 183 patients (age 59.0 ± 15.9 years) were included, with 83 (45%) admitted before the intervention began. Benzodiazepine utilization increased for patients admitted after the bundle implementation, while agents intended to reduce benzodiazepine use showed no greater utilization. No "breakpoint" was identified to suggest the bundle impacted any endpoint measure. However, increasing time between COVID-19 wave start and ICU admission was associated with fewer delirium, coma, and death-free days (β =  - 0.044 [95% CI - 0.085, - 0.003] days/wave day); more days of benzodiazepine infusion (β = 0.056 [95% CI 0.025, 0.088] days/wave day); and a higher maximum benzodiazepine infusion rate (β = 0.079 [95% CI 0.037, 0.120] mg/h/wave day). The evidence-based practice bundle did not significantly alter sedation utilization patterns during the first COVID-19 wave. Sedation practices deteriorated and encephalopathy burden increased over time, highlighting that strategies to reinforce clinical practices may be hindered under conditions of extreme healthcare system strain.

This study aimed to investigate the interplay between genetic susceptibility and socioeconomic disparities on psychiatric disorders.

Patients can respond differently to intervention in the early phase of psychosis. Diverse symptomatic and functional outcomes can be distinguished and achieving one outcome may mean achieving another, but not necessarily the other way round, which is difficult to disentangle with cross-sectional data. The present study's goal was to evaluate implicative relationships between diverse functional outcomes to better understand their reciprocal dependencies in a cross-sectional design, by using statistical implication analysis (SIA).

Attentional Control Theory (ACT) posits that anxiety impacts cognitive functioning through interference in working memory and processing efficiency, resulting in performance deficits in set-shifting and inhibition. Few studies have examined the effects of anxiety on set-shifting and inhibition in clinical samples or how these relationships might be affected by age. The current study tested whether increased age, elevated anxiety, and their interaction were associated with reduced performance on measures of set-shifting and inhibition.

Adolescents often experience a heightened incidence of depressive symptoms, which can persist without early intervention. However, adolescents often struggle to identify depressive symptoms, and even when they are aware of these symptoms, seeking help is not always their immediate response. This study aimed to explore the relationship between passively collected digital data, specifically keystroke and stylus data collected via mobile devices, and the manifestation of depressive symptoms.

Decades of neuroimaging studies have shown modest differences in brain structure and connectivity in depression, hindering mechanistic insights or the identification of risk factors for disease onset. Furthermore, whereas depression is episodic, few longitudinal neuroimaging studies exist, limiting understanding of mechanisms that drive mood-state transitions. The emerging field of precision functional mapping has used densely sampled longitudinal neuroimaging data to show behaviourally meaningful differences in brain network topography and connectivity between and in healthy individuals, but this approach has not been applied in depression. Here, using precision functional mapping and several samples of deeply sampled individuals, we found that the frontostriatal salience network is expanded nearly twofold in the cortex of most individuals with depression. This effect was replicable in several samples and caused primarily by network border shifts, with three distinct modes of encroachment occurring in different individuals. Salience network expansion was stable over time, unaffected by mood state and detectable in children before the onset of depression later in adolescence. Longitudinal analyses of individuals scanned up to 62 times over 1.5 years identified connectivity changes in frontostriatal circuits that tracked fluctuations in specific symptoms and predicted future anhedonia symptoms. Together, these findings identify a trait-like brain network topology that may confer risk for depression and mood-state-dependent connectivity changes in frontostriatal circuits that predict the emergence and remission of depressive symptoms over time.

Functional recovery remains a core clinical objective for patients with bipolar disorder (BD). Sociodemographic, clinical, and neurocognitive variables are associated with long-term functional impairment, yet the impact of sex differences is unclear. Functional remediation (FR) is a validated intervention aimed at achieving functional recovery in BD. The present study assessed the effect of sex differences of FR on psychosocial functioning at post-treatment (6-months) and 12-month follow-up (FUP). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the role of sex as a factor in the efficacy of FR.

Post-operative development of restrictive eating disorders can occur in patients after bariatric surgery. In children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN) or atypical AN, premorbid body mass index (BMI) has recently been shown to predict total weight loss. We hypothesized that pre-operative BMI similarly predicts weight loss and the development of a restrictive eating disorder in adult bariatric patients.

Normalized relative cerebral blood volume (nrCBV) and percentage of signal recovery (PSR) computed from dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) perfusion imaging are useful biomarkers for differential diagnosis and treatment response assessment in brain tumors. However, their measurements are dependent on DSC acquisition factors, and CBV-optimized protocols technically differ from PSR-optimized protocols. This study aimed to generate "synthetic" DSC data with adjustable synthetic acquisition parameters using dual-echo gradient-echo (GE) DSC datasets extracted from dynamic spin-and-gradient-echo echoplanar imaging (dynamic SAGE-EPI). Synthetic DSC was aimed at: 1) simultaneously create nrCBV and PSR maps using optimal sequence parameters, 2) compare DSC datasets with heterogeneous external cohorts, and 3) assess the impact of acquisition factors on DSC metrics.

Neurological disorders have had a substantial rise the last three decades, imposing substantial burdens on both patients and healthcare costs. Consequently, the demand for high-quality research has become crucial for exploring effective treatment options. However, current neurology research has some limitations in terms of transparency, reproducibility, and reporting bias. The adoption of reporting guidelines (RGs) and trial registration policies has been proven to address these issues and improve research quality in other medical disciplines. It is unclear the extent to which these policies are being endorsed by neurology journals. Therefore, our study aims to evaluate the publishing policies of top neurology journals regarding RGs and trial registration.

Recent years have seen an increased interest regarding theoretical and empirical associations of adult attachment security and primary affective traits concerning psychiatric disorders. In this study, network analysis technique is applied to dissect the links between both psychodynamic personality constructs and an array of psychopathological symptoms.

While cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is a well-established treatment for odontophobia, research is sparse regarding its effect on patients with dental anxiety related to psychological trauma experiences. This study aimed to evaluate changes in symptoms and acceptability of interdisciplinary Torture, Abuse, and Dental Anxiety (TADA) team treatment for patients with odontophobia or dental anxiety. We also wanted to describe the sample's oral health status. The TADA teams offer targeted anxiety treatment and adapted dental treatment using a CBT approach.

Advancing age is a negative prognostic factor for cutaneous melanoma. However, the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) within the melanoma tumor microenvironment (TME) has remained unexplored in the context of aging. While the size and morphology of the EVs isolated from young vs. aged fibroblasts remained unaltered, the contents of the protein cargo were changed. Aging reduced the expression of the tetraspanin CD9 in both the dermal fibroblasts and released EVs. CD9 is a crucial regulator of EV cargo sorting. Modulating the CD9 expression in fibroblasts was sufficient to alter its levels in EVs. Mass spectrometry analysis of EVs released by CD9 knockdown (KD) vs. control cells revealed a significant increase in angiopoietin-like protein 2 (ANGPTL2), an angiogenesis promoter. Analysis of primary endothelial cells confirmed increased sprouting under CD9 KD conditions. Together, our data indicate that aged EVs play an important role in promoting a tumor-permissive microenvironment.

The field of digital mental health has followed an exponential growth trajectory in recent years. While the evidence base has increased significantly, its adoption within health and care services has been slowed by several challenges, including a lack of knowledge from researchers regarding how to navigate the pathway for mandatory regulatory approval. This paper details the steps that a team must take to achieve the required approvals to carry out a research study using a novel digital mental health intervention. We used a randomised controlled trial of a digital mental health intervention called STOP (Successful Treatment of Paranoia) as a worked example.

Although there are several genome-wide association studies available which highlight genetic variants associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), often the X chromosome is excluded from the analysis. We conducted an X-chromosome-wide association study (XWAS) in three independent studies with a pathologically confirmed phenotype (total 1970 cases and 1113 controls). The XWAS was performed in males and females separately, and these results were then meta-analysed. Four suggestively associated genes were identified which may be of potential interest for further study in AD, these are DDX53 (rs12006935, OR = 0.52, p = 6.9e-05), IL1RAPL1 (rs6628450, OR = 0.36, p = 4.2e-05; rs137983810, OR = 0.52, p = 0.0003), TBX22 (rs5913102, OR = 0.74, p = 0.0003) and SH3BGRL (rs186553004, OR = 0.35, p = 0.0005; rs113157993, OR = 0.52, p = 0.0003), which replicate across at least two studies. The SNP rs5913102 in TBX22 achieves chromosome-wide significance in meta-analysed data. DDX53 shows highest expression in astrocytes, IL1RAPL1 is most highly expressed in oligodendrocytes and neurons and SH3BGRL is most highly expressed in microglia. We have also identified SNPs in the NXF5 gene at chromosome-wide significance in females (rs5944989, OR = 0.62, p = 1.1e-05) but not in males (p = 0.83). The discovery of relevant AD associated genes on the X chromosome may identify AD risk differences and similarities based on sex and lead to the development of sex-stratified therapeutics.

There are little data on the relationship between physical activity and suicidal behavior in medical students. Therefore, this cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the association between physical activity and suicidal behavior and identify mediating factors involved in the association among medical students from the United States.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications significantly reduce symptomatology at a group level, but individual response to ADHD medication is variable. Thus, developing prediction models to stratify treatment according to individual baseline clinicodemographic characteristics is crucial to support clinical practice. A potential valuable source of data to develop accurate prediction models is real-world clinical data extracted from electronic healthcare records (EHRs). Yet, systematic information regarding EHR data on ADHD is lacking. We conducted a comprehensive review of studies that included EHR reporting data regarding individuals with ADHD, with a specific focus on treatment-related data. Relevant studies were identified from PubMed, Ovid, and Web of Science databases up to February 24, 2024. We identified 103 studies reporting EHR data for individuals with ADHD. Among these, 83 studies provided information on the type of prescribed medication. However, dosage, duration of treatment, and ADHD symptom ratings before and after treatment initiation were only reported by a minority of studies. This review supports the potential use of EHRs to develop treatment response prediction models but emphasizes the need for more comprehensive reporting of treatment-related data, such as changes in ADHD symptom ratings and other possible baseline clinical predictors of treatment response.

Existing literature strongly supports the idea that children with primary nocturnal enuresis (PNE) have brainstem abnormalities. However, the connection between pre-micturition arousal responses and brain functional connectivities is still not clearly defined. Our study investigated the correlation between the gradations of micturition desire-awakening (MDA) functionality and the functional connectivity of the midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG), a pivotal brainstem hub implicated in the neural regulation of micturition in humans. Neuroimaging and behavioral data from 133 patients with PNE and 40 healthy children were acquired from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and precise clinical observations, respectively. The whole-brain correlation analyses were undertaken to elucidate the complex connectivity patterns between the subregions of PAG and the cerebral cortex, with a focus on their correlation to the spectrum of MDA functionality. A positive correlation was identified between MDA dysfunction and the resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between the left ventrolateral periaqueductal gray (vlPAG) and the right temporal pole of the superior temporal gyrus. Conversely, a negative correlation was observed between MDA dysfunction and the RSFC of the right vlPAG with the right superior parietal lobule. Additionally, MDA dysfunction exhibited a negative association with the RSFC between the dorsomedial PAG (dmPAG) and the right inferior parietal lobule. These findings may indicate that the specific signal from a distended bladder is blocked in the PAG and its functional connectivity with the executive function, attention, and default mode networks, ultimately leading to impaired arousal and bladder control. This revelation underscores potential neural targets for future therapeutic interventions.

HPV-positive and HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) are recognized as distinct entities. There remains uncertainty surrounding the causal effects of smoking and alcohol on the development of these two cancer types. Here we perform multivariable Mendelian randomization (MR) to evaluate the causal effects of smoking and alcohol on the risk of HPV-positive and HPV-negative HNSCC in 3431 cases and 3469 controls. Lifetime smoking exposure, as measured by the Comprehensive Smoking Index (CSI), is associated with increased risk of both HPV-negative HNSCC (OR = 3.03, 95%CI:1.75-5.24, P = 7.00E-05) and HPV-positive HNSCC (OR = 2.73, 95%CI:1.39-5.36, P = 0.003). Drinks Per Week is also linked with increased risk of both HPV-negative HNSCC (OR = 7.72, 95%CI:3.63-16.4, P = 1.00E-07) and HPV-positive HNSCC (OR = 2.66, 95%CI:1.06-6.68, P = 0.038). Smoking and alcohol independently increase the risk of both HPV-positive and HPV-negative HNSCC. These findings have important implications for understanding the modifying risk factors between HNSCC subtypes.

The aim of this study was to clarify the association between various antipsychotic formulations-oral-daily antipsychotics (OAPs), long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIs), and their combination-and the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD). We conducted a nationwide population-based case-control study using data from 2011 to 2020 from the National Health Insurance Research Database and multiple-cause-of-death data from Taiwan. The study included patients with a new diagnosis of schizophrenia who were followed for SCD occurrence until 2020. Cases and controls were frequency-matched at a 1:4 ratio by age, sex, and year of new schizophrenia diagnosis. Compared with the use of OAP monotherapy, the use of LAI and OAP combination (OR = 1.91) and LAI monotherapy (OR = 1.45) were associated with an increased risk of SCD. Additionally, cardiovascular comorbidities (adjusted OR = 11.15) were identified as a significant risk factor for SCD. This study revealed the following hierarchy of SCD risk associated with antipsychotic formulations (listed from lowest to highest risk): nonuse of antipsychotics, OAP monotherapy, LAI monotherapy, and their combination. These findings underscore the importance of assessing cardiovascular disease history before LAIs are prescribed to patients with schizophrenia and indicate that physicians should avoid prescribing combined antipsychotics when using LAIs.

People with mental health conditions were potentially more vulnerable than others to the neuropsychiatric effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global efforts taken to contain it. The aim of this multinational study was to examine the changes in psychotropic drug prescribing during the pandemic among people with depressive and anxiety disorders.

Youth who have been exposed to potentially traumatic events are at risk of developing chronic and severe adjustment problems. However, some youth exposed to potentially traumatic events exhibit better-than-expected adaptation. Person-centered analyses, based on multiple criteria for adaptive behavior and adversity, are well-suited to empirically identifying different patterns of adaptation among high-risk youth.

Mutations in the X-linked endosomal Na+/H+ exchanger 6 (NHE6) cause Christianson syndrome (CS). Here, in the largest study to date, we examine genetic diversity and clinical progression in CS into adulthood.

Relationship education has shown promising effects for low-income couples on outcomes such as promoting positive communication, improving global relationship satisfaction, parenting, and individual psychological distress. Studies also indicate that couples' baseline distress (e.g., relational and individual) moderates outcomes. Yet, few studies implemented a person-centered approach to analyzing data for those who participate in relationship education. In a sample of 488 low-income opposite-gendered couples, we identified latent profile groups for men and women based on self-reported relationship satisfaction and behavioral self-regulation scores, thus incorporating both relational and individual factors. Results yielded a three-class solution for men and a four-class solution for women. We then examined group profile differences in individual psychological distress and relationship satisfaction change scores after completing the relationship education intervention (12 h of PREP's Within Our Reach). Results indicated significant differences, suggesting that group membership can predict overall improvements in both psychological and relationship distress. Thus, RE programmers and policymakers may consider flexible delivery (e.g., more or less content; more or less intense coaching) that considers overall baseline relational and/or individual functioning as opposed to a one-size-fits-all method.

Suicidal behavior among adolescents with mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety, is a critical issue. This study explores the prevalence and predictors of past-year suicidal behaviors among Bangladeshi high school graduates, employing both traditional statistical and machine learning methods.

Previous work suggests that cognitive and environmental risk factors may predict conversion to psychosis in individuals at clinical high risk (CHRs) for the disorder. Less clear, however, is whether these same factors are also associated with the initial emergence of the high risk state in individuals who do not meet current threshold criteria for being considered high risk.

Mold exposure is a common environmental issue that can adversely affect health, particularly among older adults. The impact of mold exposure on anxiety symptoms in this population has not been extensively studied.

As life expectancy continues to increase, improving the quality of life (QoL) for older adults becomes an important issue. This study investigated the impact of a two-week intensive rehabilitation program at the Techirghiol Balneal and Rehabilitation Sanatorium on older adults' QoL, focusing on physical and cognitive function. The study employed a comprehensive geriatric assessment to evaluate the progress of 156 patients over 65 from admission to discharge. We used the Scale for Identifying Fall Risk Factors (STRATIFY) scale to assess the risk of falling, the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) to assess pain levels, and the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) to assess motor and cognitive abilities. The program included multi-parametric evaluations and personalized treatment plans. Statistical analysis of these data led to the following results: The STRATIFY scale showed a significant improvement in patient functionality and a decrease in the risk of falling during hospitalization, with a mean difference in scores between admission and discharge ranging from 0.141 to 0.372, with a p-value of less than 0.001, confirming the clinical significance of this improvement. The VAS showed a significant reduction in pain or symptom intensity, reflected by a mean decrease of -3.141 between admission and discharge. The FIM recorded a mean increase of 1.436 in patients' motor capacity between admission and discharge, reflecting improved adaptation to daily activities, especially in the areas of self-care, sphincter control, transfer, and locomotion. Social participation and health status were positively influenced, demonstrating the benefits of short-term, intensive rehabilitation. The two-week rehabilitation program significantly improved the QoL of older adult patients. These outcomes suggested that active aging strategies could be effectively integrated into medical and institutional care frameworks, highlighting the necessity for policies that support older adults' involvement in economic and social contexts.

The number of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) has increased dramatically in Asia.

Retrieving comprehensible rule-based knowledge from medical data by machine learning is a beneficial task, e.g., for automating the process of creating a decision support system. While this has recently been studied by means of exception-tolerant hierarchical knowledge bases (i.e., knowledge bases, where rule-based knowledge is represented on several levels of abstraction), privacy concerns have not been addressed extensively in this context yet. However, privacy plays an important role, especially for medical applications.

Cognitive frailty refers to the co-occurrence of cognitive impairment and frailty without concurrent Alzheimer's disease or dementia. Studies of cognitive frailty and mortality have been limited to single country or older people. However, frailty and cognitive decline may occur much earlier. We aimed to examine the association between different cognitive frailty status and subsequent all-cause mortality among middle-aged and older people in 17 countries.

To assess the feasibility of administrating an electronic and paper-based food insecurity screener among patients presenting to a stroke clinic during the study period. We aimed to ensure a consecutive sample for our retrospective analysis and evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of food insecurity in this population.

The suicide mortality rate has been increasing in Region of the Americas, despite decreasing in all other World Health Organization (WHO) regions. Means restriction is an effective evidence-based intervention for suicide prevention. The objective of the current study was to estimate the impact of implementing national-level means restriction policies (i.e., firearm and pesticide restrictions) on the suicide mortality rate in the Region of the Americas.

Many psychopathologies tied to internalizing symptomatology emerge during adolescence, therefore identifying neural markers of internalizing behavior in childhood may allow for early intervention. We utilized data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® to evaluate associations between cortico-amygdalar functional connectivity, polygenic risk for depression (PRS), traumatic events experienced, internalizing behavior, and internalizing subscales: withdrawn/depressed behavior, somatic complaints, and anxious/depressed behaviors. Data from 6371 children (ages 9-11) were used to analyze amygdala resting-state fMRI connectivity to Gordon parcellation based whole-brain regions of interest (ROIs). Internalizing behaviors were measured using the parent-reported Child Behavior Checklist. Linear mixed-effects models were used to identify patterns of cortico-amygdalar connectivity associated with internalizing behaviors. Results indicated left amygdala connections to auditory, frontoparietal network (FPN), and dorsal attention network (DAN) ROIs were significantly associated with withdrawn/depressed symptomatology. Connections relevant for withdrawn/depressed behavior were linked to social behaviors. Specifically, amygdala connections to DAN were associated with social anxiety, social impairment, and social problems. Additionally, an amygdala connection to the FPN ROI and the auditory network ROI was associated with social anxiety and social problems, respectively. Therefore, it may be important to account for social behaviors when looking for brain correlates of depression.

Cost is a key outcome in quality and value, but it is often difficult to estimate reliably and efficiently for use in real-time improvement efforts. We describe a method using patient-reported outcomes (PROs), Markov modeling, and statistical process control (SPC) analytics in a real-time cost-estimation prototype designed to assess cost differences between usual care and improvement conditions in a national multicenter improvement collaborative-the IBD Qorus Learning Health System (LHS).

Surging interest in individual differences has faced setbacks in light of recent replication crises in psychology, for example in brain-wide association studies exploring brain-behavior correlations. A crucial component of replicability for individual differences studies, which is often assumed but not directly tested, is the reliability of the measures we use. Here, we evaluate the reliability of different cognitive tasks on a dataset with over 250 participants, who each completed a multi-day task battery. We show how reliability improves as a function of number of trials, and describe the convergence of the reliability curves for the different tasks, allowing us to score tasks according to their suitability for studies of individual differences. We further show the effect on reliability of measuring over multiple time points, with tasks assessing different cognitive domains being differentially affected. Data collected over more than one session may be required to achieve trait-like stability.

The Covid pandemic has yielded new insights into psychological vaccine acceptance factors. This knowledge serves as a basis for behavioral and communication interventions that can increase vaccination readiness for other diseases.

Occupational therapy (OT), a vital part of psychiatric rehabilitation, encourages participation in social activities, which is critical for the recovery of people with severe mental illnesses (SMI). However, the effects of OT on the subsequent social activities of patients with SMI have not been fully clarified. We aimed to identify the factors that encourage post-discharge social activity participation among patients with SMI who received OT.

Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) represent a substantial global public health challenge with multifaceted impacts on individuals, families, and healthcare systems. Brief cognitive screening tools such as the Mini-Cog© can help improve recognition of ADRD in clinical practice, but widespread adoption continues to lag. We compared the Digital Clock and Recall (DCR), a next-generation process-driven adaptation of the Mini-Cog, with the original paper-and-pencil version in a well-characterized clinical trial sample.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a disproportionate impact on the sexual and gender-diverse (SGD) community. Compared with non-SGD populations, their social relations and health status are more vulnerable, whereas public health data regarding SGD are scarce. To analyze the concerns and health status of SGD individuals, this cohort study leveraged 471,371,477 tweets from 251,455 SGD and 22,644,411 non-SGD users, spanning from 2020 February 1 to 2022 April 30. The outcome measures comprised the distribution and dynamics of COVID-related topics, attitudes toward vaccines, and the prevalence of symptoms. Topic analysis revealed that SGD users engaged more frequently in discussions related to "friends and family" (20.5% vs. 13.1%, < 0.001) and "wear masks" (10.1% vs. 8.3%, < 0.001) compared to non-SGD users. Additionally, SGD users exhibited a marked higher proportion of positive sentiment in tweets about vaccines, including Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson. Among 102,464 users who self-reported COVID-19 diagnoses, SGD users disclosed significantly higher frequencies of mentioning 61 out of 69 COVID-related symptoms than non-SGD users, encompassing both physical and mental health challenges. The results provide insights into an understanding of the unique needs and experiences of the SGD community during the pandemic, emphasizing the value of social media data in epidemiological and public health research.

The delicate balance between discrimination and generalization of responses is crucial for survival in our ever-changing environment. In particular, it is important to understand how stimulus discrimination affects the level of stimulus generalization. For example, when we use non-differential training for Pavlovian eyeblink conditioning to investigate generalization of cerebellar-related eyelid motor responses, we find generalization effects on amount, amplitude and timing of the conditioned responses. However, it is unknown what the generalization effects are following differential training. We trained mice to close their eyelids to a 10 kHz tone with an air-puff as the reinforcing stimulus (CS+), while alternatingly exposing them to a tone frequency of either 4 kHz, 9 kHz or 9.5 kHz without the air-puff (CS-) during the training blocks. We tested the generalization effects during the expression of the responses after the training period with tones ranging from 2 kHz to 20 kHz. Our results show that the level of generalization tended to positively correlate with the difference between the CS+ and the CS- training stimuli. These effects of generalization were found for the probability, amplitude but not for the timing of the conditioned eyelid responses. These data indicate the specificity of the generalization effects following differential versus non-differential training, highlighting the relevance of discrimination learning for stimulus generalization.

Schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar affective disorder are debilitating psychiatric conditions characterized by a chronic pattern of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive disturbances. Shared psychopathology includes the pre-eminence of altered affective states, disorders of thoughts, and behavioral control. Additionally, those conditions share epidemiological traits, including significant cardiovascular, metabolic, infectious, and respiratory co-morbidities, resulting in reduced life expectancy of up to 25 years. Nutritional ketosis has been successfully used to treat a range of neurological disorders and preclinical data have convincingly shown potential for its use in animal models of psychotic disorders. More recent data from open clinical trials have pointed toward a dramatic reduction in psychotic, affective, and metabolic symptoms in both schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder.

Inadequate water supply, poor sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities in schools, insufficient puberty education and a lack of hygienic menstrual hygiene management (MHM) items (absorbents) cause girls in developing countries like Ethiopia to view menstruation as shameful and uncomfortable. However, there was little evidence of female MHM practice and associated factors among secondary school girls in eastern Ethiopia.

Difficult-to-treat depression (DTD) represents a broad spectrum of patients with persistent depression where standard treatment modalities are insufficient, yet specific characteristics of this group remain insufficiently understood. This investigation aims to delineate the sociodemographic and clinical profiles of suspected DTD patients in real-world clinical settings.

Glucocorticoids are understood to represent useful biomarkers of stress and can be measured in saliva, hair, and breastmilk. The collection of such biosamples is increasingly included in biobank and cohort studies. While collection is considered "non-invasive" by biomedical researchers (compared to sampling blood), community perspectives may differ. This cross-sectional, qualitative study utilising eight focus groups aimed to determine the feasibility and acceptability of collecting ostensibly "non-invasive" biological samples in Malawi. Breastfeeding women, couples, field workers, and healthcare providers were purposively sampled. Data about prior understandings of, barriers to, and feasibility of "non-invasive" biosampling were analysed. Participants described biomaterials intended for "non-invasive" collection as sometimes highly sensitive, with sampling procedures raising community concerns. Sampling methods framed as "non-invasive" within biomedicine can consequently be considered "invasive" by prospective sample donors. Biomedical and community framings of "invasiveness' can therefore diverge, and the former must respond to and be informed by the perspectives of the latter. Further, considerations of collection procedures are shaped by therapeutic misconceptions about the immediate health-related utility of biomedical and public health research. When researchers engage with communities about biosampling, they must ensure they are not furthering therapeutic misconceptions and actively seek to dispel these.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a human rights violation that often involves violence against women, which appears to be the most prevalent type of abuse. IPV is a global public health issue with major human rights violations. Pregnant women's IPV needs special consideration because of the possible harm that might happen to mothers and their fetuses. The enormous global public health issue of IPV affects physical, mental, and sexual transgressions. Even though there were studies conducted on IPV among women, few studies were conducted among pregnant women in sub-Saharan African countries. Therefore, this study revealed IPV and associated factors among pregnant women from the recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) in sub-Saharan African countries.

Various methods such as k-anonymity and differential privacy have been proposed to safeguard users' private information in the publication of location service data. However, these typically employ a rigid "all-or-nothing" privacy standard that fails to accommodate users' more nuanced and multi-level privacy-related needs. Data is irrecoverable once anonymized, leading to a permanent reduction in location data quality, in turn significantly diminishing data utility. In the paper, a novel, bidirectional and multi-layered location privacy protection method based on attribute encryption is proposed. This method offers layered, reversible, and fine-grained privacy safeguards. A hierarchical privacy protection scheme incorporates various layers of dummy information, using an access structure tree to encrypt identifiers for these dummies. Multi-level location privacy protection is achieved after adding varying amounts of dummy information at different hierarchical levels N. This allows for precise control over the de-anonymization process, where users may adjust the granularity of anonymized data based on their own trust levels for multi-level location privacy protection. This method includes an access policy which functions via an attribute encryption-based access control system, generating decryption keys for data identifiers according to user attributes, facilitating a reversible transformation between data anonymity and de-anonymity. The complexities associated with key generation, distribution, and management are thus markedly reduced. Experimental comparisons with existing methods demonstrate that the proposed method effectively balances service quality and location privacy, providing users with multi-level and reversible privacy protection services.

Addressing the global challenge of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is crucial and demands immediate attention. Raising awareness, improving healthcare facilities, and implementing preventive measures are necessary to reduce the spread and mitigate their adverse effects. The treatment seeking behavior of individuals in relation to STIs is an important factor in STI prevention and control. Thus, this study aimed to identify factors associated with STI-related care-seeking behavior among sexually active men in East Africa.

Alexithymia, characterized by difficulty identifying and describing emotions and an externally oriented thinking style, is a personality trait linked to various mental health issues. Despite its recognized importance, research on alexithymia in early childhood is sparse. This study addresses this gap by investigating alexithymia in preschool-aged children and its correlation with psychopathology, along with parental alexithymia.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1403094.].

Telemedicine has emerged as a novel healthcare service model that plays a vital role in addressing the unequal distribution of medical resources. Telemedicine has recently gained significant traction in economically prosperous cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in China. However, Xinyang City in Henan Province is an economically less developed city, and telemedicine is still in its early stages. By exploring the views of medical staff and administrators at Xinyang City's tertiary A-level hospital on telemedicine, this study aims to determine the development status of telemedicine services in Xinyang City. The objective was to identify the challenges in the construction process and formulate corresponding strategies for advancing telemedicine in Xinyang City.

The use of anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) in degenerative dementia (DD) remains uncertain. We aimed to evaluate the association of early AED administration with subsequent DD occurrence.